Section 4. Blood tabooed.
WE have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name
raw flesh. At certain times a Brahman teacher is enjoined not to look on
raw flesh, blood, or persons whose hands have been cut off. In Uganda
the father of twins is in a state of taboo for some time after birth; among
other rules he is forbidden to kill anything or to see blood. In the Pelew
Islands when a raid has been made on a village and a head carried off,
the relations of the slain man are tabooed and have to submit to certain
observances in order to escape the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in
the house, touch no raw flesh, and chew betel over which an incantation
has been uttered by the exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered
man goes away to the enemy's country in pursuit of his murderer. The
taboo is probably based on the common belief that the soul or spirit of the
animal is in the blood. As tabooed persons are believed to be in a perilous
state-for example, the relations of the slain man are liable to the attacks of
his indignant ghost-it is especially necessary to isolate them from contact
with spirits; hence the prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo
is only the special enforcement of a general precept; in other words, its
observance is particularly enjoined in circumstances which seem urgently
to call for its application, but apart from such circumstances the prohibition
is also observed, though less strictly, as a common rule of life. Thus some
of the Esthonians will not taste blood because they believe that it contains
the animal's soul, which would enter the body of the person who tasted the
blood. Some Indian tribes of North America, "through a strong principle of
religion, abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of any animal,
as it contains the life and spirit of the beast." Jewish hunters poured out
the blood of the game they had killed and covered it up with dust. They
would not taste the blood, believing that the soul or life of the animal was
in the blood, or actually was the blood. 1
It is a common rule that royal blood may not be shed upon the ground.
Hence when a king or one of his family is to be put to death a mode of
execution is devised by which the royal blood shall not be spilt upon the
earth. About the year 1688 the generalissimo of the army rebelled against
the king of Siam and put him to death "after the manner of royal criminals,
or as princes of the blood are treated when convicted of capital crimes,
which is by putting them into a large iron caldron, and pounding them to
pieces with wooden pestles, because none of their royal blood must be
spilt on the ground, it being, by their religion, thought great impiety to
contaminate the divine blood by mixing it with earth." When Kublai Khan
defeated and took his uncle Nayan, who had rebelled against him, he
caused Nayan to be put to death by being wrapt in a carpet and tossed to
and fro till he died, "because he would not have the blood of his Line
Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in the eye of Heaven and before
the Sun." "Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar maxim: `One Khan will put
another to death to get possession of the throne, but he takes great care
that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is highly improper that the
blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause
the victim to be smothered somehow or other.' The like feeling prevails at
the court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed
is reserved for princes of the blood." 2
The reluctance to spill royal blood seems to be only a particular case of
a general unwillingness to shed blood or at least to allow it to fall on the
ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day persons caught in the streets of
Cambaluc (Peking) at unseasonable hours were arrested, and if found
guilty of a misdemeanor were beaten with a stick. "Under this punishment
people sometimes die, but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed, for
their Bacsis say that it is an evil thing to shed man's blood." In West
Sussex people believe that the ground on which human blood has been
shed is accursed and will remain barren for ever. Among some primitive
peoples, when the blood of a tribesman has to be spilt it is not suffered to
fall upon the ground, but is received upon the bodies of his
fellow-tribesmen. Thus in some Australian tribes boys who are being
circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the living bodies of the
tribesmen; and when a boy's tooth is knocked out as an initiatory
ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast the
blood flows and may not be wiped away. "Also the Gauls used to drink
their enemies' blood and paint themselves therewith. So also they write that
the old Irish were wont; and so have I seen some of the Irish do, but not
their enemies' but friends' blood, as, namely, at the execution of a notable
traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien, I saw an old woman, which
was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartered and suck
up all the blood that ran thereout, saying that the earth was not worthy to
drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hair,
crying out and shrieking most terribly." Among the Latuka of Central Africa
the earth on which a drop of blood has fallen at childbirth is carefully
scraped up with an iron shovel, put into a pot along with the water used in
washing the mother, and buried tolerably deep outside the house on the
left-hand side. In West Africa, if a drop of your blood has fallen on the
ground, you must carefully cover it up, rub and stamp it into the soil; if it
has fallen on the side of a canoe or a tree, the place is cut out and the
chip destroyed. One motive of these African customs may be a wish to
prevent the blood from falling into the hands of magicians, who might make
an evil use of it. That is admittedly the reason why people in West Africa
stamp out any blood of theirs which has dropped on the ground or cut out
any wood that has been soaked with it. From a like dread of sorcery
natives of New Guinea are careful to burn any sticks, leaves, or rags
which are stained with their blood; and if the blood has dripped on the
ground they turn up the soil and if possible light a fire on the spot. The
same fear explains the curious duties discharged by a class of men called
ramanga or "blue blood" among the Betsileo of Madagascar. It is their
business to eat all the nail-parings and to lick up all the spilt blood of the
nobles. When the nobles pare their nails, the parings are collected to the
last scrap and swallowed by these ramanga. If the parings are too large,
they are minced small and so gulped down. Again, should a nobleman
wound himself, say in cutting his nails or treading on something, the
ramanga lick up the blood as fast as possible. Nobles of high rank hardly
go anywhere without these humble attendants; but if it should happen that
there are none of them present, the cut nails and the spilt blood are
carefully collected to be afterwards swallowed by the ramanga. There is
scarcely a nobleman of any pretensions who does not strictly observe this
custom, the intention of which probably is to prevent these parts of his
person from falling into the hands of sorcerers, who on the principles of
contagious magic could work him harm thereby. 3
The general explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the ground is
probably to be found in the belief that the soul is in the blood, and that
therefore any ground on which it may fall necessarily becomes taboo or
sacred. In New Zealand anything upon which even a drop of a high
chief's blood chances to fall becomes taboo or sacred to him. For
instance, a party of natives having come to visit a chief in a fine new
canoe, the chief got into it, but in doing so a splinter entered his foot, and
the blood trickled on the canoe, which at once became sacred to him. The
owner jumped out, dragged the canoe ashore opposite the chief's house,
and left it there. Again, a chief in entering a missionary's house knocked
his head against a beam, and the blood flowed. The natives said that in
former times the house would have belonged to the chief. As usually
happens with taboos of universal application, the prohibition to spill the
blood of a tribesman on the ground applies with peculiar stringency to
chiefs and kings, and is observed in their case long after it has ceased to
be observed in the case of others. 4