Introduction to the History of Religions Part 15

+584+. But while social life is the basis of ethical construction, the actual ethical const.i.tution of men has been influenced by religion, in later times by the supplying of lofty ideals and sanctions, in early times by a magical determination of things injurious. It is this second category that is covered by the term 'taboo,' a Polynesian word said to mean 'what is prohibited.' Prohibitions arising from natural human relations const.i.tute civil law; those arising from extrahuman or other magical influences const.i.tute taboo.[936]

+585+. Early man, regarding all objects as possibly endowed with power, selects out of the whole ma.s.s by observation and experience certain objects which affect his life, his relations with which he finds it desirable to define. These are all mysterious;[937] some are helpful, some harmful. The helpful objects become lucky stones, amulets. The injurious or dangerous objects are the more numerous; in an atmosphere of uncertainty the mysterious is dreaded, avoided, and guarded against by rules.[938]

+586+. The objects affected by the conception of taboo are as various as the conditions of human life--they include things inanimate and animate, and events and experiences of all sorts. Sometimes the danger is supposed to be inherent in the object, sometimes the quality of dangerousness is imposed on it or infused into it by some authority; but in all cases there is present the force (mana) that, in savage theory, makes the external world a factor in human destinies.[939] This force may be transmitted from one object to another (usually by contact[940]), and thus the taboo infection may spread indefinitely, a silent and terrible source of misfortune, sometimes to a single person, sometimes to a whole community. Ceremonies connected with taboo are designed to protect against this destructive influence.

+587+. The princ.i.p.al taboo usages may be cla.s.sed roughly under certain heads, which, however, will sometimes overlap one another.

+588+. _Taboos connected with the conception of life._ For early man the central mystery of the world was life, and mystery and danger attached to all things connected with its genesis, maintenance, and cessation--to pregnancy, birth, death, corpses, funerals, blood. Against these things precautions, in the form of various restrictions, had to be taken.

Pregnancy was sometimes regarded as due to supernatural agency, and in all cases was noted as a mysterious condition in which the woman was peculiarly exposed to evil influences; she was sometimes required to keep her head covered or to avoid moons.h.i.+ne, or to live separated from her husband.[941]

+589+. Care for women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child might be induced by natural human kindliness. But certain usages in connection with birth indicate fear of superhuman dangers. In many regions (Central Asia, Africa, Oceania, China) the mother is taboo for a certain time, being regarded apparently as a source of danger to others, as well as being herself exposed to danger. The child also is surrounded by perils. Mother and child are protected by isolation, ablutions (baptism), amulets, conjurations, and by consecration to a deity.[942]

The intimate relation between father and child may make it necessary to impose taboos on the former--he is sometimes required to go to bed (the _couvade_, or man-childbed), to abstain from work and from certain foods held to be injurious, and to avoid touching weapons and other dangerous things; thus, through the ident.i.ty of father and child, the latter is guarded against the hostile mana that may be lurking near. The seclusion of the mother sometimes varies in duration according to the s.e.x of the child; in most cases, apparently, the period is longer for a male child;[943] in the Jewish ritual the period for the maid-child is twice as great (eighty days) as that for the male;[944] the difference in the points of view, perhaps, is that the evil influence may direct itself particularly against, or be more serious for, the male as socially the more important, or it may be more dangerous for the female as the weaker.[945]

+590+. _Taboos connected with death._ The danger to the living arising from a death is of a twofold nature: the corpse, as a strange, uncanny thing, is a source of peril; and there are possible external enemies--the spirit that produced the death, and the ghost of the departed. Against these dangerous things avoidance of the corpse is the common precaution--a dead body must not be touched, or, if it is touched, he who touches must undergo purification.[946] Perhaps the various modes of disposing of corpses (exposure, inhumation, cremation) were originally attempts to get rid of their dangerous qualities; later other motives came in. The body of a suicide was especially feared, and was staked down on a public way to prevent its reappearance; it was perhaps the abnormal and desperate character of the death that produced this special fear. The dread of a corpse is, however, not universal among savages--in many cases it is eaten, simply as food or to acquire the qualities of the deceased, or for other reasons. It is feared as having hurtful power, it is eaten as being sacred or helpful.

+591+. The house in which a death occurs shares the evil power of the dead body, and sometimes must be destroyed, together with all its furniture, or abandoned or purified.[947] Death diffuses its baleful influence through the atmosphere, making it unfavorable for ordinary work, which, accordingly, is often then suspended for a time.[948]

Seclusion is sometimes enjoined on widower or widow,[949] and mention of the name of the deceased is forbidden--the ident.i.ty of spouse or name with the dead effects the transmission of what is dangerous in him. In another direction the earthly dwelling of a dead person is protected--a curse is p.r.o.nounced on one who violates it.[950]

+592+. _Taboos connected with woman and the relations between the s.e.xes._ Among many peoples there is dread of the presence of women and of their belongings under certain circ.u.mstances.[951] The ground of this fear may lie in those physiological peculiarities of woman which are regarded as mysterious and dangerous, and the antagonism of feeling may have been increased by the separation between the s.e.xes consequent on the differences in their social functions and their daily pursuits.

Woman seems to move in a sphere different from that of man; she acts in ways that are strange to him. Whatever its ground, the feeling of dread is a real one: a case is reported of a man who, on learning that he had lain down on his wife's blanket, became violently ill.

+593+. Various restrictions are imposed on women at periods of s.e.xual crisis. The girl on reaching the age of p.u.b.erty is generally (though not always[952]) immured, sometimes for weeks or months, to s.h.i.+eld her from noxious influences, human and nonhuman. During menstruation a woman is isolated, may not be looked on by the sun, must remain apart from her husband, and her food is strictly regulated.[953] It is not infrequently the case that certain foods are permanently forbidden women, for what special reasons is not clear.[954] The rule forbidding a wife to eat with her husband may have come originally from nonreligious social considerations (her subordination to the man, or the fact that she belonged to a social group different from his), but in that case it later acquired a religious character. Women have commonly been excluded in savage communities from solemn ceremonies (as those of the initiation of males) and from tribal councils;[955] such rules may have originated in the natural differentiation of social functions of the s.e.xes or in the desire of men to keep the control of tribal life in their own hands, but in many cases the presence of women was supposed to vitiate the proceedings supernaturally. In industrial enterprises, such as hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, they are sometimes held to be a fatal influence.[956] In family life a wife's mother was debarred from all social intercourse with her son-in-law.[957]

+594+. Where procreation was ascribed to the union of the s.e.xes, s.e.xual intercourse, as being intimately connected with life, was credited with supernatural potency, generally unfavorable to vigor.[958] It has been largely prohibited on all important public occasions, such as hunting and war, and particularly in connection with religious ceremonies.[959]

Various considerations may have contributed to the establishment of such customs, but in their earliest form we have, probably, to recognize not any moral effort to secure chast.i.ty, but a dread of injurious mana resident in women.[960] We may compare the fact that women have often been regarded as specially gifted in witchcraft.[961]

+595+. _Taboos connected with great personages._ The theory of mana includes the belief that special supernatural power resides in the persons of tribal leaders, such as magicians, chiefs, priests. It follows that danger attaches to their bodies (particularly to head, hair, and nails), to their names, and to their food and other belongings. These things must be avoided: their food must not be eaten by common folk; their houses and other property must not be used; their nail-cuttings must be buried so that danger may be averted from the community; their names must not be mentioned. They themselves, being peculiarly sensitive to malign influences, must be protected in the house and when they walk out; and it is in some cases not safe for the common man to look on the chief as he pa.s.ses through the village.

+596+. Not all these regulations are found in any one community, but the principle is the same everywhere. The greatest development of taboo power in chiefs occurs in Polynesia, the home of taboo. There they are all-powerful. Whatever a chief touches becomes his property. If he enters a house, steps into a canoe, affixes his name to a field, it is his. His control appears to be limited only by the accident of his momentary desire. No one thinks of opposing his decisions--that would be fatal to the opposer. This social situation pa.s.ses when a better form of civil government is established, but some features of the old conception cling to later dignitaries: till recently the nail-parings of the emperor of j.a.pan were carefully disposed of lest, being inadvertently touched, they should bring misfortune.

+597+. A priest also may carry taboo infection on his person. In Ezekiel's scheme of ritual organization it is ordered that when the priest, having offered sacrifice, goes forth into the outer court where the people are, he shall put off the garments in which he ministered and lay them in a sacred place, and put on other garments, lest some one touching him should be made ritually unclean, that is taboo, forbidden to mingle with his fellows or to do his ordinary work for a certain time (generally till the evening).[962] In many regions there have been and are numerous restrictions on priests, some of which are in their own interests (to preserve their ritual purity), some in the interests of others (to guard them against the infection of taboo).[963] Other quasi-official or devoted persons (as, for example, the Hebrew n.a.z.irite[964]) were subject to restrictions of food. Strangers, who in a primitive period were frequently put to death, in a more humane period were subjected to purifying processes in order to remove the taboo infection that might cling to them.[965]

+598+. _Industrial taboos._ The customs of certain Polynesian chiefs, described above, cannot be said to aid industry, but there are taboo usages designed to protect and further popular occupations. These doubtless have a natural nonmagical basis--the necessity of making good crops and protecting private property would be recognized everywhere, and would call forth legal enactments; but it was inevitable, in certain communities, that such enactments should be strengthened by supernatural sanctions such as those offered by the conception of taboo.

+599+. Protective arrangements of this sort abound in Oceania and Indonesia. In Samoa the sweet-potato fields are taboo till the crop is gathered.[966] Hawaiian fisheries are protected by the simple device of forbidding the taking of certain fish at certain seasons; here the economic motive is obvious, but taboo penalties are annexed.[967] During planting time in New Zealand all persons employed in the work were taboo for other occupations and obliged to give all their time to the planting; and the same rule held for hunting and fis.h.i.+ng.[968] The Borneo Kayans refrain from their usual occupations during planting, harvesting, and the search for camphor.[969] Similar restrictions, of an elaborate kind, are in force in Sumatra,[970] and in a.s.sam.[971]

+600+. The property of private persons was protected: the common man might impose a taboo on his land, crops, house, and garments, and these were then safe from depredation. It was true, however, in New Zealand as elsewhere, that the potency of the imposed taboo depended on the influence of him who imposed it; chiefs, as uniting in their persons civil and religious authority, were the most powerful persons in the community, and taboos ordered by them were the most effective. In Melanesia taboo is largely employed for the protection of private property--curses are p.r.o.nounced against trespa.s.sers, and the authority of the tabooer is reenforced by that of the local spirit or ghost (_tindalo_);[972] here taboo has become definitely an element of civil law, in which it tends to be absorbed.

+601+. _Taboos connected with other important social events._ It appears that all occurrences supposed to affect the life of the community have been, and often still are, regarded as bringing with them, or as attended by, supernatural influences (resident in mana or in spirits) that may be dangerous. Against these perils the usual precautions are taken, one of the commonest (as in cases mentioned in the preceding paragraphs) being abstinence from ordinary work; the belief, apparently, is that such work is tainted with the injurious influence with which the atmosphere is charged.

+602+. Among religious ceremonies the expulsion of evil spirits was naturally attended with danger, and work was prohibited. Such was the custom in Athens at the Anthesteria and on the sixth day of the Thargelia, and in Rome at the Lemuria.[973] Among existing tribes there are numerous examples of this sort of restriction: it is found in West Africa[974] and in Indonesia (Kar Nicobar, Bali[975]); in a.s.sam it takes the form of a taboo (_genna_) for laying to rest the ghosts of all who have died within the year[976] (an All Souls ceremony).

+603+. In general, sacred seasons, times of great communal ceremonies, demand the avoidance of ordinary pursuits, which, it is feared, may imperil the success of the ceremonies by necessitating contact with things infected or nonsacred. The earlier Hebrew usage recognized such seasons (new moon, sabbath, and perhaps others); the later usage increased the number of tabooed days as the ritual was expanded and organised.[977] For Greece we have the Plynteria, on the princ.i.p.al day of which work was suspended;[978] in Rome the feriae were such days, regular or occasional.[979] The inbringing of first fruits was a peculiarly solemn occasion, when grat.i.tude to the deity mingled with fear of hostile influences; so among the Hebrews[980] and at Athens[981]

and in Tonga.[982] Polynesian restrictions on the occasion of ceremonies are given by Ellis.[983] All such days of abstinence from ordinary work tend to become holidays, times of popular amus.e.m.e.nt, and a taboo element may be suspected in such festivals as those of the later Hindu period.[984] Naturally, also, days of restriction become sacred to deities.

+604+. Great nonreligious tribal events and peculiar situations demand restrictive precautions. Warriors prepare for an expedition by remaining apart from their wives.[985] Women whose husbands are absent are sometimes immured or forbidden all intercourse with human beings; by reason of the ident.i.ty of husband and wife supernatural harm to the latter will affect the former. Afflictive occurrences, such as famines, pestilences, earthquakes, are signs of some hostile supernatural power, defense against which requires the avoidance of ordinary pursuits.

Arbitrary enactments by chiefs may attach restrictions to a particular day. Sometimes restrictive usages, of obscure origin, become communal law. Thus, every Toda clan has certain days of the week (not the occasion of special ceremonies) in which it is forbidden to follow ordinary occupations; among the things forbidden are the giving of feasts, the performance of funeral ceremonies, the cutting of nails, and shaving; women and dairymen may not leave the village, and the people and buffaloes may not move from one place to another.[986] Doubtless this system of prohibitions is the outcome of many generations of experience--the organization of various local usages.

+605+. _Taboos connected with the moon._ Unusual celestial phenomena, such as eclipses, meteors, and comets, have always excited terror, being referred to some hostile supernatural agency, and have called forth special placative and restrictive ceremonies. They are accounted for in savage lore by various myths.[987] But the permanently important taboos have been those that are a.s.sociated with the phases of the moon. These periodical transformations, unexplained and mysterious, seemed to early man to have vital relation with all earthly life--the waxing and waning of the moon was held to determine, through the sympathy existing between all things, the growth and decay of plants, animals, and men.[988] Hence arose the widely diffused belief that all important undertakings should be begun while the moon was increasing, and innumerable regulations for the conduct of affairs were established, not a few of them surviving in civilized popular belief and practice to the present day.

+606+. Sometimes the changes in the moon are minutely observed. The Nandi describe every day of the month by the appearance of the moon or by its relation to occupations.[989] Natural observation in some cases divided the lunar month into four parts: the Buddhist uposatha days are the four days in the lunar month when the moon is full or new or halfway between the two;[990] in Hawaii the 3d-6th, 14th-15th, 24th-25th, 27th-28th days of every month were taboo periods;[991] the Babylonians had five such periods in certain months (four periods with one period intercalated). But, though the quartering of the lunation may seem to us the most natural division of the month, in actual practice it is rather the exception.[992] The simplest division, indeed, is that into two parts, determined by new moon and full moon (Cambodia, Siam; cf. the Mexican period of thirteen days). The division into three periods of ten days each (Egypt, Greece, Annam, j.a.pan) ignores lunar phases and seeks a convenient and symmetrical arrangement. With this decimal system is perhaps connected the division of the month into six periods of five days each (Yoruba, Java, Sumatra, and perhaps Babylonia). The Romans had a somewhat irregular official division of the first half of the month into three parts (Kalends, Nones, Ides) corresponding in a general way to lunar phases, and also commercial periods of eight days (_nundinae_), perhaps of similar origin. A seven-day division is found in Ashantiland (and perhaps in Peru), and in Java there is reported a division of a year into thirty periods of seven days each.

+607+. It appears, then, that in several communities there has been a division of the month in the interests of convenience, without regard to lunar phases; that in several cases a seven-day week has been fallen upon; and that of the phases of the moon new moon and full moon have been most frequently looked to as chronological marks. The new moon, apart from its function of indicating the beginning of the lunar month, has also by many tribes been hailed with joy as a friend restored to life after seeming extinction.[993] The full moon, while it has not entered so intimately into the emotional life of man, has played an important part by marking the division of the month into two equal parts.

+608+. _The Hebrew sabbath._ Taboo days are days of abstinence from work, set apart as seasons of rest.[994] Such was the original form of the Hebrew sabbath--it is described in the earlier Old Testament notices simply as a day on which ordinary work was unlawful.[995] The history of its precise origin and development is, however, by no means clear.

Theories that derive it from the cult of some particular deity or regard it as primarily a day for placating a supernatural Power[996] may be set aside. It may be a.s.sumed that it is an early inst.i.tution somehow connected with the moon, and a definite indication of origin appears to be furnished by the fact that in a Babylonian inscription the term _shabattu_[997] is used for the full moon. The identification of Hebrew sabbath with full moon is favored by the collocation of new moon and sabbath in early Old Testament doc.u.ments[998] as days on which trading was unlawful. These, obviously, were the two chief taboo days of the month; the fact that new moon stands first is doubtless due to its position in the month.

+609+. It is uncertain whether the Babylonian full-moon day was ritually particularly important, and it is not clear how the Hebrews came to invest this day, if it was their sabbath, with peculiar significance. In the earlier legal doc.u.ments it is merely a restrictive period--man and beast are to rest from toil;[999] in later codes religious motives for the observance of the day are introduced--first, grat.i.tude to Yahweh for the rescue of the nation from Egyptian bondage, and then respect for the fact that Yahweh worked in creating the world six days and stopped work on the seventh day.[1000] In the sixth century we find the sabbath elevated to the position of specific sign of Yahweh's protective relation to the people, and still later it is regarded as a day of joyous obedience to divine law.[1001] Thus, the process of moralization of the day was probably a long-continued one.[1002]

+610+. In the various experimental divisions of the month, as we have seen, a week of seven days has been approached independently in several places (Babylonia, Hawaii, Java, Ashantiland). The basis of this division is doubtless the quartering of the lunation, and it has been reenforced, probably, by considerations of convenience--seven is an intermediate number, six days of work and one of abstinence and rest (holiday) commends itself as a practical arrangement. It appears among the Hebrews as early as the eighth century B.C.;[1003] it may have been derived from or suggested by Babylonian usage, or it may have been an ancient Hebrew custom--data on this point are lacking. In any case the Jewish genius for religious organization seized on the seven-day scheme and wove it into the system of wors.h.i.+p. A more important step taken by the Jews was the ignoring of lunar phases (except, of course, new moon as the beginning of the month) and reckoning the week and the seventh day (the sabbath) in a continuous line. We have noted cases in which lunar phases were ignored, but this Jewish arrangement appears to be unique, and its simplicity and convenience have commended it to the world.

+611+. _Lucky and unlucky days._ The malefic influences emanating from various objects and resident in the air attached themselves to certain days, and out of the vast ma.s.s of experiences in every community there grew up systems of days when things might or might not be done with safety and advantage. There were the great occasions, economic and astronomical, referred to above, and there were particular occurrences, such as a death or a defeat, that stamped a day as unlucky. There are many such beliefs, the origin of which is lost in a remote antiquity.

The ancient civilized nations had their codes of luck. Egypt had a long list of unlucky days.[1004] In Babylonia onerous restrictions were imposed on kings, seers, and physicians on certain days (the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, 28th) of the sixth and eighth months[1005] (and perhaps of other months). A brief list of days favorable and unfavorable to work is given by Hesiod.[1006] The Roman _dies nefasti_, properly 'irreligious days,' were inauspicious, unlucky.[1007] Similar lists of lucky and unlucky days are found among existing tribes,[1008] and the popular luck codes in Christian communities are numerous and elaborate.[1009] These have done, and still do, great harm by subst.i.tuting irrational for rational rules of conduct.

+612+. In many of the cases cited above and in many totemistic regulations there are prohibitions of particular sorts of food. Such prohibitions, very numerous, are found in all grades of civilization.[1010] They have arisen from various causes--climatic conditions, hygienic beliefs, religious conceptions (as, for example, the recognition of the sacred character of certain animals, and the connection of certain foods with supernatural beings and ceremonies[1011]), sometimes, perhaps, from accidental experiences; the history of most of the particular usages escapes us. The fundamental principle involved is the ident.i.ty of the food with him who eats it--when it is charged with supernatural power (by its own sacredness, or by its connection with a sacred person, or by ecclesiastical decree) it becomes malefic to an unauthorized person who partakes of it.

+613+. A peculiar form of prohibition of foods appears when a society is divided into groups that are kept apart from one another by social and religious traditions that have hardened into civic rules. In such cases the diet of every group may be regulated by law, and it may become dangerous and abhorrent for a superior to eat what has been touched by an inferior. The best example of this sort of organization is the Hindu system of castes, which has a marked and unhappy effect on the life of the people.[1012] All such arbitrary social divisions yield gradually to the influence of education and civic freedom, and this appears to be the tendency in India at the present day.

+614+. _Punishment of violation of taboo._ Where the hostile power is inherent in an object, punishment is supposed to follow violation automatically--through contact the malefic influence pa.s.ses into the man's body and works destruction. Many experiences seem to the savage to establish the certainty of such a result. Fervid belief, moreover, produced by long tradition, acts powerfully on the imagination, and in taboo-ridden communities thus often brings about the bodily ill called for by the theory: a man who ate of food that he found on the roadside, learning afterwards that it belonged to a chief, fell ill and died in a few hours.[1013] When taboo regulations have been taken up into the civil law,[1014] punishment for violations is inflicted by the civil authorities. The tendency to make taboo a part of the civil law, and to subordinate the former to the latter, increases with the advance of knowledge and political organization; and one result of this movement is that great personages are sometimes permitted to violate with impunity taboos imposed by inferiors. The native theory in such cases doubtless is that the great man's mana overcomes the taboo infection; but at bottom, we may surmise, lies the sense of the dominance of civil authority.

+615+. The chief's mana, however, sometimes comes into play as a means of relief. A man who has inadvertently (or perhaps, in some instances, purposely) violated a taboo may escape punishment by touching some part of a chief's body. Here the innate potency of the superior man expels or destroys the taboo force that has entered the inferior--another example of how the primitive theory of taboo is modified by conceptions of social rank and authority.

+616+. _Removal of taboo._ In general, magical ceremonies may be employed to counteract the injurious influence resident in a thing or an act, or to destroy the evil consequences resulting from a violation of the taboo law. For this purpose sprinkling with water, bathing in water, and the employment of charms are held to be effective. Thus in the old Hebrew code the taboo resting on a house supposed to be infected with the plague is removed by sprinkling the house with water and the blood of a slain bird, and setting free a second bird alive, which is supposed to carry the plague-power off with it.[1015] A woman is tabooed forty days at the birth of a male child, and eighty days at the birth of a female child; the taboo is removed by a holocaust and a sin-offering.[1016]

+617+. A general taboo regulation may be set aside by tribal agreement in the interests of convenience or pleasure. On certain occasions the restrictions on the intercourse of the s.e.xes are removed for a brief period, at the expiration of which the prohibitory law resumes its place.[1017] Many special ceremonies in various parts of the world have to do with modifications of marriage laws.[1018]

+618+. _Taboo and magic._ Reference is made above to magical procedures in connection with taboo customs. Taboo and magic have a common basis in the conception of an occult force (which may conveniently be called _mana_) resident in all things, but they contemplate different sides of this force, and their social developments are very different. Taboo recognizes the inherent malefic manifestations of the force (known by supposed experience), and avoids them; magic uses the mana energy to effect results impossible for unaided human power. In taboo man feels himself to be under the dominance of an occult law, and his virtue is blind obedience; in magic he feels himself to be the master of a great energy, and what he needs is knowledge. Taboo has originated a ma.s.s of irrational rules for the guidance of everyday life; magic has grown into a quasi-science, with an organized body of adepts, touching religion on one side and real science on another side.

+619+. A closer relations.h.i.+p between magic and taboo has been a.s.sumed in view of the fact that both rest to some extent on the principle of the a.s.sociation of ideas, the principle that like procedures produce like results. It is true that some taboo rules depend on this conception:[1019] the flesh of timid animals is avoided, that of courageous animals is eaten, under the belief that the man partakes of the character of the food he eats; a.s.sociation with women is sometimes supposed to make a man or a boy effeminate. It is to be expected that in the immense number of taboo prohibitions and precautions some should be found in which the a.s.sociation of ideas is the determining factor. But for the majority of taboo regulations this explanation does not hold. In the economic and s.e.xual taboos mentioned above, in the dread of corpses, in the fear of touching things belonging to a chief, and in other cases there are customs that can only be referred to a belief in an injurious potency residing in certain objects.[1020] Practically, savage tribes distinguish between taboo and magic.

+620+. Contamination of customs has always been the rule in human communities, early and late, savage and civilized. We have seen how there has often been a coalescence between taboo regulations proper and ordinary civil law. To state the case more fully, these have been fused into a unity of social life with individual initiative, magical notions, arbitrary enactments. The actual social const.i.tution even of slightly developed tribes is composite, the outcome of long experience and experiment in which all the lines of social feeling and thought have gradually drawn together and been compacted into a more or less unitary ma.s.s. While these lines have influenced each the others, it is possible, to a considerable extent, to distinguish the sphere of each. Thus we can, in many cases, see where ordinary civil law comes in to adopt, modify, or set aside taboo rules, and so we can generally recognize the line of demarcation between definite taboo and the conception of a.s.sociation of ideas. In some cases the explanations offered of taboo customs are afterthoughts--imagined hypotheses to account for things already in existence.[1021]

+621+. The despotism exercised by taboo systems over certain Polynesian communities is one of the extraordinary facts of human history. In New Zealand and Hawaii the restrictions on conduct were so numerous and were carried out so mercilessly that life under these conditions would seem to us intolerable.[1022] In addition to a great number of particular prohibitions and to the constant fear of violating the sacredness of the persons of chiefs and trenching on their prerogatives, we find in New Zealand the amazing rule that on the occasion of a great misfortune (as a fire) the sufferer was to be deprived of his possessions--the blow that fell on him was held to affix a stigma to all that he owned.

Besides the traditional taboos there were the arbitrary enactments of chiefs which might constantly introduce new possibilities of suffering.

Yet with all this the people managed to live in some degree of comfort, somewhat as in civilized communities life goes on in spite of earthquakes, epidemics, bank failures, the injustices of law, and the tyranny of the powerful.

+622+. The duration of certain taboo periods among various peoples in various ages has varied greatly. Taboos relating to foods, chiefs, and the intercourse of the s.e.xes are usually permanent everyday customs; those that relate to economic procedures are in force for the time demanded by each industry. In Hawaii the catching of certain species of fish was forbidden for half the year, and the Borneo harvest taboo (carrying prohibition of other work) lasts sometimes for weeks. There is mention in a Maori legend of a taboo of three years.[1023] According to the later Hebrew law, in every seventh year all agricultural operations ceased.[1024] A portent may demand a long period of restriction, as in the case of the Roman nine-day ceremony (_novendiales feriae_).[1025] As has been remarked above, economic taboos are often dictated by convenience--they are prudential rules to which a supernatural sanction has been attached.

+623+. _Diffusion of taboo._ Polynesia, particularly New Zealand and Hawaii, is the special home of taboo--the only region in which it is known to have taken the form of a well-compacted, all-embracing system.

It exists in Melanesia, but it is there less complicated and general,[1026] and the same thing is true of British New Guinea.[1027]

In parts of Borneo it is found in modified form: there are two sorts of taboo, one, called _mali_, absolutely forbidding work on certain occasions, the other, called _penti_, allowing work if it is begun by a person not _penti_; before the birth of a child the latter form of taboo rests on both parents.[1028] The Land Dyaks have their _lali_ days and the Sea Dyaks their _pemate_,[1029] these terms being the equivalents of _taboo_.

+624+. Though there is no proof of the existence of all-pervading taboo systems among the peoples of Asia and America, there are notices of taboo regulations in particular cases in these regions. At the birth of a child the Hindu father was subject to certain restrictions along with the mother, and his taboo was removed by bathing.[1030] Among the Sioux Indians on the death of a child the father is taboo for a period of six months or a year.[1031] In West African Calabar there are taboos (called _ibet_) on individuals, connected with spirits, the guardians of children.[1032] In a.s.sam economic and other taboos are elaborate and well organized.[1033] Such observances, in connection with death, are found among the Kafirs[1034] and the Eskimo.[1035]

+625+. For the ancient civilized peoples there is no proof of the existence of general taboo systems. Various particular prohibitions, involving a sense of danger in certain things, are mentioned above; they relate chiefly to corpses, to infected houses, to women in connection with menstruation and childbirth,[1036] to certain official persons (as the Roman flamen dialis). There are also the lists of unlucky days (Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman). The origin of food prohibitions (Hebrew, Pythagorean) is uncertain;[1037] they may have arisen, as is suggested above, from general regard for sacred animals and plants, or from totemistic relations, or from other conditions unknown to us; the Hebrew lists of forbidden animals may have been gradually expanded under the guidance of antagonism to surrounding non-Yahwistic cults. Whether the ancient taboo usages are the remains of older more extensive systems or represent the extreme point to which tabooism was carried by the communities in question the data do not enable us to decide.

+626+. In various places, outside of the Polynesian area, we find terms that bear a more or less close resemblance in signification to taboo.[1038] Melanesian _tambu_ is that which has a sacred character.[1039] The Borneo terms (_lali_, _pemate_, _mali_, _penti_) are mentioned just above, and there is the _pomali_ of Timor (in the Malayan Archipelago). The Malagasy _fady_ is defined as 'dangerous, prohibited.'[1040] In Gabun (West Africa) _orunda_ is said to mean 'prohibited to human beings.'[1041] The Hebrew _tame_ is used of things dangerous, not to be touched, ritually defiling,[1042] and this sense sometimes attaches to the term _qadosh_ (rendered in the English version by 'holy'), which involves the presence of a supernatural (and therefore dangerous) quality.[1043]