to whom the vow is made). "Fasting was common at such times (i.e. mourning), and they who did so ate nothing during the day, but had a meal at night; reminding us of what David said when mourning the death of Abner: So do God to me and more also, if I taste bread or ought else till the sun be down."1 Amongst the Ewe-speaking peoples, "the relatives must fast." 2 Amongst the Tshi-speaking peoples, from the moment of death, the relatives of the deceased, and the members of the household, abstain from food and continue fasting as long as their strength permits." 3 Amongst the Yoruba-speaking peoples, " usage requires them to refuse all food, at least for the first twenty-four hours, after which they usually allow themselves to be persuaded to take some nourishment." The Caribs also fasted during mourning.5

Holy persons, such as the Selli, and tabooed persons, e.g. candidates prepared for initiation in the Eleusinia, generally may not wash, for fear, probably, lest the sanctity should be communicated by the water to other persons or things, in the same way as the impurity of the murderer in Greece might be conveyed by the offerings used in his purification. The hair and nail-parings of holy persons are also capable of conveying the taboo-infection. Hence they either remove their hair before entering into the taboo-state, or else allow it to grow during that period and remove and dispose of it carefully afterwards. These restrictions are common to mourners, as well as to persons under a vow, or otherwise sacred. In Central Africa, "while a woman's husband is absent, she goes without anointing her head or washing her face"; and amongst the ancient Mexicans the relatives of a merchant abroad did not wash their heads or faces 7- -a restriction which was probably part of a vow for the safety of the absent one. In the Miaotze tribe, at a parent's death the son remains in the house forty-nine days without washing his face; and when it is said of the Leaf-Wearers of Orissa that the only death ceremonies known to them are

6

8

bathing and fasting, this probably implies a previous (ceremonial) unwashen state. Amongst the negroes of the Gold Coast "the relations may not wash themselves or comb their hair during the funeral ceremonies, in consequence of which the rites themselves are sometimes styled Ofo, 'unwashed.'"1 "In Agweh a widow is supposed to remain shut up for six months in the room in which her husband is buried, during which time she may not wash or change her clothes. . . . At the end of the period of mourning the widows wash, shave the head, pare the nails, and put on clean cloths, the old cloths, the hair, and the nail-parings being burned." 2 Amongst the Crow Indians the widow shaves her head and her mourning ceases when the hair has grown again. In the Tonga Islands, at the death of a Tooitonga the whole population shaved their heads. In Savage Island "the women singed off the hair of their heads as a token of mourning on the death of their husbands."5 In Siam the head is shaved as a sign of mourning. The classical reader will be reminded of the Greek and Roman funeral custom. On the Gold Coast "the nearest relations of the deceased, of both sexes, shave the head and all hair from their bodies. This has commonly been regarded as a sign of grief; but, having in view the shaving of the head by women on the sacred days of deities, which are days of rejoicing, it appears rather to be a sign of respect."7 Amongst the Ewespeaking and the Yoruba-speaking peoples also, shaving marks the termination of the period of mourning. Amongst the Soumoo or Woolwa Indians of the New World, "the hair is cropped in sign of mourning";" and the Australian blacks usually shave the head and plaster themselves with white copi or pipe-clay." 10 Amongst the Bakongo, on the death of a chief, "all his followers shaved their heads in token of mourning." 11 Of the Abipones, last century it was noted

8

Mariner, Tonga Islands, 214.

Bastian, Oest. Asien, iii. 320.

Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. 2. 207.

10 Ibid. 188.

11 Ward, Congo Cannibals, 43.

that "it is also a custom to shave the heads of widows and to cover them with a grey and black hood . . . which it is reckoned a crime for her to take off till she marries again. A widower has his hair cropped, with many ceremonies, and his head covered with a little net-shaped hat, which is not taken off till the hair grows again." 1 Of the Indians of Guiana it still holds good that "the survivors crop their hair," and of the Fijians "many make themselves 'bald for the dead." 3

2

Purification, again, is required not only of the mourners, but of all who may have touched the dead, just as contact with a holy volume "defiled the hands" of the later Jews and entailed ablution. "Contact with a corpse renders a person unclean, and he must purify himself by washing in water from head to foot." 4 "Those persons who have

touched the corpse are considered unclean; and, after the interment, they proceed in procession to the nearest well or brook, and sprinkle themselves with water, which is the ordinary native mode of purification."5 In Samoa “the fifth day (of mourning) was a day of 'purification.' They bathed the face and hands with hot water, and then they were clean,' and resumed the usual time and mode of eating." "6 In Peru "certain springs were assigned as places for ablution after performing funeral rites."7 In ancient Greece a basin of lustral water was placed at the door of the house of mourning for purposes of purification.

Since, then, the reluctance to come in contact with a corpse and the precautions taken by those who have to come or have come into such contact are identical with the reluctance and precaution observed in the case of other things taboo or tabooed, it is reasonable to look for an identical cause. Now, the supposed hostility or malevolence of the spirit of the deceased will not serve as a common cause: the phylacteries and the sacred volume of the Jews were not

1 Dobrizhoffer, History of the Abipones, ii. 18.

2 Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, 224.

3 Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 177.

5 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 241.

6 Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, 228.

4 Ellis, Ewe, 160.

7 Payne, New World, i. 445; Markham, Rites and Laws of the Incas, 12.

8 Eur. Alc. 100.

the seat of any hostile spiritual influence, the Mikado was not malevolent towards his own people, and yet contact, direct or indirect, with him or them was avoided as scrupulously as contact with a corpse. Besides, the rites for driving away the spirit of the deceased-and there are many such rites are altogether distinct from and have nothing in common with the precautions taken to prevent contact with the corpse. Fear of evil spirits, therefore, cannot be

the source of the world-wide institution of taboo.

What the source was, we have yet to consider-in our next chapter.

1 For some Indo-European rites, see my paper in the Classical Review for June 1895.

CHAPTER VIII

TABOO, MORALITY, AND RELIGION

IN Polynesia the institution of taboo was closely entwined with the social and political constitutions of the various states; taboos were imposed by the priests and the nobility, and the unwritten code of taboo corresponded in many important respects with the legal and social codes of more advanced civilisations. It is not, therefore, surprising that the earlier students of the system regarded it as an artificial invention, a piece of state-craft, cunningly devised in the interests of the nobility and priests. This view is, however, now generally abandoned. Wider researches have shown that the institution is not due to state-enactment or to priest-craft, for the simple reason that it is most at home in communities which have no state-organisation, and flourishes where there are no priests or no priesthood. Above all, the belief is not artificial and imposed, but spontaneous and universal.

Taboo was next explained, and is still explained, as a religious observance; everything belonging to or connected with a god is forbidden or taboo to man. This explanation, however, has the fault, fatal to a hypothesis, of not accounting for all the facts. It is true that everything sacred is taboo; it is not true that everything taboo is sacred. Temples and all the apparatus of ritual belong to the god, and therefore are taboo; and even the corpse-taboo may be brought into a sort of harmony with this theory, if we assume that the spirit which has left the corpse becomes a god, and if we also further assume that the spirit is regarded as hostile by the mourners. With a little more strain upon the theory, it can be made also to explain the blood-taboo; for the blood