value of charity. The reason that Sama-jangja and (in many versions) Saman are doomed to die early is because they neglect their ancestors, their neighbors, or both, despite possessing great wealth. As the chasa tell Sama-jangja's family in one version: "If you would save your father Do not scorn those who have nothing, and feed the hungry." Implying a connection between wealth, sinful behavior, and resulting premature death, the narratives urge the rich to fulfill their social responsibilities towards both their ancestors and their neighbors—or indeed, to actively reduce their wealth through ritual or charity—in order to prevent such a death. Connections to other narratives Scholars have examined both the connections between the three modern life replacement narratives, and their relationship to other stories known in Korea. The three modern narratives may all descend from a single source. Notably, although Jeju is the southernmost part of Korea and Hamgyong is a far northern periphery, both the Menggam bon-puri and the Honswi-gut feature a benevolent skull. Choi Won-oh argues that this implies that the life replacement narratives stemmed from an ancient culture that practiced skull veneration (which is no longer known in Korea), with the Jangja-puri narrative being an innovation. The idiosyncrasies of each of the three narratives may be due to influence from other shamanic narratives, or from local folklore. For instance, the initial relationship between Saman and the skull—in which the latter supernaturally reveals himself as a man who died a violent death, then rewards his human devotee by making him a great hunter—is found only in the Menggam bon-puri. This story closely matches the conventions of Jeju village-shrine bon-puri (myths dedicated to patron gods of villages) and ancestral bon-puri (myths dedicated to patron gods of specific families or occupations). Many of the gods invoked in the latter types of myths are also souls of those who met untimely deaths who manifest in a human's dream to express their need to be worshipped, then reward their devotees with prosperity. Sometimes, even specific narrative details are shared; a Menggam bon-puri version describes the skull jumping into the skirt of Saman's wife in terms very similar to one village-shrine bon-puri's description of a snake-god leaping into the skirt of his worshipper's wife. Thus, the Menggam bon-puri myth may originally have been the ancestral bon-puri of hunters, which eventually entered the ritual life of all Jeju Islanders along with the god Menggam