Chapter 20. Tabooed Persons.
Section 1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed.
WE have seen that the Mikado's food was cooked every day in new pots
and served up in new dishes; both pots and dishes were of common clay,
in order that they might be broken or laid aside after they had been once
used. They were generally broken, for it was believed that if any one else
ate his food out of these sacred dishes, his mouth and throat would become
swollen and inflamed. The same ill effect was thought to be experienced by
any one who should wear the Mikado's clothes without his leave; he would
have swellings and pains all over his body. In Fiji there is a special name
(kana lama) for the disease supposed to be caused by eating out of a
chief's dishes or wearing his clothes. "The throat and body swell, and the
impious person dies. I had a fine mat given to me by a man who durst not
use it because Thakombau's eldest son had sat upon it. There was always
a family or clan of commoners who were exempt from this danger. I was
talking about this once to Thakombau. `Oh yes,' said he. `Here,
So-and-so! come and scratch my back.' The man scratched; he was one
of those who could do it with impunity." The name of the men thus highly
privileged was Na nduka ni, or the dirt of the chief. 1
In the evil effects thus supposed to follow upon the use of the vessels or
clothes of the Mikado and a Fijian chief we see that other side of the
god-man's character to which attention has been already called. The
divine person is a source of danger as well as of blessing; he must not only
be guarded, he must also be guarded against. His sacred organism, so
delicate that a touch may disorder it, is also, as it were, electrically
charged with a powerful magical or spiritual force which may discharge
itself with fatal effect on whatever comes in contact with it. Accordingly the
isolation of the man-god is quite as necessary for the safety of others as for
his own. His magical virtue is in the strictest sense of the word contagious:
his divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless
blessings, but, if rashly touched or allowed to break bounds, burns and
destroys what it touches. Hence the disastrous effects supposed to attend a
breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which
shrivels up and consumes him on the spot. 2
The Nubas, for example, who inhabit the wooded and fertile range of
Jebel Nuba in Eastern Africa, believe that they would die if they entered
the house of their priestly king; however, they can evade the penalty of
their intrusion by baring the left shoulder and getting the king to lay his
hand on it. And were any man to sit on a stone which the king has
consecrated to his own use, the transgressor would die within the year. The
Cazembes of Angola regard their king as so holy that no one can touch him
without being killed by the magical power which pervades his sacred
person. But since contact with him is sometimes unavoidable, they have
devised a means whereby the sinner can escape with his life. Kneeling
down before the king he touches the back of the royal hand with the back
of his own, then snaps his fingers; afterwards he lays the palm of his hand
on the palm of the king's hand, then snaps his fingers again. This ceremony
is repeated four or five times, and averts the imminent danger of death. In
Tonga it was believed that if any one fed himself with his own hands after
touching the sacred person of a superior chief or anything that belonged to
him, he would swell up and die; the sanctity of the chief, like a virulent
poison, infected the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated through
them to the food, proved fatal to the eater. A commoner who had incurred
this danger could disinfect himself by performing a certain ceremony, which
consisted in touching the sole of a chief's foot with the palm and back of
each of his hands, and afterwards rinsing his hands in water. If there was
no water near, he rubbed his hands with the juicy stem of a plantain or
banana. After that he was free to feed himself with his own hands without
danger of being attacked by the malady which would otherwise follow from
eating with tabooed or sanctified hands. But until the ceremony of expiation
or disinfection had been performed, if he wished to eat he had either to get
some one to feed him, or else to go down on his knees and pick up the
food from the ground with his mouth like a beast. He might not even use a
toothpick himself, but might guide the hand of another person holding the
toothpick. The Tongans were subject to induration of the liver and certain
forms of scrofula, which they often attributed to a failure to perform the
requisite expiation after having inadvertently touched a chief or his
belongings. Hence they often went through the ceremony as a precaution,
without knowing that they had done anything to call for it. The king of
Tonga could not refuse to play his part in the rite by presenting his foot to
such as desired to touch it, even when they applied to him at an
inconvenient time. A fat unwieldy king, who perceived his subjects
approaching with this intention, while he chanced to be taking his walks
abroad, has been sometimes seen to waddle as fast as his legs could carry
him out of their way, in order to escape the importunate and not wholly
disinterested expression of their homage. If any one fancied he might have
already unwittingly eaten with tabooed hands, he sat down before the
chief, and, taking the chief's foot, pressed it against his own stomach, that
the food in his belly might not injure him, and that he might not swell up and
die. Since scrofula was regarded by the Tongans as a result of eating with
tabooed hands, we may conjecture that persons who suffered from it among
them often resorted to the touch or pressure of the king's foot as a cure for
their malady. The analogy of the custom with the old English practice of
bringing scrofulous patients to the king to be healed by his touch is
sufficiently obvious, and suggests, as I have already pointed out
elsewhere, that among our own remote ancestors scrofula may have
obtained its name of the King's Evil, from a belief, like that of the Tongans,
that it was caused as well as cured by contact with the divine majesty of
kings. 3
In New Zealand the dread of the sanctity of chiefs was at least as great
as in Tonga. Their ghostly power, derived from an ancestral spirit, diffused
itself by contagion over everything they touched, and could strike dead all
who rashly or unwittingly meddled with it. For instance, it once happened
that a New Zealand chief of high rank and great sanctity had left the
remains of his dinner by the wayside. A slave, a stout, hungry fellow,
coming up after the chief had gone, saw the unfinished dinner, and ate it
up without asking questions. Hardly had he finished when he was informed
by a horror-stricken spectator that the food of which he had eaten was the
chief's. "I knew the unfortunate delinquent well. He was remarkable for
courage, and had signalised himself in the wars of the tribe," but "no
sooner did he hear the fatal news than he was seized by the most
extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the stomach, which never ceased
till he died, about sundown the same day. He was a strong man, in the
prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker should have said he
was not killed by the tapu of the chief, which had been communicated to
the food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of
contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and direct
evidence." This is not a solitary case. A Maori woman having eaten of
some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had been taken from a
tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief, whose sanctity had
been thus profaned, would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and next day
by twelve o'clock she was dead. A Maori chief's tinder-box was once the
means of killing several persons; for, having been lost by him, and found
by some men who used it to light their pipes, they died of fright on learning
to whom it had belonged. So, too, the garments of a high New Zealand
chief will kill any one else who wears them. A chief was observed by a
missionary to throw down a precipice a blanket which he found too heavy
to carry. Being asked by the missionary why he did not leave it on a tree
for the use of a future traveller, the chief replied that "it was the fear of its
being taken by another which caused him to throw it where he did, for if it
were worn, his tapu" (that is, his spiritual power communicated by contact
to the blanket and through the blanket to the man) "would kill the person."
For a similar reason a Maori chief would not blow a fire with his mouth; for
his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the fire, which would
pass it on to the pot on the fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the
pot, which would pass it on to the man who ate the meat, which was in the
pot, which stood on the fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so that
the eater, infected by the chief's breath conveyed through these
intermediaries, would surely die. 4
Thus in the Polynesian race, to which the Maoris belong, superstition
erected round the persons of sacred chiefs a real, though at the same time
purely imaginary barrier, to transgress which actually entailed the death of
the transgressor whenever he became aware of what he had done. This
fatal power of the imagination working through superstitious terrors is by no
means confined to one race; it appears to be common among savages. For
example, among the aborigines of Australia a native will die after the
infliction of even the most superficial wound, if only he believes that the
weapon which inflicted the wound had been sung over and thus endowed
with magical virtue. He simply lies down, refuses food, and pines away.
Similarly among some of the Indian tribes of Brazil, if the medicine-man
predicted the death of any one who had offended him, "the wretch took to
his hammock instantly in such full expectation of dying, that he would
neither eat nor drink, and the prediction was a sentence which faith
effectually executed." 5
Section 2. Mourners tabooed.
THUS regarding his sacred chiefs and kings as charged with a mysterious
spiritual force which so to say explodes at contact, the savage naturally
ranks them among the dangerous classes of society, and imposes upon
them the same sort of restraints that he lays on manslayers, menstruous
women, and other persons whom he looks upon with a certain fear and
horror. For example, sacred kings and priests in Polynesia were not
allowed to touch food with their hands, and had therefore to be fed by
others; and as we have just seen, their vessels, garments, and other
property might not be used by others on pain of disease and death. Now
precisely the same observances are exacted by some savages from girls at
their first menstruation, women after childbirth, homicides, mourners, and all
persons who have come into contact with the dead. Thus, for example, to
begin with the last class of persons, among the Maoris any one who had
handled a corpse, helped to convey it to the grave, or touched a dead
man's bones, was cut off from all intercourse and almost all communication
with mankind. He could not enter any house, or come into contact with any
person or thing, without utterly bedevilling them. He might not even touch
food with his hands, which had become so frightfully tabooed or unclean as
to be quite useless. Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would
then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back,
would gnaw at it as best he could. In some cases he would be fed by
another person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without
touching the tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many
severe restrictions, little less onerous than those which were imposed upon
the other. In almost every populous village there lived a degraded wretch,
the lowest of the low, who earned a sorry pittance by thus waiting upon the
defiled. Clad in rags, daubed from head to foot with red ochre and stinking
shark oil, always solitary and silent, generally old, haggard, and wizened,
often half crazed, he might be seen sitting motionless all day apart from the
common path or thoroughfare of the village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes
on the busy doings in which he might never take a part. Twice a day a dole
of food would be thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he
could without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters
about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse,
where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted
slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such
was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one
who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead. And
when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the mourner was about
to mix with his fellows once more, all the dishes he had used in his
seclusion were diligently smashed, and all the garments he had worn were
carefully thrown away, lest they should spread the contagion of his
defilement among others, just as the vessels and clothes of sacred kings
and chiefs are destroyed or cast away for a similar reason. So complete in
these respects is the analogy which the savage traces between the
spiritual influences that emanate from divinities and from the dead, between
the odour of sanctity and the stench of corruption. 1
The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with the dead to
touch food with their hands would seem to have been universal in
Polynesia. Thus in Samoa "those who attended the deceased were most
careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were
helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the
punishment inflicted by the household god if they violated the rule." Again,
in Tonga, "no person can touch a dead chief without being taboo'd for ten
lunar months, except chiefs, who are only taboo'd for three, four, or five
months, according to the superiority of the dead chief; except again it be
the body of Tooitonga [the great divine chief], and then even the greatest
chief would be taboo'd ten months... . During the time a man is taboo'd he
must not feed himself with his own hands, but must be fed by somebody
else: he must not even use a toothpick himself, but must guide another
person's hand holding the toothpick. If he is hungry and there is no one to
feed him, he must go down upon his hands and knees, and pick up his
victuals with his mouth: and if he infringes upon any of these rules, it is
firmly expected that he will swell up and die." 2
Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in
mourning are secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the
cups and cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else.
They must build a sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and
bathe regularly, after which they must rub their bodies with branches of
spruce. The branches may not be used more than once, and when they
have served their purpose they are stuck into the ground all round the hut.
No hunter would come near such mourners, for their presence is unlucky. If
their shadow were to fall on any one, he would be taken ill at once. They
employ thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in order to keep away the ghost of
the deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid all around their beds. This
last precaution shows clearly what the spiritual danger is which leads to the
exclusion of such persons from ordinary society; it is simply a fear of the
ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them. In the Mekeo district of
British New Guinea a widower loses all his civil rights and becomes a
social outcast, an object of fear and horror, shunned by all. He may not
cultivate a garden, nor show himself in public, nor traverse the village, nor
walk on the roads and paths. Like a wild beast he must skulk in the long
grass and the bushes; and if he sees or hears any one coming, especially
a woman, he must hide behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to fish or
hunt, he must do it alone and at night. If he would consult any one, even
the missionary, he does so by stealth and at night; he seems to have lost
his voice and speaks only in whispers. Were he to join a party of fishers or
hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead
wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about everywhere
and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against
wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed
spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the
dead are malignant and their only delight is to harm the living. 3
Section 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth.
IN GENERAL, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels, garments,
and so forth of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow an
infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the
things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As
the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who
handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous
women. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on
his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself
within a fortnight. Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden
under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a
path that any man frequents. They are also secluded at childbirth, and all
vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned. In Uganda the pots
which a woman touches, while the impurity of childbirth or of menstruation
is on her, should be destroyed; spears and shields defiled by her touch are
not destroyed, but only purified. "Among all the Déné and most other
American tribes, hardly any other being was the object of so much dread
as a menstruating woman. As soon as signs of that condition made
themselves apparent in a young girl she was carefully segregated from all
but female company, and had to live by herself in a small hut away from the
gaze of the villagers or of the male members of the roving band. While in
that awful state, she had to abstain from touching anything belonging to
man, or the spoils of any venison or other animal, lest she would thereby
pollute the same, and condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the anger of
the game thus slighted. Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water, absorbed
through a drinking tube, was her only beverage. Moreover, as the very
sight of her was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes
falling over her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even
some time after she had recovered her normal state." Among the Bribri
Indians of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean. The
only plates she may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she
has done with them, she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a
cow to find them and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish.
And she drinks out of a special vessel for a like reason; because if any one
drank out of the same cup after her, he would surely die. 1
Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in
childbed and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are
supposed to be in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or
thing they might touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the
recovery of their health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed
away. Thus, in Tahiti a woman after childbirth was secluded for a fortnight
or three weeks in a temporary hut erected on sacred ground; during the
time of her seclusion she was debarred from touching provisions, and had
to be fed by another. Further, if any one else touched the child at this
period, he was subjected to the same restrictions as the mother until the
ceremony of her purification had been performed. Similarly in the island of
Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a miserable
low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days after the
birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is considered so
unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to her on sticks.
The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed as much more dangerous
even than that of menstruation. When a woman feels her time approaching,
she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut for her in a lonely
spot. There she must live alone, holding no converse with anybody save
her mother or another woman. After her delivery the medicine-man purifies
her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what, upon her.
But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a state
considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and for a full
lunar month she must live apart from her housemates, observing the same
rules with regard to eating and drinking as at her monthly periods. The case
is still worse, the pollution is still more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage
or has been delivered of a stillborn child. In that case she may not go near
a living soul: the mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly
dangerous: her food is handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts
generally for three weeks, after which she may go home, subject only to
the restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement. 2
Some Bantu tribes entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent
infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has
concealed it. An experienced observer of these people tells us that the
blood of childbirth "appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted
with a pollution still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid. The
husband is excluded from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period,
chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare
not take his child in his arms for the three first months after the birth. But the
secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the product of a
miscarriage, especially a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not
merely the man who is threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the
sky itself which suffers. By a curious association of ideas a physiological
fact causes cosmic troubles!" As for the disastrous effect which a
miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the words of a
medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: "When a woman has
had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has
hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to
parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the country is no
longer in order. When the rain approaches the place where the blood is, it
will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a distance. That woman
has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country of the chief, for
she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to fashion a
man. That blood is taboo. It should never drip on the road! The chief will
assemble his men and say to them, `Are you in order in your villages?'
Some one will answer, `Such and such a woman was pregnant and we
have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.' Then they go
and arrest the woman. They say to her, `Show us where you have hidden
it.' They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of
two sorts of roots prepared in a special pot. They take a little of the earth of
this grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the
river and sprinkle it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash
every day with the medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by
rain). Further, we (medicine-men), summon the women of the country; we
tell them to prepare a ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring
it to us one morning. If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle
the whole country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days
we send little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women's
affairs and have not yet had relations with men. We put the medicine in the
horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of
the country. A little girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a
branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, `Rain! rain!'
So we remove the misfortune which the women have brought on the roads;
the rain will be able to come. The country is purified! 3
Section 4. Warriors tabooed.
ONCE more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say, in
an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a
variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from those
rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt against foes
of flesh and blood. The general effect of these observances is to place the
warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state of seclusion or
spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety, primitive man puts his
human gods and other dangerous characters. Thus when the Maoris went
out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the highest degree, and
they and their friends at home had to observe strictly many curious customs
over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life. They became, in the
irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the old fighting days,
"tabooed an inch thick"; and as for the leader of the expedition, he was
quite unapproachable. Similarly, when the Israelites marched forth to war
they were bound by certain rules of ceremonial purity identical with rules
observed by Maoris and Australian blackfellows on the war-path. The
vessels they used were sacred, and they had to practise continence and a
custom of personal cleanliness of which the original motive, if we may
judge from the avowed motive of savages who conform to the same custom,
was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the refuse of their persons, and
thus be enabled to work their destruction by magic. Among some Indian
tribes of North America a young warrior in his first campaign had to conform
to certain customs, of which two were identical with the observances
imposed by the same Indians on girls at their first menstruation: the vessels
he ate and drank out of might be touched by no other person, and he was
forbidden to scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers;
if he could not help scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick. The
latter rule, like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with
his own fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution,
whichever we choose to call it, of the tabooed hands. Moreover among
these Indian tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night
with their faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the
posture, they might not change it. They might not sit upon the bare ground,
nor wet their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they
had no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect
of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which
they carried with them for the purpose. No member of the party was
permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who
chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden
to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything that belonged to him.
If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the duty of the member
whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the other
member down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked
down peaceably and without resistance. The vessels out of which the
warriors ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark,
with marks to distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians
invariably drank out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out
of the other. When on their way home they came within a day's march of
the village, they hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on
the prairie, doubtless to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being
communicated with disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have seen
that the vessels and clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at childbirth
and menstruation, and of persons defiled by contact with the dead are
destroyed or laid aside for a similar reason. The first four times that an
Apache Indian goes out on the war-path, he is bound to refrain from
scratching his head with his fingers and from letting water touch his lips.
Hence he scratches his head with a stick, and drinks through a hollow reed
or cane. Stick and reed are attached to the warrior's belt and to each other
by a leathern thong. The rule not to scratch their heads with their fingers,
but to use a stick for the purpose instead, was regularly observed by
Ojebways on the war-path. 1
With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred tribes we are told they "will
not cohabit with women while they are out at war; they religiously abstain
from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of
three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home,
because they are to sanctify themselves." Among the Ba-Pedi and
Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa not only have the warriors to abstain from
women, but the people left behind in the villages are also bound to
continence; they think that any incontinence on their part would cause
thorns to grow on the ground traversed by the warriors, and that success
would not attend the expedition. 2
Why exactly many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in
time of war, we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their
motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic,
close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and
cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in
childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons. Indeed the
Kayans of Central Borneo go so far as to hold that to touch a loom or
women's clothes would so weaken a man that he would have no success
in hunting, fishing, and war. Hence it is not merely sexual intercourse with
women that the savage warrior sometimes shuns; he is careful to avoid the
sex altogether. Thus among the hill tribes of Assam, not only are men
forbidden to cohabit with their wives during or after a raid, but they may not
eat food cooked by a woman; nay, they should not address a word even to
their own wives. Once a woman, who unwittingly broke the rule by
speaking to her husband while he was under the war taboo, sickened and
died when she learned the awful crime she had committed. 3
Section 5. Manslayers tabooed.
IF THE READER still doubts whether the rules of conduct which we have
just been considering are based on superstitious fears or dictated by a
rational prudence, his doubts will probably be dissipated when he learns
that rules of the same sort are often imposed even more stringently on
warriors after the victory has been won and when all fear of the living
corporeal foe is at an end. In such cases one motive for the inconvenient
restrictions laid on the victors in their hour of triumph is probably a dread of
the angry ghosts of the slain; and that the fear of the vengeful ghosts does
influence the behaviour of the slayers is often expressly affirmed. The
general effect of the taboos laid on sacred chiefs, mourners, women at
childbirth, men on the war-path, and so on, is to seclude or isolate the
tabooed persons from ordinary society, this effect being attained by a
variety of rules, which oblige the men or women to live in separate huts or
in the open air, to shun the commerce of the sexes, to avoid the use of
vessels employed by others, and so forth. Now the same effect is produced
by similar means in the case of victorious warriors, particularly such as
have actually shed the blood of their enemies. In the island of Timor, when
a warlike expedition has returned in triumph bringing the heads of the
vanquished foe, the leader of the expedition is forbidden by religion and
custom to return at once to his own house. A special hut is prepared for
him, in which he has to reside for two months, undergoing bodily and
spiritual purification. During this time he may not go to his wife nor feed
himself; the food must be put into his mouth by another person. That these
observances are dictated by fear of the ghosts of the slain seems certain;
for from another account of the ceremonies performed on the return of a
successful head-hunter in the same island we learn that sacrifices are
offered on this occasion to appease the soul of the man whose head has
been taken; the people think that some misfortune would befall the victor
were such offerings omitted. Moreover, a part of the ceremony consists of a
dance accompanied by a song, in which the death of the slain man is
lamented and his forgiveness is entreated. "Be not angry," they say,
"because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads
might now have been exposed in your village. We have offered the
sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace.
Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been better that we should
remain friends? Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head
would not have been cut off." The people of Paloo in Central Celebes take
the heads of their enemies in war and afterwards propitiate the souls of the
slain in the temple. 1
Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, "a
man who has taken life is considered to be impure until he has undergone
certain ceremonies: as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses himself
and his weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village
and seats himself on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him
or takes any notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which is
put in charge of two or three small boys as servants. He may eat only
toasted bananas, and only the centre portion of them-the ends being
thrown away. On the third day of his seclusion a small feast is prepared by
his friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands for him. This is
called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his best ornaments and
badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully armed and parades the village.
The next day a hunt is organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game
captured. It is cut open and the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of
the man. He then walks solemnly down to the nearest water, and standing
straddle-legs in it washes himself. All the young untried warriors swim
between his legs. This is supposed to impart courage and strength to them.
The following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed,
and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having satisfied himself that he has
thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to his house. The
beating of flooring-boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain method
of scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is finished. He can then
enter his wife's house." 2
In Windessi, Dutch New Guinea, when a party of head-hunters has been
successful, and they are nearing home, they announce their approach and
success by blowing on triton shells. Their canoes are also decked with
branches. The faces of the men who have taken a head are blackened with
charcoal. If several have taken part in killing the same victim, his head is
divided among them. They always time their arrival so as to reach home in
the early morning. They come rowing to the village with a great noise, and
the women stand ready to dance in the verandahs of the houses. The
canoes row past the room sram or house where the young men live; and as
they pass, the murderers throw as many pointed sticks or bamboos at the
wall or the roof as there were enemies killed. The day is spent very quietly.
Now and then they drum or blow on the conch; at other times they beat the
walls of the houses with loud shouts to drive away the ghosts of the slain.
So the Yabim of New Guinea believe that the spirit of a murdered man
pursues his murderer and seeks to do him a mischief. Hence they drive
away the spirit with shouts and the beating of drums. When the Fijians had
buried a man alive, as they often did, they used at nightfall to make a great
uproar by means of bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, for the purpose
of frightening away his ghost, lest he should attempt to return to his old
home. And to render his house unattractive to him they dismantled it and
clothed it with everything that to their ideas seemed most repulsive. On the
evening of the day on which they had tortured a prisoner to death, the
American Indians were wont to run through the village with hideous yells,
beating with sticks on the furniture, the walls, and the roofs of the huts to
prevent the angry ghost of their victim from settling there and taking
vengeance for the torments that his body had endured at their hands.
"Once," says a traveller, "on approaching in the night a village of Ottawas,
I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all busily engaged in
raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, I
found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the
Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of
the departed combatants from entering the village." 3
Among the Basutos "ablution is specially performed on return from battle. It
is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as
possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would
pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They go in a
procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream. At the moment they
enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying
substances into the current. This is, however, not strictly necessary. The
javelins and battle-axes also undergo the process of washing." Among the
Bageshu of East Africa a man who has killed another may not return to his
own house on the same day, though he may enter the village and spend
the night in a friend's house. He kills a sheep and smears his chest, his
right arm, and his head with the contents of the animal's stomach. His
children are brought to him and he smears them in like manner. Then he
smears each side of the doorway with the tripe and entrails, and finally
throws the rest of the stomach on the roof of his house. For a whole day he
may not touch food with his hands, but picks it up with two sticks and so
conveys it to his mouth. His wife is not under any such restrictions. She
may even go to mourn for the man whom her husband has killed, if she
wishes to do so. Among the Angoni, to the north of the Zambesi, warriors
who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with
ashes, hang garments of their victims on their persons, and tie bark ropes
round their necks, so that the ends hang down over their shoulders or
breasts. This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising
at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to drive
away the ghosts of the slain, which, if they were not thus banished from the
houses, might bring sickness and misfortune on the inmates. 4
In some of these accounts nothing is said of an enforced seclusion, at
least after the ceremonial cleansing, but some South African tribes certainly
require the slayer of a very gallant foe in war to keep apart from his wife
and family for ten days after he has washed his body in running water. He
also receives from the tribal doctor a medicine which he chews with his
food. When a Nandi of East Africa has killed a member of another tribe, he
paints one side of his body, spear, and sword red, and the other side white.
For four days after the slaughter he is considered unclean and may not go
home. He has to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he may not
associate with his wife or sweetheart, and he may eat nothing but porridge,
beef, and goat's flesh. At the end of the fourth day he must purify himself by
taking a strong purge made from the bark of the segetet tree and by drinking
goat's milk mixed with blood. Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, when a
man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return
home, and his friends rub a medicine, which generally consists of goat's
dung, over his body to prevent the spirit of the slain man from troubling him.
Exactly the same custom is practised for the same reason by the Wageia of
East Africa. With the Ja-Luo of Kavirondo the custom is somewhat different.
Three days after his return from the fight the warrior shaves his head. But
before he may enter his village he has to hang a live fowl, head uppermost,
round his neck; then the bird is decapitated and its head left hanging round
his neck. Soon after his return a feast is made for the slain man, in order
that his ghost may not haunt his slayer. In the Pelew Islands, when the men
return from a warlike expedition in which they have taken a life, the young
warriors who have been out fighting for the first time, and all who handled
the slain, are shut up in the large council-house and become tabooed.
They may not quit the edifice, nor bathe, nor touch a woman, nor eat fish;
their food is limited to coco-nuts and syrup. They rub themselves with
charmed leaves and chew charmed betel. After three days they go together
to bathe as near as possible to the spot where the man was killed. 5
Among the Natchez Indians of North America young braves who had
taken their first scalps were obliged to observe certain rules of abstinence
for six months. They might not sleep with their wives nor eat flesh; their only
food was fish and hasty-pudding. If they broke these rules, they believed
that the soul of the man they had killed would work their death by magic,
that they would gain no more successes over the enemy, and that the least
wound inflicted on them would prove mortal. When a Choctaw had killed an
enemy and taken his scalp, he went into mourning for a month, during
which he might not comb his hair, and if his head itched he might not
scratch it except with a little stick which he wore fastened to his wrist for the
purpose. This ceremonial mourning for the enemies they had slain was not
uncommon among the North American Indians. 6
Thus we see that warriors who have taken the life of a foe in battle are
temporarily cut off from free intercourse with their fellows, and especially
with their wives, and must undergo certain rites of purification before they
are readmitted to society. Now if the purpose of their seclusion and of the
expiatory rites which they have to perform is, as we have been led to
believe, no other than to shake off, frighten, or appease the angry spirit of
the slain man, we may safely conjecture that the similar purification of
homicides and murderers, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of a
fellow-tribesman, had at first the same significance, and that the idea of a
moral or spiritual regeneration symbolised by the washing, the fasting, and
so on, was merely a later interpretation put upon the old custom by men
who had outgrown the primitive modes of thought in which the custom
originated. The conjecture will be confirmed if we can show that savages
have actually imposed certain restrictions on the murderer of a
fellow-tribesman from a definite fear that he is haunted by the ghost of his
victim. This we can do with regard to the Omahas of North America. Among
these Indians the kinsmen of a murdered man had the right to put the
murderer to death, but sometimes they waived their right in consideration of
presents which they consented to accept. When the life of the murderer
was spared, he had to observe certain stringent rules for a period which
varied from two to four years. He must walk barefoot, and he might eat no
warm food, nor raise his voice, nor look around. He was compelled to pull
his robe about him and to have it tied at the neck even in hot weather; he
might not let it hang loose or fly open. He might not move his hands about,
but had to keep them close to his body. He might not comb his hair, and it
might not be blown about by the wind. When the tribe went out hunting, he
was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of mile from the rest of the
people "lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind, which might
cause damage." Only one of his kindred was allowed to remain with him at
his tent. No one wished to eat with him, for they said, "If we eat with him
whom Wakanda hates, Wakanda will hate us." Sometimes he wandered at
night crying and lamenting his offence. At the end of his long isolation the
kinsmen of the murdered man heard his crying and said, "It is enough.
Begone, and walk among the crowd. Put on moccasins and wear a good
robe." Here the reason alleged for keeping the murderer at a considerable
distance from the hunters gives the clue to all the other restrictions laid on
him: he was haunted and therefore dangerous. The ancient Greeks
believed that the soul of a man who had just been killed was wroth with his
slayer and troubled him; wherefore it was needful even for the involuntary
homicide to depart from his country for a year until the anger of the dead
man had cooled down; nor might the slayer return until sacrifice had been
offered and ceremonies of purification performed. If his victim chanced to be
a foreigner, the homicide had to shun the native country of the dead man
as well as his own. The legend of the matricide Orestes, how he roamed
from place to place pursued by the Furies of his murdered mother, and
none would sit at meat with him, or take him in, till he had been purified,
reflects faithfully the real Greek dread of such as were still haunted by an
angry ghost. 7
Section 6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed.
IN SAVAGE society the hunter and the fisherman have often to observe
rules of abstinence and to submit to ceremonies of purification of the same
sort as those which are obligatory on the warrior and the manslayer; and
though we cannot in all cases perceive the exact purpose which these
rules and ceremonies are supposed to serve, we may with some probability
assume that, just as the dread of the spirits of his enemies is the main
motive for the seclusion and purification of the warrior who hopes to take or
has already taken their lives, so the huntsman or fisherman who complies
with similar customs is principally actuated by a fear of the spirits of the
beasts, birds, or fish which he has killed or intends to kill. For the savage
commonly conceives animals to be endowed with souls and intelligences
like his own, and hence he naturally treats them with similar respect. Just
as he attempts to appease the ghosts of the men he has slain, so he essays
to propitiate the spirits of the animals he has killed. These ceremonies of
propitiation will be described later on in this work; here we have to deal,
first, with the taboos observed by the hunter and the fisherman before or
during the hunting and fishing seasons, and, second, with the ceremonies
of purification which have to be practised by these men on returning with
their booty from a successful chase. 1
While the savage respects, more or less, the souls of all animals, he treats
with particular deference the spirits of such as are either especially useful
to him or formidable on account of their size, strength, or ferocity.
Accordingly the hunting and killing of these valuable or dangerous beasts
are subject to more elaborate rules and ceremonies than the slaughter of
comparatively useless and insignificant creatures. Thus the Indians of
Nootka Sound prepared themselves for catching whales by observing a fast
for a week, during which they ate very little, bathed in the water several
times a day, sang, and rubbed their bodies, limbs, and faces with shells
and bushes till they looked as if they had been severely torn with briars.
They were likewise required to abstain from any commerce with their
women for the like period, this last condition being considered
indispensable to their success. A chief who failed to catch a whale has
been known to attribute his failure to a breach of chastity on the part of his
men. It should be remarked that the conduct thus prescribed as a
preparation for whaling is precisely that which in the same tribe of Indians
was required of men about to go on the war-path. Rules of the same sort
are, or were formerly, observed by Malagasy whalers. For eight days
before they went to sea the crew of a whaler used to fast, abstaining from
women and liquor, and confessing their most secret faults to each other;
and if any man was found to have sinned deeply, he was forbidden to
share in the expedition. In the island of Mabuiag continence was imposed
on the people both before they went to hunt the dugong and while the
turtles were pairing. The turtle-season lasts during parts of October and
November; and if at that time unmarried persons had sexual intercourse with
each other, it was believed that when the canoe approached the floating
turtle, the male would separate from the female and both would dive down
in different directions. So at Mowat in New Guinea men have no relation
with women when the turtles are coupling, though there is considerable
laxity of morals at other times. In the island of Uap, one of the Caroline
group, every fisherman plying his craft lies under a most strict taboo during
the whole of the fishing season, which lasts for six or eight weeks.
Whenever he is on shore he must spend all his time in the men's
clubhouse, and under no pretext whatever may he visit his own house or
so much as look upon the faces of his wife and womenkind. Were he but to
steal a glance at them, they think that flying fish must inevitably bore out his
eyes at night. If his wife, mother, or daughter brings any gift for him or
wishes to talk with him, she must stand down towards the shore with her
back turned to the men's clubhouse. Then the fisherman may go out and
speak to her, or with his back turned to her he may receive what she has
brought him; after which he must return at once to his rigorous confinement.
Indeed the fishermen may not even join in dance and song with the other
men of the clubhouse in the evening; they must keep to themselves and be
silent. In Mirzapur, when the seed of the silkworm is brought into the house,
the Kol or Bhuiyar puts it in a place which has been carefully plastered
with holy cowdung to bring good luck. From that time the owner must be
careful to avoid ceremonial impurity. He must give up cohabitation with his
wife; he may not sleep on a bed, nor shave himself, nor cut his nails, nor
anoint himself with oil, nor eat food cooked with butter, nor tell lies, nor do
anything else that he deems wrong. He vows to Singarmati Devi that, if the
worms are duly born, he will make her an offering. When the cocoons open
and the worms appear, he assembles the women of the house and they
sing the same song as at the birth of a baby, and red lead is smeared on
the parting of the hair of all the married women of the neighbourhood. When
the worms pair, rejoicings are made as at a marriage. Thus the silkworms
are treated as far as possible like human beings. Hence the custom which
prohibits the commerce of the sexes while the worms are hatching may be
only an extension, by analogy, of the rule which is observed by many
races, that the husband may not cohabit with his wife during pregnancy
and lactation. 2
In the island of Nias the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them lightly
over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game into them.
While they are engaged in digging the pits, they have to observe a number
of taboos. They may not spit, or the game would turn back in disgust from
the pits. They may not laugh, or the sides of the pit would fall in. They may
eat no salt, prepare no fodder for swine, and in the pit they may not scratch
themselves, for if they did, the earth would be loosened and would
collapse. And the night after digging the pit they may have no intercourse
with a woman, or all their labour would be in vain. 3
This practice of observing strict chastity as a condition of success in
hunting and fishing is very common among rude races; and the instances
of it which have been cited render it probable that the rule is always based
on a superstition rather than on a consideration of the temporary weakness
which a breach of the custom may entail on the hunter or fisherman. In
general it appears to be supposed that the evil effect of incontinence is not
so much that it weakens him, as that, for some reason or other, it offends
the animals, who in consequence will not suffer themselves to be caught. A
Carrier Indian of British Columbia used to separate from his wife for a full
month before he set traps for bears, and during this time he might not drink
from the same vessel as his wife, but had to use a special cup made of
birch bark. The neglect of these precautions would cause the game to
escape after it had been snared. But when he was about to snare martens,
the period of continence was cut down to ten days. 4
An examination of all the many cases in which the savage bridles his
passions and remains chaste from motives of superstition, would be
instructive, but I cannot attempt it now. I will only add a few miscellaneous
examples of the custom before passing to the ceremonies of purification
which are observed by the hunter and fisherman after the chase and the
fishing are over. The workers in the salt-pans near Siphoum, in Laos, must
abstain from all sexual relations at the place where they are at work; and
they may not cover their heads nor shelter themselves under an umbrella
from the burning rays of the sun. Among the Kachins of Burma the ferment
used in making beer is prepared by two women, chosen by lot, who during
the three days that the process lasts may eat nothing acid and may have
no conjugal relations with their husbands; otherwise it is supposed that the
beer would be sour. Among the Masai honey-wine is brewed by a man
and a woman who live in a hut set apart for them till the wine is ready for
drinking. But they are strictly forbidden to have sexual intercourse with
each other during this time; it is deemed essential that they should be
chaste for two days before they begin to brew and for the whole of the six
days that the brewing lasts. The Masai believe that were the couple to
commit a breach of chastity, not only would the wine be undrinkable but the
bees which made the honey would fly away. Similarly they require that a
man who is making poison should sleep alone and observe other taboos
which render him almost an outcast. The Wandorobbo, a tribe of the same
region as the Masai, believe that the mere presence of a woman in the
neighbourhood of a man who is brewing poison would deprive the poison
of its venom, and that the same thing would happen if the wife of the
poison-maker were to commit adultery while her husband was brewing the
poison. In this last case it is obvious that a rationalistic explanation of the
taboo is impossible. How could the loss of virtue in the poison be a
physical consequence of the loss of virtue in the poison-maker's wife?
Clearly the effect which the wife's adultery is supposed to have on the
poison is a case of sympathetic magic; her misconduct sympathetically
affects her husband and his work at a distance. We may, accordingly, infer
with some confidence that the rule of continence imposed on the
poison-maker himself is also a simple case of sympathetic magic, and not,
as a civilised reader might be disposed to conjecture, a wise precaution
designed to prevent him from accidentally poisoning his wife. 5
Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa, when the site
of a new village has been chosen and the houses are building, all the
married people are forbidden to have conjugal relations with each other. If it
were discovered that any couple had broken this rule, the work of building
would immediately be stopped, and another site chosen for the village. For
they think that a breach of chastity would spoil the village which was
growing up, that the chief would grow lean and perhaps die, and that the
guilty woman would never bear another child. Among the Chams of
Cochin-China, when a dam is made or repaired on a river for the sake of
irrigation, the chief who offers the traditional sacrifices and implores the
protection of the deities on the work has to stay all the time in a wretched
hovel of straw, taking no part in the labour, and observing the strictest
continence; for the people believe that a breach of his chastity would entail
a breach of the dam. Here, it is plain, there can be no idea of maintaining
the mere bodily vigour of the chief for the accomplishment of a task in
which he does not even bear a hand. 6
If the taboos or abstinences observed by hunters and fishermen before
and during the chase are dictated, as we have seen reason to believe, by
superstitious motives, and chiefly by a dread of offending or frightening the
spirits of the creatures whom it is proposed to kill, we may expect that the
restraints imposed after the slaughter has been perpetrated will be at least
as stringent, the slayer and his friends having now the added fear of the
angry ghosts of his victims before their eyes. Whereas on the hypothesis
that the abstinences in question, including those from food, drink, and
sleep, are merely salutary precautions for maintaining the men in health
and strength to do their work, it is obvious that the observance of these
abstinences or taboos after the work is done, that is, when the game is
killed and the fish caught, must be wholly superfluous, absurd, and
inexplicable. But as I shall now show, these taboos often continue to be
enforced or even increased in stringency after the death of the animals, in
other words, after the hunter or fisher has accomplished his object by
making his bag or landing his fish. The rationalistic theory of them therefore
breaks down entirely; the hypothesis of superstition is clearly the only one
open to us. 7
Among the Inuit or Esquimaux of Bering Strait "the dead bodies of various
animals must be treated very carefully by the hunter who obtains them, so
that their shades may not be offended and bring bad luck or even death
upon him or his people." Hence the Unalit hunter who has had a hand in
the killing of a white whale, or even has helped to take one from the net, is
not allowed to do any work for the next four days, that being the time during
which the shade or ghost of the whale is supposed to stay with its body. At
the same time no one in the village may use any sharp or pointed
instrument for fear of wounding the whale's shade, which is believed to be
hovering invisible in the neighbourhood; and no loud noise may be made
lest it should frighten or offend the ghost. Whoever cuts a whale's body with
an iron axe will die. Indeed the use of all iron instruments is forbidden in the
village during these four days. 8
These same Esquimaux celebrate a great annual festival in December
when the bladders of all the seals, whales, walrus, and white bears that
have been killed in the year are taken into the assembly-house of the
village. They remain there for several days, and so long as they do so the
hunters avoid all intercourse with women, saying that if they failed in that
respect the shades of the dead animals would be offended. Similarly among
the Aleuts of Alaska the hunter who had struck a whale with a charmed
spear would not throw again, but returned at once to his home and
separated himself from his people in a hut specially constructed for the
purpose, where he stayed for three days without food or drink, and without
touching or looking upon a woman. During this time of seclusion he snorted
occasionally in imitation of the wounded and dying whale, in order to
prevent the whale which he had struck from leaving the coast. On the
fourth day he emerged from his seclusion and bathed in the sea, shrieking
in a hoarse voice and beating the water with his hands. Then, taking with
him a companion, he repaired to that part of the shore where he expected
to find the whale stranded. If the beast was dead, he at once cut out the
place where the death-wound had been inflicted. If the whale was not
dead, he again returned to his home and continued washing himself until
the whale died. Here the hunter's imitation of the wounded whale is
probably intended by means of homoeopathic magic to make the beast die
in earnest. Once more the soul of the grim polar bear is offended if the
taboos which concern him are not observed. His soul tarries for three days
near the spot where it left his body, and during these days the Esquimaux
are particularly careful to conform rigidly to the laws of taboo, because they
believe that punishment overtakes the transgressor who sins against the
soul of a bear far more speedily than him who sins against the souls of the
sea-beasts. 9
When the Kayans have shot one of the dreaded Bornean panthers, they
are very anxious about the safety of their souls, for they think that the soul
of a panther is almost more powerful than their own. Hence they step eight
times over the carcase of the dead beast reciting the spell, "Panther, thy
soul under my soul." On returning home they smear themselves, their dogs,
and their weapons with the blood of fowls in order to calm their souls and
hinder them from fleeing away; for, being themselves fond of the flesh of
fowls, they ascribe the same taste to their souls. For eight days afterwards
they must bathe by day and by night before going out again to the chase.
Among the Hottentots, when a man has killed a lion, leopard, elephant, or
rhinoceros, he is esteemed a great hero, but he has to remain at home
quite idle for three days, during which his wife may not come near him; she
is also enjoined to restrict herself to a poor diet and to eat no more than is
barely necessary to keep her in health. Similarly the Lapps deem it the
height of glory to kill a bear, which they consider the king of beasts.
Nevertheless, all the men who take part in the slaughter are regarded as
unclean, and must live by themselves for three days in a hut or tent made
specially for them, where they cut up and cook the bear's carcase. The
reindeer which brought in the carcase on a sledge may not be driven by a
woman for a whole year; indeed, according to one account, it may not be
used by anybody for that period. Before the men go into the tent where they
are to be secluded, they strip themselves of the garments they had worn in
killing the bear, and their wives spit the red juice of alder bark in their
faces. They enter the tent not by the ordinary door but by an opening at the
back. When the bear's flesh has been cooked, a portion of it is sent by the
hands of two men to the women, who may not approach the men's tent
while the cooking is going on. The men who convey the flesh to the women
pretend to be strangers bringing presents from a foreign land; the women
keep up the pretence and promise to tie red threads round the legs of the
strangers. The bear's flesh may not be passed in to the women through the
door of their tent, but must be thrust in at a special opening made by lifting
up the hem of the tent-cover. When the three days' seclusion is over and
the men are at liberty to return to their wives, they run, one after the other,
round the fire, holding the chain by which pots are suspended over it. This
is regarded as a form of purification; they may now leave the tent by the
ordinary door and rejoin the women. But the leader of the party must still
abstain from cohabitation with his wife for two days more. 10
Again, the Caffres are said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an
enormous serpent resembling it; "and being influenced by certain
superstitious notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put
it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to
lie in a running stream of water during the day for several weeks together;
and no beast whatever was allowed to be slaughtered at the hamlet to
which he belonged, until this duty had been fully performed. The body of
the snake was then taken and carefully buried in a trench, dug close to the
cattle-fold, where its remains, like those of a chief, were henceforward kept
perfectly undisturbed. The period of penance, as in the case of mourning
for the dead, is now happily reduced to a few days." In Madras it is
considered a great sin to kill a cobra. When this has happened, the people
generally burn the body of the serpent, just as they burn the bodies of
human beings. The murderer deems himself polluted for three days. On the
second day milk is poured on the remains of the cobra. On the third day the
guilty wretch is free from pollution. 11
In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is
sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of
superstition. Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble
so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals
for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both
sets of customs are based may be assumed to be substantially the same.
Those ideas, if I am right, are the respect which the savage feels for the
souls of beasts, especially valuable or formidable beasts, and the dread
which he entertains of their vengeful ghosts. Some confirmation of this view
may be drawn from the ceremonies observed by fishermen of Annam when
the carcase of a whale is washed ashore. These fisherfolk, we are told,
worship the whale on account of the benefits they derive from it. There is
hardly a village on the sea-shore which has not its small pagoda,
containing the bones, more or less authentic, of a whale. When a dead
whale is washed ashore, the people accord it a solemn burial. The man
who first caught sight of it acts as chief mourner, performing the rites which
as chief mourner and heir he would perform for a human kinsman. He puts
on all the garb of woe, the straw hat, the white robe with long sleeves
turned inside out, and the other paraphernalia of full mourning. As next of
kin to the deceased he presides over the funeral rites. Perfumes are
burned, sticks of incense kindled, leaves of gold and silver scattered,
crackers let off. When the flesh has been cut off and the oil extracted, the
remains of the carcase are buried in the sand. After wards a shed is set up
and offerings are made in it. Usually some time after the burial the spirit of
the dead whale takes possession of some person in the village and
declares by his mouth whether he is a male or a female. 12
