China, too, where the spirit, so far from being feared, was, as in Bonny, invited to return, the corpse is or was taboo; for we may infer from the question in The Li Ki,1 "Whoever being engaged with the mourning rites for a parent bathed his head or body?" that the period of the mourning rites was a time of "uncleanness" for the son.

It seems, therefore, that even if we were to admit that this species of "uncleanness" originated in a savage theory that the soul might settle on the "unclean," we could not infer that deceased spirits were feared wherever this taboo was found to exist. Next and this is the second reason why no reference has been previously made to this important set of facts-there are several kinds of taboo, of which the corpse-taboo is only one, and it seems proper to employ the comparative method and consider the various kinds together. We may thus perhaps avoid one-sided conclusions, and get a general view, if not a general theory, of the subject. The next chapter, therefore, deals with taboo.

1 1 Legge's translation (Sacred Books of the East), 181.

CHAPTER VI

TABOO ITS TRANSMISSIBILITY

TABOO is a Polynesian word, said to mean "strongly marked"; but though the word is Polynesian, the institution is universal.1 Things are taboo which are thought to be dangerous to handle or to have to do with: things "holy" and things "unclean" are alike taboo; the dead body, the new-born child; blood and the shedder of blood; the divine king as well as the criminal; the sick, outcasts, and foreigners; animals as well as men; women especially, the married woman as well as the sacred virgin; food, clothes, vessels, property, house, bed, canoes, the threshing-floor, the winnowing fan; a name, a word, a day; all are or may be taboo because dangerous. This short list does not contain one-hundredth part of the things which are supposed to be dangerous; but even if it were filled out and made tolerably complete, it would, by itself, fail to give any idea of the actual extent and importance of the institution of taboo. If it were merely bodily contact with the person or thing tabooed which entailed danger, it would be sufficiently difficult for the savage to avoid unintentionally touching some of all the many things taboo. But the difficulty and danger are multiplied by the fact that involuntarily to catch sight of the tabooed object, or to be seen by the tabooed person, is as dangerous as to

1 The best collections of facts are, for Polynesia, Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie, vi. 343 ff.; for food-taboos, A. E. Crawley in Folk-Lore, vi. 2 (June 1895), 130 ff.; for taboos on women, A. E. Crawley in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. Nos. 2, 3, 4 (Nov. 1894, Feb. and May 1895), 116 ff., 219 ff., 430 ff.; Frazer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, s. v. "Taboo," and In the Golden Bough, i. 109 ff.; cf. also Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 152 ff., 446 ff., 481. For instances not drawn from the above collections, the special references will be given in each case below.

touch, taste, or handle. Thus in Samoa, "Tupai was the name of the high priest and prophet. He was greatly dreaded. His very look was poison. If he looked at a cocoa-nut tree it died, and if he glanced at a bread-fruit tree it also withered away." The king of Loango may not, for the same reason, see a river or tree, and he has to make many long detours in consequence when he goes visiting.2 In some places girls when taboo have an equally poisonous glance, and are made to wear very broad-brimmed hats, in order that they may not infect the sun. The custom common amongst savage royalties, of holding a state umbrella over the king, may be, I conjecture, a survival from times when the king was a divine king, and, like Tupai or a tabooed woman, might do mischief with his eyes. In Whydah, "in former times, on the eve of the day for the public procession [of the sacred python], the priests and Dañh-si went round the town, announcing the approach of the festival, and warning all the inhabitants, white and black, to close their doors and windows, and to abstain from looking into the streets." 3 In ancient Greece the same belief manifests itself in the tale that Euryphylus was stricken with madness, when he ventured to open the λápvag or tabernacle, and look upon the image of Dionysus Æsymnetes. In the mysteries, the secret objects of worship were so taboo that it was only after a long course of preparatory purification and communion that it became safe for the worshipper to see them: "the πоTTEίa was the last and highest grade of initiation."5 In modern folk-lore it is held to be fatal to see "the good people ""they are fairies: he who looks on them shall die."

On the same principle that seeing or being seen is dangerous, mere proximity also is forbidden; and amongst the Basutos, during harvest-time, the "unclean" may not even approach the crop. In the same way, too, to hear is as dangerous as to see; thus amongst the Zulus, on receipt of the news that a relative is dead, the hearer must sprinkle himself with the blood of sacrifice, "to purify himself from

Turner, Samoa, 23.

3 Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 61.

2 Bastian, Loango Küste, i. 263-8.

4 Pausanias, viii. c. 19.

5 Gardner and Jevons, Greek Antiquities, 278. 6 Casalis, Les Bassoutos, 266.

4

5

9

the mourning,"1 though obviously from the nature of the case there can have been no bodily or even visual contact with the corpse to defile the mourner. Even the name of the deceased, as well as the news of his death, is dangerous to hear, and may not be pronounced. Thus the native tribes of Tasmania, now extinct, never mentioned the dead";2 and the same reticence is observed by the Ainos, and the Australian black-men. The Ostiaks avoid mentioning the name of the deceased; the Caribs do not like to pronounce the names of their dead." The same dislike is found in Tierra del Fuego." The Guaycorous never utter the name of a deceased chief, and the Abipones abstain not only from the name of the deceased, but from any word of which the name may happen to form part. It would, however, be an error to suppose that it is only the names of things unclean" and defiling, such as the name of one who is now a corpse, are dangerous to hear; in Polynesia, chiefs are so sacred that their names are strictly taboo, and the component syllables may not be used in common conversation. In Sumatra, the name of the tiger is taboo, and when a reference to him is unavoidable, euphemisms are employed, and he is called "Grandfather," "Ancient One," "The Free," etc.1 The later Jews shrank from pronouncing the actual name of God, and made substitutions, to avoid unnecessary contact even of this indirect kind with the consuming holiness of the Lord. In ancient Greece, the rites to which the initiated alone were admitted were so sacred that all mention of them to the profane was tabooed-hence our uncertainty as to what those rites really were.

10

We have, however, yet to mention the peculiar characteristic of the institution of taboo, and that which gives it its widest range and greatest power. That is the transmissibility, the infection or contagion of taboo. Everything which comes in

1 Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 24.

2 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 238.

3 Ibid. 238.

5 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 362.

Bastian, Oest. Asien, v. 86.

Père Delaborde in the Recueil de divers voyages (A.D. 1684), 8.

7 Réville, Religions des peuples non-civilisés, i. 398.

8 Ibid. 384.

19 Bastian, Oest. Asien, v. 51.

9 Ibid. 386.

contact with a tabooed person or thing becomes itself as dangerous as the original object, becomes a fresh centre of infection, a fresh source of danger to the community. In the case of things" unclean," the modern mind can without difficulty understand that, granted the original object is really polluted, it communicates its pollution to whatever touches it. It requires no great exercise of the imagination to comprehend that in ancient Greece the offerings used for the purification of a murderer, became, in the very process of purifying him, themselves polluted and had to be buried.1 The rules about the uncleanness produced by the carcases of vermin in Leviticus xi. 32 ff., are also intelligible from this point of view: "Whatever they touch must be washed; the water itself is then unclean, and can propagate the contagion ; nay, if the defilement affect an (unglazed) earthen pot, it is supposed to sink into the pores, and cannot be washed out, so that the pot must be broken." 2 It is, however, strange to find that the "infection of holiness" produces exactly the same results as the pollution of uncleanness, that is to say, it renders the thing touched taboo and therefore unusable. But in Tahiti if a chief's foot touches the earth, the spot which it touches becomes taboo thenceforth, and none may approach it chiefs are therefore carried in Tahiti when they go out. If he enters a house, it becomes taboo; no one else may go into it ever after. No one may touch him, or eat and drink out of a vessel which he has touched. In New Zealand it is fatal to touch anything that is his or that he has used; none may use a bed that he has slept in. If a drop of his blood happens to fall on anything, the thing on which it falls becomes his property. When a missionary had saved a choking Maori from death by extracting a bone from his throat by means of a pair of tweezers, the first thing the Maori did on recovering his breath was to claim the tweezers: they had touched him and were taboo, and thereby appropriated to him. In ancient Greece the priest and priestess of Artemis Hymnia amongst the Orchomenians, and the Rechabites amongst the Jews, might not enter a private house, for the same reason as the Polynesian chief. 2 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 447. * Pausanias, viii. 13, and Jer. xxv. 9 ff.

1 Pausanias, ii. 31.