PSYCHE’S TASK
A DISCOURSE CONCERNING
THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON
THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
TO WHICH IS ADDED
THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
_AN INAUGURAL LECTURE_
BY
J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1913
[EPIGRAPHS]
Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together
almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and
interwoven with the knowledge of evil and in so many cunning
resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds, which
were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort
asunder, were not more intermixt.
Milton, _Areopagitica_.
Il ne faut pas croire cependant qu’un mauvais principe vicie
radicalement une institution, ni même qu’il y fasse tout le mal qu’il
porte dans son sein. Rien ne fausse plus l’histoire que la logique:
quand l’esprit humain s’est arrêté sur une idée, il en tire toutes
les conséquences possibles, lui fait produire tout ce qu’en effet
elle pourrait produire, et puis se la représente dans l’histoire avec
tout ce cortège. Il n’en arrive point ainsi; les événements ne sont
pas aussi prompts dans leur déductions que l’esprit humain. Il y a
dans toutes choses un mélange de bien et de mal si profond, si
invincible que, quelque part que vous pénétriez, quand vous
descendrez dans les derniers éléments de la société ou de l’âme,
vous y trouverez ces deux ordres de faits coexistant, se développant
l’un à côté de l’autre et se combattant, mais sans s’exterminer. La
nature humaine ne va jamais jusqu’aux dernières limites, ni du mal ni
du bien; elle passe sans cesse de l’un à l’autre, se redressant au
moment où elle semble le plus près de la chute, faiblissant au
moment où elle semble marcher le plus droit.
Guizot, _Histoire de la civilisation dans l’Europe_, Cinquième Leçon.
[DEDICATION]
TO
ALL WHO ARE ENGAGED
IN PSYCHE’S TASK
OF SORTING OUT THE SEEDS OF GOOD
FROM THE SEEDS OF EVIL
I DEDICATE THIS DISCOURSE
PREFACE
{vii}
The substance of the following discourse was lately read at an
evening meeting of the Royal Institution in London, and most of it was
afterwards delivered in the form of lectures to my class at Liverpool.
It is now published in the hope that it may call attention to a
neglected side of superstition and stimulate enquiry into the early
history of those great institutions which still form the framework of
modern society. If it should turn out that these institutions have
sometimes been built on rotten foundations, it would be rash to
conclude that they must all come down. Man is a very curious animal,
and the more we know of his habits the more curious does he appear. He
may be the most rational of the beasts, but certainly he is the most
absurd. Even the saturnine wit of Swift, unaided by a knowledge of
savages, fell far short of the reality in his attempt to set human
folly in a strong light. Yet the odd thing is that in spite, or
perhaps by virtue, of his absurdities man moves steadily upwards; the
more we learn of his past history the more groundless does the old
theory of his degeneracy prove to be. From false premises he often
arrives at sound conclusions: from a chimerical theory he deduces a
salutary practice. This discourse will have served a useful purpose if
it illustrates a few {viii} of the ways in which folly mysteriously
deviates into wisdom, and good comes out of evil. It is a mere sketch
of a vast subject. Whether I shall ever fill in these bald outlines
with finer strokes and deeper shadows must be left to the future to
determine. The materials for such a picture exist in abundance; and if
the colours are dark, they are yet illuminated, as I have tried in
this essay to point out, by a ray of consolation and hope.
J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge, _February_ 1909.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In this edition _Psyche’s Task_ has been enlarged by fresh
illustrative examples and by the discussion of a curious point of
savage etiquette, but the substance and the form of the discourse
remain unchanged. I have added _The Scope of Social Anthropology_, an
inaugural lecture intended to mark out roughly the boundaries of the
general study of which _Psyche’s Task_ aims at setting forth some
particular results. There is therefore a certain appropriateness in
presenting the two discourses together to the reader.
J. G. F.
Cambridge, 6_th June_ 1913.
CONTENTS
{ix}
Preface
PSYCHE’S TASK
I. Introduction
The dark and the bright side of Superstition: a plea for the accused:
four propositions to be proved by the defence 3-5
II. Government
Superstition has been a prop of Government by inculcating a deep
veneration for governors: evidence of this veneration collected from
Melanesia, Polynesia, Africa, the Malay region, and America: evidence
of similar veneration among Aryan peoples from India to Scotland 6-19
III. Private Property
Superstition has been a prop of Private Property by inculcating a deep
fear of its violation: evidence of this fear collected from Polynesia,
Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America
20-43
IV. Marriage
Superstition has been a prop of Marriage by inculcating a deep fear of
disregarding the traditionary rules of sexual morality: evidence of
this fear collected from South-Eastern Asia, the Malay Archipelago,
Africa, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Irish: extreme
severity with which breaches of the sexual code have been punished in
India, Babylon, {x} Palestine, Africa, the East Indies, Australia,
America, and Europe: the avoidance of the wife’s mother and of a man’s
own mother, sisters, daughters, and female cousins, based on the fear
of incest: the origin of the fear of incest unknown: belief that
adultery and fornication inflict physical injury not only on the
culprits but on their innocent relations: evidence of the belief
collected from Africa, America, Sumatra, and New Britain 44-110
V. Respect for Human Life
Superstition has been a prop for the Security of Human Life by
inculcating a deep fear of the ghosts of the murdered dead: evidence
of the fear collected from ancient Greece, modern Africa, America,
India, New Guinea, Celebes, the Bismarck Archipelago, and Fiji: deep
fear of ghosts in general: evidence collected from America, Africa,
India, Burma, the Indian Archipelago, Australia, New Guinea, and
China: influence of the fear in restraining men from murder 111-153
VI. Conclusion
Summing up for the defence: by serving as a prop for government,
private property, marriage, and human life, Superstition has rendered
a great service to humanity: Superstition at the bar: sentence of
death 154-156
THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology, or the Science of Man, a new study: Social Anthropology
restricted to the rudimentary phases of human society: not concerned
with the practical application of its results: all forms of human
society either savage or evolved out of savagery: hence Social
Anthropology deals primarily with savagery and secondarily with those
survivals of savagery in civilization which are commonly known as
folklore: importance of the study of savagery for an understanding of
the evolution of the human mind: existing savages primitive only in a
relative sense by comparison with civilized peoples: in reality the
savages of the present day probably stand at a high level of culture
compared with their remote predecessors: for example, the present
systems of marriage and consanguinity among savages appear to have
been preceded by a period, not necessarily primitive, of sexual
communism: survivals of savagery in civilization due to the natural
and ineradicable inequality of men: mankind {xi} ultimately led by an
intellectual aristocracy: superstition the creed of the laggards in
the march of intellect: the wide prevalence of superstition under the
surface of society a standing menace to civilization: the lowest forms
of superstition the most tenacious of life: function of the
Comparative Method in reconstructing the early history of human
thought and institutions: its legitimacy based on the ascertained
similarity of the human mind in all races: the need of studying
savages only of late years understood: urgent importance of the study
in consequence of the rapid disappearance of savagery: the duty of our
generation to preserve a record of it for posterity: the duty of the
Universities and of the State 157-176
INDEX 177-186
ENDNOTES
PSYCHE’S TASK
{3}
I.
INTRODUCTION
[Sidenote: The dark side of superstition.] We are apt to think of
superstition as an unmitigated evil, false in itself and pernicious in
its consequences. That it has done much harm in the world, cannot be
denied. It has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures,
embroiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents
and children, putting swords, and worse than swords between them: it
has filled gaols and madhouses with its innocent or deluded victims:
it has broken many hearts, embittered the whole of many a life, and
not content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into
the grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul
imagination has conjured up to appal and torture the survivors. It has
done all this and more. [Sidenote: The brighter side of
superstition.] Yet the case of superstition, like that of Mr.
Pickwick after the revelations of poor Mr. Winkle in the witness-box,
can perhaps afford to be placed in a rather better light; and without
posing as the Devil’s Advocate or appearing before you in a blue flame
and sulphureous fumes, I do profess to make out what the charitable
might call a plausible plea for a very dubious client. For I propose
to prove, or at least make probable, by examples that among certain
races and at certain stages of evolution some social institutions
which we all, or most of us, believe to be beneficial have partially
rested on a basis of superstition. The institutions to which I refer
are purely secular or civil. Of religious or ecclesiastical
institutions I shall say nothing. It might perhaps be possible to shew
that even religion has not wholly escaped the taint or {4} dispensed
with the support of superstition; but I prefer for to-night to confine
myself to those civil institutions which people commonly imagine to be
bottomed on nothing but hard common sense and the nature of things.
While the institutions with which I shall deal have all survived into
civilized society and can no doubt be defended by solid and weighty
arguments, it is practically certain that among savages, and even
among peoples who have risen above the level of savagery, these very
same institutions have derived much of their strength from beliefs
which nowadays we should condemn unreservedly as superstitious and
absurd. The institutions in regard to which I shall attempt to prove
this are four, namely, government, private property, marriage, and the
respect for human life. [Sidenote: Four propositions to be proved.]
And what I have to say may be summed up in four propositions as
follows:--
I. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical
government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and
maintenance of civil order.
II. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby
contributed to the security of its enjoyment.
III. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to a
stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the
married and the unmarried.
IV. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed to
the security of its enjoyment.
[Sidenote: Preliminary remarks.] Before proceeding to deal with
these four propositions separately, I wish to make two remarks, which
I beg you will bear in mind. First, in what I have to say I shall
confine myself to certain races of men and to certain ages of history,
because neither my time nor my knowledge permits me to speak of all
races of men and all ages of history. How far the limited conclusions
which I shall draw for some races and for some ages are applicable to
others must be left to future enquiries to determine. That is my first
remark. My second is this. If it can be proved that in certain races
and at certain times the institutions {5} in question have been based
partly on superstition, it by no means follows that even among these
races they have never been based on anything else. On the contrary, as
all the institutions which I shall consider have proved themselves
stable and permanent, there is a strong presumption that they rest
mainly on something much more solid than superstition. No institution
founded wholly on superstition, that is on falsehood, can be
permanent. If it does not answer to some real human need, if its
foundations are not laid broad and deep in the nature of things, it
must perish, and the sooner the better. That is my second remark.
II.
GOVERNMENT
{6}
[Sidenote: Superstition as a prop of government.] With these two
cautions I address myself to my first proposition, which is, that
among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened
the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has
thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil
order.
[Sidenote: Superstitious respect for chiefs in Melanesia.] Among
many peoples the task of government has been greatly facilitated by a
superstition that the governors belong to a superior order of beings
and possess certain supernatural or magical powers to which the
governed can make no claim and can offer no resistance. Thus Dr.
Codrington tells us that among the Melanesians “the power of chiefs
has hitherto rested upon the belief in their supernatural power
derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they had intercourse. As
this belief has failed, in the Banks’ Islands for example some time
ago, the position of a chief has tended to become obscure; and as this
belief is now being generally undermined a new kind of chief must
needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin.”[6.1] According to
a native Melanesian account, the authority of chiefs rests entirely on
the belief that they hold communication with mighty ghosts and possess
that supernatural power or _mana_, as it is called, whereby they are
able to bring the influence of the ghosts to bear on human life. If a
chief imposed a fine, it was paid because the people firmly believed
that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him.
As soon as any considerable number of his {7} subjects began to
disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines
was shaken.[7.1] It is thus that in Melanesia religious scepticism
tends to undermine the foundations of civil society.
[Sidenote: Superstitious respect for chiefs in Fiji.] Similarly Mr.
Basil Thomson tells us that “the key to the Melanesian system of
government is Ancestor-worship. Just as every act in a Fijian’s life
was controlled by his fear of Unseen Powers, so was his conception of
human authority based upon religion.” The dead chief was supposed
still to watch jealously over his people and to punish them with
dearth, storms, and floods, if they failed to bring their offerings to
his tomb and to propitiate his spirit. And the person of his
descendant, the living chief, was sacred; it was hedged in by a magic
circle of taboo and might not even be touched without incurring the
wrath of the Unseen. “The first blow at the power of the chiefs was
struck unconsciously by the missionaries. Neither they nor the chiefs
themselves realized how closely the government of the Fijians was
bound up with their religion. No sooner had a missionary gained a
foothold in a chief village than the tabu was doomed, and on the tabu
depended half the people’s reverence for rank. The tabu died hard, as
such institutions should do. The first-fruits were still presented to
the chief, but they were no longer carried from him to the temple,
since their excuse--as an offering to persuade the ancestors to grant
abundant increase--had passed away. No longer supported by the
priests, the Sacred Chief fell upon evil days”; for in Fiji, as in
other places, the priest and the chief, when they were not one and the
same person, had played into each other’s hands, both knowing that
neither could stand firm without the aid of the other.[7.2]
[Sidenote: Superstitious respect for chiefs in Polynesia generally
and in New Zealand particularly.] In Polynesia the state of things
was similar. There, too, the power of chiefs depended largely on a
belief in their supernatural powers, in their relation to ancestral
spirits, and in the magical virtue of taboo, which pervaded their
persons and interposed between them and common folk an invisible but
formidable barrier, to pass which was death. In New Zealand the Maori
chiefs were deemed to be living {8} _atuas_ or gods. Thus the Rev.
Richard Taylor, who was for more than thirty years a missionary in New
Zealand, tells us that in speaking a Maori chief “assumed a tone not
natural to him, as a kind of court language; he kept himself distinct
from his inferiors, eating separately; his person was sacred, he had
the power of holding converse with the gods, in fact laid claim to
being one himself, making the _tapu_ a powerful adjunct to obtain
control over his people and their goods. Every means were used to
acquire this dignity; a large person was thought to be of the highest
importance; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was
generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support
by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance; thus,
whilst they were half-starved, miserable-looking little creatures, the
chief’s child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its
good appearance. Nor was this feeling confined to the body; the chief
was an _atua_, but there were powerful and powerless gods; each
naturally sought to make himself one of the former; the plan therefore
adopted, was to incorporate the spirits of others with their own;
thus, when a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out his eyes
and swallowed them, the _atua tonga_, or divinity, being supposed to
reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also
possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more
chiefs he slew, the greater did his divinity become.… Another great
sign of a chief was oratory--a good orator was compared to the
_korimako_, the sweetest singing bird in New Zealand; to enable the
young chief to become one, he was fed upon that bird, so that he might
the better acquire its qualities, and the successful orator was termed
a _korimako_.”[8.1] Again, another writer informs us that the
opinions of Maori chiefs “were held in more estimation than those of
others, simply because they were believed to give utterance to the
thoughts of deified men. No dazzling pageantry hedged them round, but
their persons were sacred.… Many of them believed themselves inspired;
{9} thus Te Heu Heu, the great Taupo chief and priest, shortly before
he was swallowed up by a landslip, said to a European missionary:
‘Think not that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come
from the heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I
shall return to them.’”[9.1] So sacred was the person of a Maori
chief that it was not lawful to touch him, even to save his life. A
chief has been seen at the point of suffocation and in great agony
with a fish bone sticking in his throat, and yet not one of his
people, who were lamenting around him, dared to touch or even approach
him, for it would have been as much as their own life was worth to do
so. A missionary, who was passing, came to the rescue and saved the
chief’s life by extracting the bone. As soon as the rescued man
recovered the power of speech, which he did not do for half an hour,
the first use he made of it was to demand that the surgical
instruments with which the bone had been extracted should be given to
him as compensation for the injury done him by drawing his sacred
blood and touching his sacred head.[9.2]
[Sidenote: Superstitious fear of contact with Maori chiefs.] Not
only the person of a Maori chief but everything that had come into
contact with it was sacred and would kill, so the Maoris thought, any
sacrilegious person who dared to meddle with it. Cases have been known
of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly
eaten the remains of a chief’s dinner or handled something that
belonged to him. For example, a woman, having partaken of some fine
peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed
place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out
in agony that the _atua_ or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had
been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon,
and next day by twelve o’clock she was dead.[9.3] Similarly a chief’s
tinder-box has proved fatal to several men; for having found it and
lighted their pipes with it {10} they actually expired of terror on
learning to whom it belonged.[10.1] Hence a considerate chief would
throw away where it could not be found any garment or mat for which he
had no further use, lest one of his subjects should find it and be
struck dead by the shock of its inherent divinity. For the same reason
he would never blow a fire with his mouth; for his sacred breath would
communicate its sanctity to the fire, and the fire would pass it on to
the meat that might be cooked on it, and the meat would carry it into
the stomach of the eater, and he would die.[10.2] Thus the divinity
which hedged a Maori chief was a devouring flame which shrivelled up
and consumed whatever it touched. No wonder that such men were
implicitly obeyed.
[Sidenote: Superstitious respect for chiefs and kings in Tonga and
Tahiti.] In the rest of Polynesia the state of things was similar.
For example, the natives of Tonga in like manner believed that if any
one fed himself with his own hands after touching the sacred person of
a superior chief, 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, unless he disinfected himself by touching the chief’s feet in a
particular way.[10.3] When a king of Tahiti entered on office he was
girded with a sacred girdle of red feathers, which not only raised him
to the highest earthly station, but identified him with the
gods.[10.4] Henceforth “every thing in the least degree connected
with the king or queen--the cloth they wore, the houses in which they
dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men by whom they were
borne when they journeyed by land, became sacred--and even the sounds
in the language, composing their names, could no longer be
appropriated to ordinary significations. Hence, the original names of
most of the objects with which they were familiar, have from time to
time undergone considerable alterations. The ground on which they even
accidentally trod, became sacred; and the dwelling under which they
might enter, must for ever after be vacated {11} by its proprietors,
and could be appropriated only to the use of these sacred personages.
No individual was allowed to touch the body of the king or queen; and
every one who should stand over them, or pass the hand over their
heads, would be liable to pay for the sacrilegious act with the
forfeiture of his life. It was on account of this supposed sacredness
of person that they could never enter any dwellings, excepting those
that were specially dedicated to their use, and prohibited to all
others; nor might they tread on the ground in any part of the island
but their own hereditary districts.”[11.1]
[Sidenote: Superstitious fear of contact with kings in Africa and the
Malay region.] In like manner the Cazembes, in the interior of
Angola, regarded their king as so holy that no one could touch him
without being killed by the magical power which emanated from his
sacred person; however, any one who had accidentally or necessarily
come into personal contact with his Majesty could escape death by
touching the king’s hands in a special manner.[11.2] Similar beliefs
are current in the Malay region, where the theory of the king as the
Divine Man is said to be held perhaps as strongly as in any other part
of the world. “Not only is the king’s person considered sacred, but
the sanctity of his body is believed to communicate itself to his
regalia, and to slay those who break the royal taboos. Thus it is
firmly believed that any one who seriously offends the royal person,
who touches (even for a moment) or who imitates (even with the king’s
permission) the chief objects of the regalia, or who wrongfully makes
use of any of the insignia or privileges of royalty, will be _kĕna
daulat_, _i.e._ struck dead, by a quasi-electric discharge of that
Divine Power which the Malays suppose to reside in the king’s person,
and which is called _daulat_ or Royal Sanctity.”[11.3] [Sidenote:
Marvellous powers attributed to rajahs by Malays and Dyaks.] Further,
the Malays firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence
over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the
bearing of fruit-trees.[11.4] Some of the Hill Dyaks of Sarawak {12}
used to bring their seed-rice to Rajah Brooke to be fertilized by him;
and once when the rice-crops of a tribe were thin, the chief remarked
that it could not be otherwise, since they had not been visited by the
Rajah.[12.1] [Sidenote: Superstitious veneration for the rajah of
Loowoo.] Among the Toradjas of Central Celebes “the power of the
rajah of Loowoo rested for the most part on superstition and on
tradition. The ancestors had served the rajah in their day, and should
the descendants fail to do so they would have to fear the wrath of the
ancestors. Often Toradjas said to us, ‘The rajah of Loowoo is our
god.’ They saw in him the complete embodiment of the old institutions.
It used to be said that he had white blood, and the mysterious power
that went forth from him was thought to be so great that a common
Toradja could not see him without suffering from a swollen belly and
dying.”[12.2]
[Sidenote: Magical powers attributed to kings in Africa.] Similarly
in Africa kings are commonly supposed to be endowed with a magical
power of making the rain to fall and the crops to grow: drought and
famine are set down to the weakness or ill-will of the king, and
accordingly he is punished, deposed, or put to death.[12.3] To take
two or three instances out of many, a writer of the eighteenth century
speaks as follows of the kingdom of Loango in West Africa: [Sidenote:
The king of Loango.] “The government with these people is purely
despotic. They say their lives and goods belong to the king; that he
may dispose of and deprive them of them when he pleases, without form
of process, and without their having anything to complain of. In his
presence they pay marks of respect which resemble adoration. The
individuals of the lower classes are persuaded that his power is not
confined to the earth, and that he has credit enough to make rain fall
from heaven: hence they fail not, when a continuance of drought makes
them fearful about the harvest, to represent to him that if he does
not take care to water the lands of his kingdom, they will die of
hunger, and will find it impossible to make him the usual presents.
The king, to satisfy the people, without however compromising himself
with heaven, {13} devolves the affair on one of his ministers, to whom
he gives orders to cause to fall without delay upon the plains as much
rain as is wanted to fertilize them. When the minister sees a cloud
which he presumes must shed rain, he shews himself in public, as if to
exercise the orders of his prince. The women and children troop around
him, crying with all their might, _Give us rain, give us rain_: and he
promises them some.”[13.1] The king of Loango, says another old
writer, “is honoured among them as though he were a God: and is called
_Sambee_ and _Pango_, which mean God. They believe he can let them
have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the
time they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to
them, on this occasion they make him presents, and none come
empty-handed.” On a day appointed, when the chiefs with their troops
had assembled in warlike array, the drums used to beat and the horns
to sound, and the king shot arrows into the air, which was believed to
bring down the rain.[13.2] On the other side of Africa a similar
state of things is reported by the old Portuguese historian Dos
Santos. [Sidenote: The king of Sofala.] He says: “The king of all
these lands of the interior and of the river of Sofala is a
woolly-haired Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and has
no knowledge of God; on the contrary, he esteems himself the god of
all his lands, and is so looked upon and reverenced by his subjects.”
“When they suffer necessity or scarcity they have recourse to the
king, firmly believing that he can give them all that they desire or
have need of, and can obtain anything from his dead predecessors, with
whom they believe that he holds converse. For this reason they ask the
king to give them rain when it is required, and other favourable
weather for their harvest, and in coming to ask for any of these
things they bring him valuable presents, which the king accepts,
bidding them return to their homes and he will be careful to grant
their petitions. They are such barbarians that though they see how
often the king {14} does not give them what they ask for, they are not
undeceived, but make him still greater offerings, and many days are
spent in these comings and goings, until the weather turns to rain,
and the Kaffirs are satisfied, believing that the king did not grant
their request until he had been well bribed and importuned, as he
himself affirms, in order to maintain them in their error.”[14.1]
Nevertheless “it was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to
commit suicide by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical
defect fell upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss
of their front teeth by which they were disfigured, or any other
deformity or affliction. To put an end to such defects they killed
themselves, saying that the king should be free from any blemish.”
However, in the time of Dos Santos the king of Sofala, in defiance of
all precedent, persisted in living and reigning after he had lost a
front tooth; and he even went so far as to tax his royal predecessors
with folly for having made away with themselves for such trifles as a
decayed tooth or a little grey hair, declaring his firm resolution to
live as long as he possibly could for the benefit of his loyal
subjects.[14.2] [Sidenote: The chief medicine-man of the Nandi.] At
the present day the principal medicine-man of the Nandi, a tribe in
British East Africa, is also supreme chief of the whole people. He is
a diviner, and foretells the future: he makes women and cattle
fruitful; and in time of drought he obtains rain either directly or
through the intervention of the rainmakers. The Nandi believe
implicitly in these marvellous powers of their chief. His person is
usually regarded as absolutely sacred. Nobody may approach him with
weapons in his hand or speak in his presence unless he is first
addressed; and it is deemed most important that nobody should touch
the chief’s head, otherwise his powers of divination and so forth
would depart from him.[14.3] This widespread African conception of
the divinity of kings culminated long ago in ancient Egypt, where the
kings were treated as gods both in life and in death, temples being
dedicated to their worship {15} and priests appointed to conduct
it.[15.1] And when the harvests failed, the ancient Egyptians, like
the modern negroes, laid the blame of the failure on the reigning
monarch.[15.2]
[Sidenote: Superstitious veneration of the Peruvians for the Yncas.]
A halo of superstitious veneration also surrounded the Yncas or
governing class in ancient Peru. Thus the old historian Garcilasso de
la Vega, himself the son of an Ynca princess, tells us that “it does
not appear that any Ynca of the blood royal has ever been punished, at
least publicly, and the Indians deny that such a thing has ever taken
place. They say that the Ynca never committed any fault that required
correction; because the teaching of their parents, and the common
opinion that they were children of the Sun, born to teach and to do
good to the rest of mankind, kept them under such control, that they
were rather an example than a scandal to the commonwealth. The Indians
also said that the Yncas were free from the temptations which usually
lead to crime, such as passion for women, envy and covetousness, or
the thirst for vengeance; because if they desired beautiful women, it
was lawful for them to have as many as they liked; and any pretty girl
they might take a fancy to, not only was never denied to them, but was
given up by her father with expressions of extreme thankfulness that
an Ynca should have condescended to take her as his servant. The same
thing might be said of their property; for, as they never could feel
the want of anything, they had no reason to covet the goods of others;
while as governors they had command over all the property of the Sun
and of the Ynca; and those who were in charge, were bound to give them
all that they required, as children of the Sun, and brethren of the
Ynca. They likewise had no temptation to kill or wound any one either
for revenge, or in passion; for no one ever offended them. On the
contrary, they received adoration only second to that offered to the
royal person; and if any one, how high soever his rank, had enraged
any Ynca, it would have been looked upon as sacrilege, and very
severely punished. But it may be affirmed that an Indian {16} was
never punished for offending against the person, honour, or property
of any Ynca, because no such offence was ever committed, as they held
the Yncas to be like gods.”[16.1]
[Sidenote: Superstitious veneration for kings in ancient India.] Nor
have such superstitions been confined to savages and other peoples of
alien race in remote parts of the world. They seem to have been shared
by the ancestors of all the Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. Thus
in the ancient Indian law-book called the Laws of Manu, we read:
“Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords of the
gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre; and, like
the sun, he burns eyes and hearts; nor can anybody on earth even gaze
on him. Through his (supernatural) power he is Fire and Wind, he Sun
and Moon, he the Lord of justice (Yama), he Kubera, he Varuna, he
great Indra. Even an infant king must not be despised (from an idea)
that he is a (mere) mortal; for he is a great deity in human
form.”[16.2] And in the same law-book the effects of a good king’s
reign are thus described: “In that (country) where the king avoids
taking the property of (mortal) sinners, men are born in (due) time
(and are) long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each
as it was sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped (offspring)
is born.”[16.3]
[Sidenote: Superstitious veneration for kings in ancient Europe.]
Similarly in Homeric Greece, kings and chiefs were described as sacred
or divine; their houses, too, were divine, and their chariots
sacred;[16.4] and it was thought that the reign of a good king caused
the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley, the trees to be
loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and the sea to yield
fish.[16.5] When the crops failed, the Burgundians used to blame
their kings and depose them.[16.6] Similarly the Swedes always
ascribed the abundance or scantiness of the harvest to the goodness or
badness of their kings, and in time of dearth they have been known
{17} to sacrifice them to the gods for the sake of procuring good
crops.[17.1] In ancient Ireland it was also believed that when kings
observed the customs of their ancestors the seasons were mild, the
crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish,
and the fruit-trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of
their produce. A canon ascribed to St. Patrick enumerates among the
blessings that attend the reign of a just king “fine weather, calm
seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit.”[17.2] [Sidenote:
Survivals of the superstition in Scotland.] Superstitions of the kind
which were thus current among the Celts of Ireland centuries ago
appear to have survived among the Celts of Scotland down to Dr.
Johnson’s time; for when he travelled in Skye it was still held that
the return of the chief of the Macleods to Dunvegan, after any
considerable absence, produced a plentiful catch of herring;[17.3]
and at a still later time, when the potato crop failed, the clan
Macleod desired that a certain fairy banner in the possession of their
chief might be unfurled,[17.4] apparently in the belief that the
magical banner had only to be displayed to produce a fine crop of
potatoes.
[Sidenote: Touching for the King’s Evil.] Perhaps the last relic of
such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the
notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was
accordingly known as the King’s Evil;[17.5] and on the analogy of the
Polynesian superstitions which I have cited, we may perhaps conjecture
that the skin disease of scrofula was originally supposed to be caused
as well as cured by the king’s touch. Certain it is that in Tonga some
forms of scrofula, as well as indurations of the liver, to which the
natives were very subject, were thought to be caused by touching a
chief and {18} to be healed, on homœopathic principles, in the very
same fashion.[18.1] Similarly in Loango palsy is called the king’s
disease, because the negroes imagine it to be heaven’s own punishment
for treason meditated against the king.[18.2] The belief in the
king’s power to heal by touch is known to have been held both in
France and England from the eleventh century onward. The first French
king to touch the sick appears to have been Robert the Pious, the
first English king Edward the Confessor.[18.3] In England the belief
that the king could heal scrofula by his touch survived into the
eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson was touched in his childhood for
scrofula by Queen Anne.[18.4] It is curious that so typical a
representative of robust common sense as Dr. Johnson should in his
childhood and old age have thus been brought into contact with these
ancient superstitions about royalty both in England and Scotland. In
France the superstition lingered a good deal longer, for whereas Queen
Anne was the last reigning monarch in England to touch for scrofula,
both Louis XV. and Louis XVI. at their coronation touched thousands of
patients, and as late as 1824 Charles X. at his coronation went
through the same solemn farce. It is said that the sceptical wits of
Louis XVI.’s time investigated all the cases of the persons on whom
the king had laid hands at his coronation, with the result that out of
two thousand four hundred who were touched only five were made
whole.[18.5]
[Sidenote: Conclusion.] The foregoing evidence, summary as it is,
may suffice to prove that many peoples have regarded their rulers,
whether chiefs or kings, with superstitious awe as beings of a higher
order and endowed with mightier powers than common folk. Imbued with
such a profound veneration for their governors and with such an
exaggerated conception of their power, they cannot but have yielded
them a prompter and more implicit obedience than if they had {19}
known them to be men of common mould just like themselves. If that is
so, I may claim to have proved my first proposition, which is, that
among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened
the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has
thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil
order.
III.
PRIVATE PROPERTY
{20}
[Sidenote: Superstition as a prop of private property.] I pass now
to my second proposition, which is, that among certain races and at
certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for private
property, and has thereby contributed to the security of its
enjoyment.
[Sidenote: Taboo in Polynesia.] Nowhere, perhaps, does this appear
more plainly than in Polynesia, where the system of taboo reached its
highest development; for the effect of tabooing a thing was, in the
opinion of the natives, to endow it with a supernatural or magical
energy which rendered it practically unapproachable by any but the
owner. Thus taboo became a powerful instrument for strengthening the
ties, perhaps our socialist friends would say riveting the chains, of
private property. Indeed, some good authorities who were personally
acquainted with the working of taboo in Polynesia, have held that the
system was originally devised for no other purpose. [Sidenote: Taboo
among the Maoris of New Zealand.] For example, an Irishman who lived
as a Maori with the Maoris for years, and knew them intimately, writes
as follows: “The original object of the ordinary _tapu_ seems to have
been the preservation of property. Of this nature in a great degree
was the ordinary personal _tapu_. This form of the _tapu_ was
permanent, and consisted in a certain sacred character which attached
to the person of a chief and never left him. It was his birthright, a
part in fact of himself, of which he could not be divested, and which
was well understood and recognized at all times as a matter of course.
The fighting men and petty chiefs, and every one indeed who could by
any means claim the title of _rangatira_--which in the sense I now use
it means gentleman--were all in {21} some degree more or less
possessed of this mysterious quality. It extended or was communicated
to all their moveable property, especially to their clothes, weapons,
ornaments, and tools, and to everything in fact which they touched.
This prevented their chattels from being stolen or mislaid, or spoiled
by children, or used or handled in any way by others. And as in the
old times, as I have before stated, every kind of property of this
kind was precious in consequence of the great labour and time
necessarily, for want of iron tools, expended in the manufacture, this
form of the _tapu_ was of great real service. An infringement of it
subjected the offender to various dreadful imaginary punishments, of
which deadly sickness was one.” The culprit was also liable to what
may be called a civil action, which consisted in being robbed and
beaten; but the writer whom I have just quoted tells us that the worst
part of the punishment for breaking taboo was the imaginary part,
since even when the offence had been committed unwittingly the
offender has been known to die of fright on learning what he had
done.[21.1] Similarly, another writer, speaking of the Maoris,
observes that “violators of the _tapu_ were punished by the gods and
also by men. The former sent sickness and death; the latter inflicted
death, loss of property, and expulsion from society. It was a dread of
the gods, more than of men, which upheld the _tapu_. Human eyes might
be deceived, but the eyes of the gods could never be deceived.”[21.2]
“The chiefs, as might be expected, are fully aware of the advantages
of the _tapu_, finding that it confers on them, to a certain extent,
the power of making laws, and the superstition on which the _tapu_ is
founded will ensure the observance of them. Were they to transgress
the _tapu_, they believe that the _attua_ (God) would kill them, and
so universal is this belief that it is, or rather was, a very rare
occurrence to find any one daring enough to commit the {22} sacrilege.
To have preserved this influence so completely among a people
naturally so shrewd and intelligent, great care must, no doubt, have
been taken not to apply it unless in the usual and recognised manner.
To have done otherwise would have led to its being frequently
transgressed; and consequently to the loss of its influence. Before
the natives came into contact with the Europeans the _tapu_ seems to
have acted with the most complete success; as the belief was general,
that any disregard of it would infallibly subject the offender to the
anger of the _attua_, and death would be the consequence.
Independently, however, of the support which the _tapu_ derives from
the superstitious fears of these people, it has, like most other laws,
an appeal to physical force in case of necessity. A delinquent, if
discovered, would be stripped of everything he possessed; and if a
slave, would in all probability be put to death--many instances of
which have actually occurred. So powerful is this superstitious
feeling, that slaves will not venture to eat of the same food as their
master; or even to cook at the same fire; believing that the _attua_
would kill them if they did so. Everything about, or belonging to, a
chief is accounted sacred by the slaves. Fond as they are of tobacco,
it would be perfectly secure though left exposed on the roof of a
chief’s house; no one would venture to touch it. To try them, a friend
of mine gave a fig of tobacco to a slave; who, after having used it,
was informed that it had been on the roof of the chief’s house. The
poor fellow, in the greatest consternation, went immediately to the
chief telling him what had happened, and beseeching him to take off
the _tapu_ from the tobacco to prevent the evil consequences.”[22.1]
[Sidenote: Taboo as a preserver of property.] Hence it has been
truly said that “this form of _tapu_ was a great preserver of
property. The most valuable articles might, in ordinary circumstances,
be left to its protection, in the absence of the owners, for any
length of time.”[22.2] If any one wished to preserve his crop, his
house, his garments, or anything else, he had only to taboo the
property, and it was safe. To shew that the thing was tabooed, he put
a mark {23} to it. Thus, if he wished to use a particular tree in the
forest to make a canoe, he tied a wisp of grass to the trunk; if he
desired to appropriate a patch of bulrush in a swamp, he stuck up a
pole in it with a bunch of grass at the top; if he left his house with
all its valuables, to take care of itself, he secured the door with a
bit of flax, and the place straightway became inviolable, nobody would
meddle with it.[23.1]
Hence although the restrictions imposed by taboo were often vexatious
and absurd, and the whole system has sometimes been denounced by
Europeans as a degrading superstition, yet observers who looked a
little deeper have rightly perceived that its enactments, enforced
mainly by imaginary but still powerful sanctions, were often
beneficial. “The New Zealanders,” says one writer, “could not have
been governed without some code of laws analogous to the _tapu_.
Warriors submitted to the supposed decrees of the gods who would have
spurned with contempt the orders of men, and it was better the people
should be ruled by superstition than by brute force.”[23.2] Again, an
experienced missionary, who knew the Maoris well, writes that “the
_tapu_ in many instances was beneficial; considering the state of
society, absence of law, and fierce character of the people, it formed
no bad substitute for a dictatorial form of government, and made the
nearest approach to an organized state of society.”[23.3]
[Sidenote: Taboo in the Marquesas Islands.] In other parts of
Polynesia the system of taboo with its attendant advantages and
disadvantages, its uses and abuses, was practically the same, and
everywhere, as in New Zealand, it tightened for good or evil the ties
of private property. This indeed was perhaps the most obvious effect
of the institution. In the Marquesas Islands, it is said, taboo was
invested with a divine character as the expression of the will of the
gods revealed to the priests; as such it set bounds to injurious
excesses, prevented depredations, and united the people. Especially it
converted the tabooed or privileged classes into landed proprietors;
the land belonged to them alone and to their heirs; common {24} folk
lived by industry and by fishing. Taboo was the bulwark of the
landowners; it was that alone which elevated them by a sort of divine
right into a position of affluence and luxury above the vulgar; it was
that alone which ensured their safety and protected them from the
encroachments of their poor and envious neighbours. “Without doubt,”
say the writers from whom I borrow these observations, “the first
mission of taboo was to establish property, the base of all
society.”[24.1]
[Sidenote: Superstitious fear as a preserver of property in Samoa.]
In Samoa also superstition played a great part in fostering a respect
for private property. That it did so, we have the testimony of a
missionary, Dr. George Turner, who lived for many years among the
Samoans and has given us a very valuable account of their customs. He
says: “I hasten to notice the second thing which I have already
remarked was an auxiliary towards the maintenance of peace and order
in Samoa, viz. _superstitious fear_. If the chief and heads of
families, in their court of inquiry into any case of stealing, or
other concealed matter, had a difficulty in finding out the culprit,
they would make all involved swear that they were innocent. In
swearing before the chiefs the suspected parties laid a handful of
grass on the stone, or whatever it was, which was supposed to be the
representative of the village god, and laying their hand on it, would
say, ‘In the presence of our chiefs now assembled, I lay my hand on
the stone. If I stole the thing may I speedily die.’ This was a common
mode of swearing. The meaning of the grass was a silent additional
imprecation that his family might all die, and that _grass_ might grow
over their habitation. If all swore, and the culprit was still
undiscovered, the chiefs then wound up the affair by committing the
case to the village god, and solemnly invoking him to mark out for
speedy destruction the guilty {25} mischief-maker. But, instead of
appealing to the chiefs, and calling for an oath, many were contented
with their own individual schemes and imprecations to frighten thieves
and prevent stealing. When a man went to his plantation and saw that
some cocoa-nuts, or a bunch of bananas, had been stolen, he would
stand and shout at the top of his voice two or three times, ‘May fire
blast the eyes of the person who has stolen my bananas! May fire burn
down his eyes and the eyes of his god too!’ This rang throughout the
adjacent plantations, and made the thief tremble. They dreaded such
uttered imprecations.… But there was another and more extensive class
of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on
stealing, especially from plantations and fruit trees, viz. the silent
hieroglyphic taboo, or _tapui_ (_tapooe_), as they call it. Of this
there was a great variety.”[25.1]
[Sidenote: Samoan taboos.] Among the Samoan taboos which were
employed for the protection of property were the following:--1. _The
sea-pike taboo_. To prevent his bread-fruits from being stolen a man
would plait some coco-nut leaflets in the form of a sea-pike and hang
one or more such effigies from the trees which he wished to protect.
Any ordinary thief would be afraid to touch a tree thus guarded, for
he believed that if he stole the fruit a sea-pike would mortally wound
him the next time he went to sea. 2. _The white-shark taboo_. A man
would plait a coco-nut leaf in the shape of a shark and hang it on a
tree. This was equivalent to an imprecation that the thief might be
devoured by a shark the next time he went to fish. 3. _The cross-stick
taboo_. This was a stick hung horizontally on the tree. It expressed a
wish that whoever stole fruit from the tree might be afflicted with a
sore running right across his body till he died. 4. _The ulcer taboo_.
This was made by burying some pieces of clam-shell in the ground and
setting up at the spot several reeds tied together at the top in a
bunch like the head of a man. By this the owner signified his wish
that the thief might be laid low with ulcerous sores all over his
body. If the thief happened thereafter to be troubled with swellings
or sores, he confessed his fault and sent a present to the {26} owner
of the land, who in return sent to the culprit a herb both as a
medicine and as a pledge of forgiveness. 5. _The thunder taboo_. A man
would plait coco-nut leaflets in the form of a small square mat and
suspend it from a tree, adding some white streamers of native cloth. A
thief believed that for trespassing on such a tree he or his children
might be struck by lightning, or perhaps that lightning might strike
and blast his own trees. “From these few illustrations,” says Dr.
Turner in conclusion, “it will be observed that Samoa formed no
exception to the remarkably widespread system of superstitious taboo;
and the extent to which it preserved honesty and order among a heathen
people will be readily imagined.”[26.1]
[Sidenote: Taboo in Tonga.] In Tonga a man guilty of theft or of any
other crime was said to have broken the taboo, and as such persons
were supposed to be particularly liable to be bitten by sharks, all on
whom suspicion fell were compelled to go into water frequented by
sharks; if they were bitten or devoured, they were guilty; if they
escaped, they were innocent.[26.2]
[Sidenote: Taboo in Melanesia.] In Melanesia also a system of taboo
(_tambu_, _tapu_) exists; it is described as “a prohibition with a
curse expressed or implied,” and derives its sanction from a belief
that the chief or other person who imposes a taboo has the support of
a powerful ghost or spirit (_tindalo_). If a common man took it upon
himself to taboo anything, people would watch to see whether a
transgressor of the taboo fell sick; if he did, it was a proof that
the man who imposed the taboo was backed by a powerful ghost, and his
reputation would rise accordingly. Each ghost affected a particular
sort of leaf, which was his taboo mark.[26.3] In New Britain
plantations, coco-nut trees, and other possessions are protected
against thieves by marks of taboo attached to them, and it is thought
that whoever violates the taboo will be visited by sickness or other
misfortune. The nature of the sickness or misfortune varies with that
of the mark or magical object which embodies the mystic virtue of the
taboo. One plant used for this purpose will cause the {27} thief’s
head to ache; another will make his thighs swell; another will break
his legs; and so forth. Even the murmuring of a spell over a fence is
believed to ensure that whoever steals sticks from the fence will have
a swollen head.[27.1] In Fiji the institution of taboo was the secret
of power and the strength of despotic rule. It was wondrously
diffused, affecting things great and small. Here it might be seen
tending a brood of chickens and there directing the energies of a
kingdom. The custom was much in favour with the chiefs, who adjusted
it so that it sat lightly on them and heavily on others. By it they
gained influence, supplied their wants, and commanded at will their
inferiors. In imposing a taboo a chief need only be checked by a
regard for ancient precedent. Inferior persons endeavoured by the help
of the system to put their yam-beds and plantain-plots within a sacred
pale.[27.2]
[Sidenote: Taboo in the Malay Archipelago.] A system of taboo based
on superstition prevails all over the islands of the Malay
Archipelago, where the common term for taboo is _pamali_, _pomali_, or
_pemali_, though in some places other words, such as _poso_, _potu_,
or _boboso_ are in use to express the same idea.[27.3] In this great
region also the superstition associated with taboo is a powerful
instrument to enforce the rights of private property. Thus, in the
island of Timor “a prevalent custom is the _pomali_, exactly
equivalent to the ‘taboo’ of the Pacific islanders, and equally
respected. It is used on the commonest occasions, and a few palm
leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of the _pomali_ will preserve
its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of
man-traps, spring guns, or a savage dog, would do with us.”[27.4] In
Amboyna the word for taboo is _pamali_. A man who wishes to protect
his fruit-trees or other possessions against theft may do it in
various ways. For example, he may make a white cross on a pot {28} and
hang the pot on the fruit-tree; then the thief who steals fruit from
that tree will be a leper. Or he may place the effigy of a mouse under
the tree; then the thief will have marks on his nose and ears as if a
mouse had gnawed them. Or he may plait dry sago leaves into two round
discs and tie them to the tree; then the thief’s body will swell up
and burst.[28.1] In Ceram the methods of protecting property from
thieves are similar. For example, a man places a pig’s jaw in the
branches of his fruit-tree; after that any person who dares to steal
the fruit from the tree will be rent in pieces by a wild boar. The
image of a crocodile with a thread of red cotton tied round its neck
will be equally efficacious; the thief will be devoured by a
crocodile. A wooden effigy of a snake will make the culprit to be
stung by a serpent. A figure of a cat with a red band round its neck
will cause all who approach the tree with evil intentions to suffer
from excruciating pains in their stomachs, as if a cat were clawing
their insides.[28.2] An image of a swallow will cause the thief to
suffer as if a swallow were pecking his eyes out: a piece of thorny
wood and a red spongy stone will inflict piercing pangs on him and
make his whole body to be red and pitted with minute holes: a
burnt-out brand will cause his house to burst into flames, without any
apparent reason; and so on.[28.3] Similarly in the Ceram Laut Islands
a man protects his coco-nut trees or sago palms by placing charmed
objects at the foot of them. For example, he puts the effigy of a fish
under his coco-nut tree and says, “Grandfather fish, cause the person
who steals my coco-nuts to be sick and vomit.” The culprit accordingly
is seized with pains in his stomach and can only be relieved of them
by the owner of the coco-nuts, who spits betel-nut juice on the ailing
part and blows into the sufferer’s ear, saying, “Grandfather fish,
return to the sea. You have there room enough and great rocks of coral
where you can {29} swim about.” Or again he may make a miniature
coffin and place it on the ground under the tree; then the thief will
suffer from shortness of breath and a feeling of suffocation, as if he
were actually shut up in a coffin. And many other devices there are
whereby in these islands the owner of fruit-trees protects the fruit
from the depredations of his unscrupulous neighbours. In every case he
deposits at the foot of the tree or fastens to the trunk a charmed
object, which he regards as endowed with supernatural powers, and he
invokes its aid to guard his possessions.[29.1]
[Sidenote: Charms for the protection of fruit-trees in Central
Celebes.] The Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes protect
their fruit-trees, especially their sirih plants and their coco-nut
palms against thieves by amulets or charms of various sorts which they
attach to the trees. The charms consist of the leaves of certain
plants or parts of an animal tied up in leaves. Before the owner
fastens one of these amulets to the tree, he says, “O charm (_ooroo_),
if any man will take of these fruits, make him sick.” And the people
in general believe that sickness will overtake the thief who
disregards the taboo and steals the fruit. The kind of sickness or
other mishap which will visit the sinner varies with the nature of the
charm. The qualities of the object which is fastened to the tree are
supposed to enter into the culprit’s body and to affect him
accordingly. For example, if the charm consists of a particular
sharp-edged grass, then the thief will feel sharp pains in his body;
if it is part of a white ant heap, he will be afflicted with leprosy;
if it is a certain weed of which the fruit drops off easily, his teeth
will fall out; if it is a plant whose leaves cause itching, his body
will itch all over; if it is the _dracaena terminalis_, he will be
killed in war; and so on. There is a great variety of these amulets
for the protection of fruit-trees; every man has his own in which he
puts his trust. Yet while the Toradjas believe that sickness or other
misfortune follows automatically the breach of such taboos,
nevertheless they allege that they know how to evade the force and
vigilance of the charm and to eat of the forbidden fruit with
impunity. One of the expedients adopted for that purpose is as
follows. You take a handful of earth and throw it at the tree; then
with {30} your chopping-knife you chip a splinter from the trunk, and
addressing the protective charm you say, “Make the earth sick first,
and then the chopping-knife, and then me.” After that you have
practically nothing to fear from the amulet, and you can steal the
fruit and eat it at your ease. But that is not all. Some artful
thieves are able not merely to counteract the charm and render it
powerless against themselves; they can even reverse its action and
direct it against the owner of the tree himself. Indeed, so
well-recognized is this power that many a prudent Toradja refuses to
protect his trees with amulets at all, lest in doing so he should be
simply putting in the hands of his enemies a weapon to be used by them
for his own destruction. One of the ways in which a cunning robber
will thus defeat the ends of justice is this. He goes boldly up to the
fruit-tree which he intends to rob, removes the charm from it, and
hangs it up somewhere else. Then he lays a plank on the ground with
one end of it touching the trunk of the fruit-tree; on this plank he
walks up to the tree and calmly appropriates the fruit. The charm, of
course, in the meantime is helpless, since it is not on the tree. When
he has stripped the fruit, the rascal restores the charm to its proper
place and removes the plank. Again, the guardian charm is helpless; it
cannot pursue the thief, since he has carried away the plank, leaving
no possible exit from the tree. Thus the faithful guardian is, as it
were, imprisoned in the castle which he has been set to guard; he
frets and fumes at his confinement, and in his blind rage will fall
foul of the owner of the tree himself when next he comes to inspect
his property. This is, perhaps, the simplest and easiest mode of
hoisting a fruit-farmer with his petard. There are, however, other
ways of doing it. One of them is to get up into the tree and hang by
your feet from a branch with your head down, and, while thus suspended
in the air, to chew the root of a stinging nettle. This causes the
owner of the tree either to be eaten up by a crocodile or to perish in
war. A very popular charm among the Mountain Toradjas of Central
Celebes is to take the head or paw of an iguana and hang it on the
fruit-tree which is to be protected. The head bites the thief’s head,
and the paw grabs him by the {31} leg, so that he feels excruciating
pains in these portions of his frame. But if you hang up the whole
carcase, the thief is a dead man.[31.1]
[Sidenote: Taboo (_fady_) in Madagascar.] In Madagascar there is an
elaborate system of taboo known as _fady_.[31.2] It has been
carefully studied in a learned monograph by Professor A. van
Gennep,[31.3] who argues that originally all property was based on
religion, and that marks of property were marks of taboo.[31.4]
However, so far as the evidence permits us to judge, it does not
appear that the system has been used by the Malagasy for the
protection of property to the same extent as by the Polynesians, the
Melanesians, and the Indonesians. But we hear of Malagasy charms
placed in the fields to afflict with leprosy and other maladies any
persons who should dare to steal from them.[31.5] And we are told
that some examples of _fady_ or taboo “seem to imply a curious basis
for the moral code in regard to the rights of property among the last
generation of Malagasy. It does not appear to have been _fady_ to
steal in general, but certain articles were specified, to steal which
there were various penalties attached. Thus, to steal an egg caused
the thief to become leprous; to steal _landy_ (native silk) caused
blindness or some other infirmity. And to steal iron was also visited
by some bodily affliction.”[31.6] In order to recover stolen property
the Malagasy had recourse to a deity called Ramanandroany. The owner
would take a remnant of the thing that had been purloined, and going
with it to the idol would say, “As to whoever stole our property, O
Ramanandroany, kill him by day, destroy him by night, and strangle
him; let there be none amongst men like him; let him not be able to
increase in riches, not even a farthing, but let him pick up his
livelihood as a hen pecks rice-grains; let his eyes be blinded, and
his knees swollen, {32} O Ramanandroany.” It was supposed that these
curses fell on the thief.[32.1]
[Sidenote: Property protected by superstitious fears elsewhere.]
Similar modes of enforcing the rights of private property by the aid
of superstitious fears have been adopted in many other parts of the
world. The subject has been copiously illustrated by Dr. Edward
Westermarck in his very learned work on the origin and development of
the moral ideas.[32.2] Here I will cite only a few cases out of many.
The Kouis of Laos, on the borders of Siam, protect their plantations
against thieves in a very simple way. They place a “shaking tubercule”
(_prateal anchot_) on the land which is to be guarded; and if any
thief should thereafter dare to lay hands on the crop, he is
immediately seized by a shaking fit like that of a drenched dog and
cannot budge from the spot. They say that a fisherman at Sangkeah
employed this charm with the best results. He used always to find his
bow-net empty till one day he had the happy thought of protecting it
by a “shaking tubercule.” It acted like magic. The thief went down as
usual into the river and brought up the net full of fish. But hardly
had he stepped on the bank when he began to shiver and shake, with the
dripping net and its writhing silvery contents glued to his breast.
Two days afterwards, the proprietor, making his rounds, discovered the
thief on the same spot, shivering and chattering away as hard as {33}
ever, but of course the fish in the net were dead and rotten.[33.1]
Among the Kawars, a primitive hill tribe of the Central Provinces in
India, “the sword, the gun, the axe, the spear have each a special
deity, and in fact in the Bangawan, the tract where the wilder Kawars
dwell, it is believed that every article of household furniture is the
residence of a spirit, and that if any one steals or injures it
without the owner’s leave the spirit will bring some misfortune on him
in revenge. Theft is said to be unknown among them, partly on this
account and partly perhaps because no one has much property worth
stealing.”[33.2] In Ceylon, when a person wishes to protect his
fruit-trees from thieves, he hangs up certain grotesque figures round
the orchard and dedicates it to the devils. After that no native will
dare to touch the fruit; even the owner himself will not venture to
use it till the charm has been removed by a priest, who naturally
receives some of the fruit for his trouble.[33.3] The Indians of
Cumana in South America surrounded their plantations with a single
cotton thread, and this was safeguard enough; for it was believed that
any trespasser would soon die. The Juris of Brazil adopt the same
simple means of stopping gaps in their fences.[33.4]
[Sidenote: Property in Annam protected by ghosts and curses.] The
Annamites in the interior of Tonquin believe that the ghosts of young
girls who have been buried in a corner of the dwelling act as a
vigilant police; if thieves have made their way into the house and are
preparing to depart with their booty, they hear the voice of a ghost
enumerating the things on which they have laid hands, and in a panic
they drop them and take to flight.[33.5] But if in spite of all an
Annamite should chance to be robbed, he can easily recover the stolen
property as follows. With a clod of earth taken from the kitchen
floor, a pinch of vermilion, the white of an egg, and a little alcohol
he makes a ball, which stands for the head of the thief. This he puts
in the fire on {34} the hearth, and having lit some incense sticks he
pronounces the following incantation: “On such a day of such a month
of such a year So-and-so was robbed of various things. The name of the
thief is unknown. I pray the guardian-spirit of the kitchen to hold
the rascal’s head in the fire that it may burn.” After that, if the
thief does not restore the stolen property, he will be a dead man
within a month.[34.1]
[Sidenote: Thieves cursed in Nias.] Similarly in Nias, an island to
the west of Sumatra, when a thief cannot be found he is cursed, and to
give weight to the curse a dog is burned alive. While the animal is
expiring in torments, the man who has been robbed expresses his wish
that the thief may likewise die in agony; and they say that thieves
who have been often cursed do die screaming.[34.2] [Sidenote:
Thieves cursed among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo.] Curses are also
employed for the same purpose with excellent effect by the Sea Dyaks
of Borneo. On this point a missionary bears the following testimony.
“With an experience of nearly twenty years in Borneo, during which I
came into contact with thousands of the people, I have known of only
two instances of theft among the Dyaks. One was a theft of rice. The
woman who lost the rice most solemnly and publicly cursed the thief,
whoever it might be. The next night the rice was secretly left at her
door. The other was a theft of money. In this case, too, the thief was
cursed. The greater part of the money was afterwards found returned to
the box from which it had been abstracted. Both these incidents show
the great dread the Dyak has of a curse. Even an undeserved curse is
considered a terrible thing, and, according to Dyak law, to curse a
person for no reason at all is a fineable offence.
“A Dyak curse is a terrible thing to listen to. I have only once heard
a Dyak curse, and I am sure I do not want to do so again. I was
travelling in the Saribas district, and at that time many of the Dyaks
there had gone in for coffee-planting; indeed, several of them had
started coffee plantations on a small scale. A woman told me that some
one had over and over again stolen the ripe coffee-berries from her
plantation. Not only were the ripe berries stolen, but the thief had
carelessly picked many of the young berries and {35} thrown them on
the ground, and many of the branches of the plants had been broken
off. In the evening, when I was seated in the public part of the house
with many Dyak men and women round me, we happened to talk about
coffee-planting. The woman was present, and told us of her
experiences, and how her coffee had been stolen by some thief, who,
she thought, must be one of the inmates of the house. Then she
solemnly cursed the thief. She began in a calm voice, but worked
herself up into a frenzy. We all listened horror-struck, and no one
interrupted her. She began by saying what had happened, and how these
thefts had gone on for some time. She had said nothing before, hoping
that the thief would mend his ways; but the matter had gone on long
enough, and she was going to curse the thief, as nothing, she felt
sure, would make him give up his evil ways. She called on all the
spirits of the waters and the hills and the air to listen to her words
and to aid her. She began quietly, but became more excited as she went
on. She said something of this kind:
[Sidenote: Curses on a man thief.] “‘If the thief be a man, may he
be unfortunate in all he undertakes! May he suffer from a disease that
does not kill him, but makes him helpless--always in pain--and a
burden to others. May his wife be unfaithful to him, and his children
become as lazy and dishonest as he is himself. If he go out on the
war-path, may he be killed, and his head smoked over the enemy’s fire.
If he be boating, may his boat be swamped and may he be drowned. If he
be out fishing, may an alligator kill him suddenly, and may his
relatives never find his body. If he be cutting down a tree in the
jungle, may the tree fall on him and crush him to death. May the gods
curse his farm so that he may have no crops, and have nothing to eat,
and when he begs for food, may he be refused, and die of starvation.
[Sidenote: Curses on a woman thief.] “‘If the thief be a woman, may
she be childless, or if she happen to be with child let her be
disappointed, and let her child be still-born, or, better still, let
her die in childbirth. May her husband be untrue to her, and despise
her and ill-treat her. May her children all desert her if she live to
grow old. May she suffer from such diseases as are peculiar to women,
and may her eyesight grow dim as the years go {36} on, and may there
be no one to help her or lead her about when she is blind.’
“I have only given the substance of what she said; but I shall never
forget the silence and the awed faces of those who heard her. I left
the house early next morning, so I do not know what was the result of
her curse--whether the thief confessed or not.”[36.1]
[Sidenote: Thieves cursed in ancient Greece.] The ancient Greeks
seem to have made a very liberal use of curses as a cheap and
effective mode of protecting property, which dispenses the injured
party from resorting to the tedious, expensive, and too often
fruitless formalities of the law. These curses they inscribed on
tablets of lead and other materials and deposited either in the place
which was to be protected from depredation or in the temple of the god
to whose tender mercies the criminal was committed. For example, in a
sacred precinct dedicated to Demeter, Persephone, Pluto and other
deities of a stern and inflexible temper at Cnidus, a number of leaden
tablets were found inscribed with curses which consigned the
malefactors of various sorts to the vengeance of the two Infernal
Goddesses, Demeter and her daughter. “May he or she never find
Persephone propitious!” is the constantly repeated burden of these
prayers; and in some of them the sinner is not only excommunicated in
this world but condemned to eternal torments in the world hereafter.
Often the persons who launched these curses were ladies. One irate
dame consigns to perdition the thief who had stolen her bracelet or
the defaulter who had failed to send back her underclothes.[36.2]
Another curse, engraved on a marble slab found at Smyrna, purports
that if any man should steal one of the sacred vessels of a certain
goddess or injure her sacred fish, he may die a painful death,
devoured by the fishes.[36.3] Sometimes, apparently, these Greek
imprecations {37} were as effective in reclaiming sinners as Dyak
curses are to this day. Thus we read of a curious dedication to a
lunar deity of Asia Minor, by name Men Aziottenos, which declares how
one Artemidorus, having been reviled by a couple of rude fellows,
cursed them in a votive tablet, and how one of the culprits, having
been punished by the god, made a propitiatory offering and mended his
wicked ways.[37.1] [Sidenote: Landmarks protected by gods and
curses.] To prevent people from encroaching on their neighbours’ land
by removing the boundary stones, the Greeks committed landmarks to the
special protection of the great god Zeus;[37.2] and Plato dwells with
unction on the double punishment, divine and human, to which the
sinner exposed himself who dared to tamper with these sacred
stones.[37.3] The Romans went even further, for they created a god
for the sole purpose of looking after landmarks, and he must have had
his hands very full if he executed all the curses which were levelled
not only at every man who shifted his neighbour’s boundary stone, but
even at the oxen which he employed to plough up his neighbour’s
land.[37.4] The Hebrew code of Deuteronomy pronounced a solemn curse
on such as removed their neighbour’s landmarks;[37.5] and Babylonian
kings exhausted their imagination in pouring out a flood of
imprecations against the abandoned wretch who thus set at naught the
rights of property in land.[37.6] King Nebuchadnezzar in particular,
before he was turned out to grass, appears to have distinguished
himself by the richness and variety of his execrations, if we may
judge by a specimen of them which has survived. A brief extract from
this masterpiece may serve to illustrate the king’s style of minatory
eloquence. Referring to the bold bad man, “be it shepherd or governor,
or agent or regent, levy master or magistrate,” whosoever he might be,
who “for all days to {38} come, for the future of human habitations,”
should dare to tamper with the land which his Majesty had just marked
out, “Ninib, lord of boundaries and boundary-stones, tear out his
boundary stone. Gula, great lady, put lingering illness into his body,
that dark and light red blood he may pour out like water. Ishtar, lady
of countries, whose fury is a flood, reveal difficulties to him, that
he escape not from misfortune. Nusku, mighty lord, powerful burner,
the god, my creator, be his evil demon and may he burn his root.
Whoever removes this stone, in the dust hides it, burns it with fire,
casts it into water, shuts it up in an enclosure, causes a fool, a
deaf man, an idiot to take it, places it in an invisible place, may
the great gods, who upon this stone are mentioned by their names,
curse him with an evil curse, tear out his foundation and destroy his
seed.”[38.1]
[Sidenote: Superstition as an ally of the rights of private property
in Africa.] In Africa also superstition is a powerful ally of the
rights of private property. Thus the Balonda place beehives on high
trees in the forest and protect them against thieves by tying a charm
or “piece of medicine” round the tree-trunks. This proves a sufficient
protection. “The natives,” says Livingstone, “seldom rob each other,
for all believe that certain medicines can inflict disease and death;
and though they consider that these are only known to a few, they act
on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. The gloom of
these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people. In
other quarters, where they are not subjected to this influence, I have
heard the chiefs issue proclamations to the effect, that real
witchcraft medicines had been placed at certain gardens from which
produce had been stolen; the thieves having risked the power of the
ordinary charms previously placed there.”[38.2]
[Sidenote: The Wanika of East Africa.] The Wanika of East Africa
“believe in the power and efficacy of charms and amulets, and they
wear them in great variety; legs, arms, neck, waist, hair, and every
part of the body are laden with them, either for the cure or
prevention of disease; for the expulsion or repulsion of evil spirits;
and to keep at bay snakes, wild animals, and every other evil. {39}
They hang painted calabashes from the baobab at their hut doors to
keep away thieves; shells, dolls, eggs scratched over with Arabic
characters by the _Wana Chuoni_ (sons of the book) of the coast, are
placed about their plantations and in their fruit-trees, and they
believe that death would overtake a thief who should disregard them. A
charm bound to the leg of a fowl is ample protection for the village.
There is no doubt that, superstitious as the people are, they dread
running great risks for the sake of small gains, and so these charms
answer their purpose.”[39.1] [Sidenote: The Boloki of the Congo.]
Among the Boloki of the Upper Congo, when a woman finds that the
cassava roots, which she keeps soaking in a water-hole, are being
stolen, she takes a piece of gum copal, and fixing it in the cleft of
a split stick she puts it on the side of the hole, while at the same
time she calls down a curse on the thief. If the thief is a man, he
will henceforth have no luck in fishing; if she is a woman, she will
have no more success in farming.[39.2] The Ekoi of Southern Nigeria
protect their farms against thieves by bundles of palm leaves to which
they give the name of _okpata_. Should any one steal from a farm thus
protected, he will fall sick and will not recover unless he gives a
certain dance, to which the name of _okpata_ is also applied.[39.3]
[Sidenote: Guardian spirits (_damzogs_) of property in Darfur.] In
the mountains of Marrah, a district of Darfur, houses, goods, and
cattle are protected against thieves by certain fierce and dangerous
guardian-spirits called _damzogs_, which can be bought like watch
dogs. Under the guardianship of such a spiritual protector the sheep
and cows are left free to wander at will; for if any one were rash
enough to attempt to steal or kill one of the beasts, his hand with
the knife in it would remain sticking fast to the animal’s throat till
the owner came and caught the rascal. An Arab merchant, travelling in
Darfur, received from a friend the following account of the way to
procure one of these useful guardians. “At the time when I first began
to trade, my friend, I often heard that _damzogs_ could be bought and
sold, and that to procure one I must apply to the owner of a _damzog_,
and {40} discuss the price with him. When the bargain is concluded, it
is necessary to give a large gourd of milk to the seller, who takes it
to his house, where are his _damzogs_. On entering he salutes them,
and goes and hangs up his vase to a hook, saying,--‘One of my
friends--such a one--very rich, is in fear of robbers, and asks me to
supply him with a guardian. Will one of you go and live in his house?
There is plenty of milk there, for it is a house of blessing, and the
proof thereof is, that I bring you this _kara_ of milk.’ The _damzogs_
at first refuse to comply with the invitation. ‘No, no,’ say they,
‘not one of us will go.’ The master of the hut conjures them to comply
with his desires, saying, ‘Oh! let the one that is willing descend
into the _kara_.’ He then retires a little, and presently one of the
_damzogs_ is heard to flop into the milk, upon which he hastens and
claps upon the vase a cover made of date-leaves. Thus stopped up he
unhooks the _kara_, and hands it over to the buyer, who takes it away
and hangs it on the wall of his hut, and confides it to the care of a
slave or of a wife, who every morning comes and takes it, emptying out
the milk, washing it and replenishing it, and hanging it up again.
From that time forward the house is safe from theft or loss.” The
merchant’s informant, the Shereef Ahmed Bedawee, had himself purchased
one of these guardian spirits, who proved most vigilant and efficient
in the discharge of his duties; indeed his zeal was excessive, for he
not only killed several slaves who tried to rob his master, but did
summary execution on the Shereef’s own son, when the undutiful young
man essayed to pilfer from his father’s shop. This was too much for
the Shereef; he invited a party of friends to assist him in expelling
the inflexible guardian. They came armed with guns and a supply of
ammunition, and by raking the shop with repeated volleys of musketry
they at last succeeded in putting the spirit to flight.[40.1]
[Sidenote: The curses of smiths and potters.] Amongst the Nandi of
British East Africa nobody dares to steal anything from a smith; for
if he did, the smith would heat his furnace, and as he blew the
bellows to make {41} the flames roar he would curse the thief so that
he would die. And in like manner among these people, with whom the
potters are women, nobody dares to filch anything from a potter; for
next time she heated her wares the potter would curse him, saying,
“Burst like a pot, and may thy house become red,” and the thief so
cursed would die.[41.1] [Sidenote: Charms to protect property in
West Africa.] In Loango, when a man is about to absent himself from
home for a considerable time he protects his hut by placing a charm or
fetish before it, consisting perhaps of a branch with some bits of
broken pots or trash of that sort; and we are told that even the most
determined robber would not dare to cross a threshold defended by
these mysterious signs.[41.2] On the coast of Guinea fetishes are
sometimes inaugurated for the purpose of detecting and punishing
certain kinds of theft; and not only the culprit himself, but any
person who knows of his crime and fails to give information is liable
to be punished by the fetish. When such a fetish is instituted, the
whole community is warned of it, so that he who transgresses
thereafter does so at his peril. For example, a fetish was set up to
prevent sheep-stealing and the people received warning in the usual
way. Shortly afterwards a slave, who had not heard of the law, stole a
sheep and offered to divide it with a friend. The friend had often
before shared with him in similar enterprises, but the fear of the
fetish was now too strong for him; he informed on the thief, who was
brought to justice and died soon after of a lingering and painful
disease. Nobody in the country ever doubted but that the fetish had
killed him.[41.3] Among the Ewe-speaking tribes of the Slave Coast in
West Africa houses and household property are guarded by amulets
(_võ-sesao_), which derive their virtue from being consecrated or
belonging to the gods. The crops, also, in solitary glades of the
forest are left under the protection of such amulets, generally
fastened to long sticks in some conspicuous position; and so guarded
they are quite safe from pillage. By the side of the paths, too, may
be seen food and palm-wine {42} lying exposed for sale with nothing
but a charm to protect them; a few cowries placed on each article
indicate its price. Yet no native would dare to take the food or the
wine without depositing its price; for he dreads the unknown evil
which the god who owns the charm would bring upon him for
thieving.[42.1] In Sierra Leone charms, called _greegrees_, are often
placed in plantations to deter people from stealing, and it is said
that “a few old rags placed upon an orange tree will generally, though
not always, secure the fruit as effectually as if guarded by the
dragons of the Hesperides. When any person falls sick, if, at the
distance of several months, he recollects having stolen fruit, etc.,
or having taken it _softly_ as they term it, he immediately supposes
_wangka_ has caught him, and to get cured he must go or send to the
person whose property he had taken, and make to him whatever
recompense he demands.”[42.2]
[Sidenote: Charms to protect property in the West Indies.]
Superstitions of the same sort have been transported by the negroes to
the West Indies, where the name for magic is _obi_ and the magician is
called the _obeah_ man. There also, we are told, the stoutest-hearted
negroes “tremble at the very sight of the ragged bundle, the bottle or
the egg-shells, which are stuck in the thatch or hung over the door of
a hut, or upon the branch of a plantain tree, to deter marauders.…
When a negro is robbed of a fowl or a hog, he applies directly to the
_Obeah_-man or woman; it is then made known among his fellow blacks,
that _obi_ is set for the thief; and as soon as the latter hears the
dreadful news, his terrified imagination begins to work, no resource
is left but in the superior skill of some more eminent _Obeah_-man of
the neighbourhood, who may counteract the magical operations of the
other; but if no one can be found of higher rank and ability; or if,
after gaining such an ally, he should still fancy himself affected, he
presently falls into a decline, under the incessant horror of
impending calamities. The slightest painful sensation in the head, the
bowels, or {43} any other part, any casual loss or hurt, confirms his
apprehensions, and he believes himself the devoted victim of an
invisible and irresistible agency. Sleep, appetite and cheerfulness
forsake him; his strength decays, his disturbed imagination is haunted
without respite, his features wear the settled gloom of despondency:
dirt, or any other unwholesome substance, becomes his only food, he
contracts a morbid habit of body, and gradually sinks into the
grave.”[43.1] Superstition has killed him.
[Sidenote: Conclusion.] Similar evidence might doubtless be
multiplied, but the foregoing cases suffice to shew that among many
peoples and in many parts of the world superstitious fear has operated
as a powerful motive to deter men from stealing. If that is so, then
my second proposition may be regarded as proved, namely, that among
certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the
respect for private property and has thereby contributed to the
security of its enjoyment.
IV.
MARRIAGE
{44}
[Sidenote: Superstition as a prop of sexual morality.] I pass now
to my third proposition, which is, that among certain races and at
certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage,
and has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of
sexual morality both among the married and the unmarried. That this is
true will appear, I think, from the following instances.
[Sidenote: Adultery or fornication supposed by the Karens to blight
the crops.] Among the Karens of Burma “adultery, or fornication, is
supposed to have a powerful influence to injure the crops. Hence, if
there have been bad crops in a village for a year or two, and the
rains fail, the cause is attributed to secret sins of this character,
and they say the God of heaven and earth is angry with them on this
account; and all the villagers unite in making an offering to appease
him.” [Sidenote: Pig’s blood used to expiate the crime.] And when a
case of adultery or fornication has come to light, “the elders decide
that the transgressors must buy a hog, and kill it. Then the woman
takes one foot of the hog, and the man takes another, and they scrape
out furrows in the ground with each foot, which they fill with the
blood of the hog. They next scratch the ground with their hands and
pray: ‘God of heaven and earth, God of the mountains and hills, I have
destroyed the productiveness of the country. Do not be angry with me,
do not hate me; but have mercy on me, and compassionate me. Now I
repair the mountains, now I heal the hills, and the streams and the
lands. May there be no failure of crops, may there be no unsuccessful
labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let them be dissipated
to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy fruitful, thy rice
abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. {45} If we cultivate but
little, still grant that we may obtain a little.’ After each has
prayed thus, they return to the house and say they have repaired the
earth.”[45.1] Thus, according to the Karens adultery and fornication
are not simply moral offences which concern no one but the culprits
and their families: they physically affect the course of nature by
blighting the earth and destroying its fertility; hence they are
public crimes which threaten the very existence of the whole community
by cutting off its food supplies at the root. But the physical injury
which these offences do to the soil can be physically repaired by
saturating it with pig’s blood.
[Sidenote: Disastrous effects ascribed to sexual crime in Assam,
Bengal, and Annam.] Some of the tribes of Assam similarly trace a
connexion between the crops and the behaviour of the human sexes; for
they believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered, the
slightest incontinence would ruin all.[45.2] Again, the inhabitants
of the hills near Rajamahal in Bengal imagine that adultery,
undetected and unexpiated, causes the inhabitants of the village to be
visited by a plague or destroyed by tigers or other ravenous beasts.
To prevent these evils an adulteress generally makes a clean breast.
Her paramour has then to furnish a hog, and he and she are sprinkled
with its blood, which is supposed to wash away their sin and avert the
divine wrath. When a village suffers from plague or the ravages of
wild beasts, the people religiously believe that the calamity is a
punishment for secret immorality, and they resort to a curious form of
divination to discover the culprits, in order that the crime may be
duly expiated.[45.3] The Khasis of Assam are divided into a number of
clans which are exogamous, that is to say, no man may marry a woman of
his own clan. Should a man be found to cohabit with a woman of his own
clan, it is treated as incest and is believed to cause great
disasters; the people will be struck by lightning or killed by tigers,
the women will die in child-bed, and {46} so forth. The guilty couple
are taken by their clansmen to a priest and obliged to sacrifice a pig
and a goat; after that they are made outcasts, for their offence is
inexpiable.[46.1] The Orang Glai, a savage tribe in the mountains of
Annam, similarly suppose that illicit love is punished by tigers,
which devour the sinners. If a girl is found with child, her family
offers a feast of pigs, fowls, and wine to appease the offended
spirits.[46.2]
[Sidenote: Similar views held by the Battas of Sumatra.] The Battas
of Sumatra in like manner think that if an unmarried woman is with
child, she must be given in marriage at once, even to a man of lower
rank; for otherwise the people will be infested with tigers, and the
crops in the fields will not be abundant. They also believe that the
adultery of married women causes a plague of tigers, crocodiles, or
other wild beasts. The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast
the whole harvest, if the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics
and other calamities that affect the whole people are almost always
traced by them to incest, by which is to be understood any marriage
that conflicts with their customs.[46.3] The natives of Nias, an
island to the west of Sumatra, imagine that heavy rains are caused by
the tears of a god weeping at the commission of adultery or
fornication. The punishment for these crimes is death. The two
delinquents, man and woman, are buried in a narrow grave with only
their heads projecting above ground; then their throats are stabbed
with a spear or cut with a knife, and the grave is filled up.
Sometimes, it is said, they are buried alive. However, the judges are
not always incorruptible and the injured family not always
inaccessible to the allurement of gain; and pecuniary compensation is
sometimes accepted as a sufficient salve for wounded honour. But if
the wronged man is a chief, the culprits must surely die. As a
consequence, perhaps, of this severity, the crimes {47} of adultery
and fornication are said to be far less frequent in Nias than in
Europe.[47.1]
[Sidenote: Similar views among the tribes of Borneo.] Similar views
prevail among many tribes in Borneo. Thus in regard to the Sea Dyaks
we are told by Archdeacon Perham that “immorality among the unmarried
is supposed to bring a plague of rain upon the earth, as a punishment
inflicted by _Petara_. [Sidenote: Excessive rains thought by the
Dyaks to be caused by sexual offences.] It must be atoned for with
sacrifice and fine. In a function which is sometimes held to procure
fine weather, the excessive rain is represented as the result of the
immorality of two young people. _Petara_ is invoked, the offenders are
banished from their home, and the bad weather is said to cease. Every
district traversed by an adulterer is believed to be accursed of the
gods until the proper sacrifice has been offered.”[47.2] When rain
pours down day after day and the crops are rotting in the fields,
these Dyaks come to the conclusion that some people have been secretly
indulging in lusts of the flesh; so the elders lay their heads
together and adjudicate on all cases of incest and bigamy, and purify
[Sidenote: Blood of pigs shed to expiate incest and unchastity.] the
earth with the blood of pigs, which appears to these savages, as
sheep’s blood appeared to the ancient Hebrews, to possess the valuable
property of atoning for moral guilt. Not long ago the offenders, whose
lewdness had thus brought the whole country into danger, would have
been punished with death or at least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his
first cousin unless he first performs a special ceremony called
_bergaput_ to avert evil consequences from the land. The couple repair
to the water-side, fill a small pitcher with their personal ornaments,
and sink it in the river; or instead of a jar they fling a chopper and
a plate into the water. A pig {48} is then sacrificed on the bank, and
its carcase, drained of blood, is thrown in after the jar. Next the
pair are pushed into the water by their friends and ordered to bathe
together. Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with pig’s blood, and
the couple perambulate the country and the villages round about,
sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are free to marry.
This is done, we are told, for the sake of the whole country, in order
that the rice may not be blasted by the marriage of cousins.[48.1]
Again, we are informed that the Sibuyaus, a Dyak tribe of Sarawak, are
very careful of the honour of their daughters, because they imagine
that if an unmarried girl is found to be with child it is offensive to
the higher powers, who, instead of always chastising the culprits,
punish the tribe by visiting its members with misfortunes. Hence when
such a crime is detected they fine the lovers and sacrifice a pig to
appease the angry powers and to avert the sickness or other calamities
that might follow. Further, they inflict fines on the families of the
couple for any severe accident or death by drowning that may have
happened at any time within a month before the religious atonement was
made; for they regard the families of the culprits as responsible for
these mishaps. The fines imposed for serious or fatal accidents are
heavy; for simple wounds they are lighter. With the fear of these
fines before their eyes parents keep a watchful eye on the conduct of
their daughters. Among the Dyaks of the Batang Lupar river the
chastity of the unmarried girls is not so strictly guarded; but in
respectable families, when a daughter proves frail, they sacrifice a
pig and sprinkle its blood on the doors to wash away the sin.[48.2]
The Hill Dyaks of Borneo abhor incest and do not allow the marriage
even of cousins. In 1846 the Baddat Dyaks complained to Mr. Hugh Low
that one of their chiefs had disturbed the peace and prosperity of the
village by marrying his own granddaughter. Since that disastrous
event, they said, no bright day had blessed their territory; rain and
darkness alone prevailed, and unless the plague-spot were {49}
removed, the tribe would soon be ruined. The old sinner was degraded
from office, but apparently allowed to retain his wife; and the
domestic brawls between this ill-assorted couple gave much pain to the
virtuous villagers.[49.1]
[Sidenote: Incest punished with death by the pagan tribes of
Borneo.] Among the pagan tribes of Borneo in general, but of Sarawak
in particular, “almost all offences are punished by fines only. Of the
few offences which are felt to require a heavier punishment, the one
most seriously regarded is incest. For this offence, which is held to
bring grave peril to the whole house, especially the danger of
starvation through failure of the _padi_ crop, two punishments have
been customary. If the guilt of the culprits is perfectly clear, they
are taken to some open spot on the river-bank at some distance from
the house. There they are thrown together upon the ground and a
sharpened bamboo stake is driven through their bodies, so that they
remain pinned to the earth. The bamboo, taking root and growing
luxuriantly on this spot, remains as a warning to all who pass by;
and, needless to say, the spot is looked on with horror and shunned by
all men. The other method of punishment is to shut up the offenders in
a strong wicker cage and to throw them into the river. This method is
resorted to as a substitute for the former one, owing to the
difficulty of getting any one to play the part of executioner and to
drive in the stake, for this involves the shedding of the blood of the
community. The kind of incest most commonly committed is the
connection of a man with an adopted daughter, and (possibly on account
of this frequency) this is the kind which is most strongly
reprobated.… The punishment of the incestuous couple does not suffice
to ward off the danger brought by them upon the community. The
household must be purified with the blood of pigs and fowls; the
animals used are the property of the offenders or of their family; and
in this way a fine is imposed. When any calamity threatens or falls
upon a house, especially a great rising of the river which threatens
to sweep away the house or the tombs of the household, the Kayans are
led to suspect that incestuous intercourse in their own or in
neighbouring houses has taken place; and they look round for evidences
of it, and sometimes detect a case which otherwise would {50} have
remained hidden. It seems probable that there is some intimate
relation between this belief and the second of the two modes of
punishment described above; but we have no direct evidence of such
connection. All the other peoples also, except the Punans, punish
incest with death. Among the Sea Dyaks the most common form of incest
is that between a youth and his aunt, and this is regarded at least as
seriously as any other form.”[50.1]
[Sidenote: Evil and confusion supposed by the Dyaks to be wrought by
fornication.] Nor is it the heinous crime of incest alone which in
the opinion of the Sea Dyaks endangers the whole community. The same
effect is supposed to follow whenever an unmarried woman is found with
child and cannot or will not name her seducer. “The greatest
disgrace,” we are told, “is attached to a woman found in a state of
pregnancy, without being able to name her husband; and cases of
self-poisoning, to avoid the shame, are not of unusual occurrence. If
one be found in this state, a fine must be paid of pigs and other
things. Few even of the chiefs will come forward without incurring
considerable responsibility. A pig is killed, which nominally becomes
the father, for want, it is supposed, of another and better one. Then
the surrounding neighbours have to be furnished with a share of the
fine to banish the _Jabu_, which exists after such an event. If the
fine be not forthcoming, the woman dare not move out of her room, for
fear of being molested, as she is supposed to have brought evil
(_kudi_) and confusion upon the inhabitants and their
belongings.”[50.2]
[Sidenote: Similar beliefs and customs among the tribes of Dutch
Borneo.] The foregoing accounts refer especially to the tribes of
Borneo under British rule; but similar ideas and customs prevail among
the kindred tribes of Dutch Borneo. Thus the Kayans or Bahaus in the
interior of the island believe that adultery is punished by the
spirits, who visit the whole tribe with failure of the crops and other
misfortunes. Hence in order to avert these evil consequences from the
innocent members of the tribe, the two culprits, with all their
possessions, are first placed on a gravel bank in the middle of the
river, in order to isolate or, in electrical {51} language, to
insulate them and so prevent the moral or rather physical infection
from spreading. Then pigs and fowls are killed, and with the blood
priestesses smear the property of the guilty pair in order to
disinfect it. Finally, the two are placed on a raft, with sixteen
eggs, and allowed to drift down stream. They may save themselves by
plunging into the water and swimming ashore; but this is perhaps a
mitigation of an older sentence of death by drowning, for young people
still shower long grass stalks, representing spears, at the shamefaced
and dripping couple.[51.1] Certain it is, that some Dyak tribes used
to punish incest by fastening the man and woman in separate baskets
laden with stones and drowning them in the river. By incest they
understood the cohabitation of parents with children, of brothers with
sisters, and of uncles and aunts with nieces and nephews. A Dutch
resident had much difficulty in saving the life of an uncle and niece
who had married each other; finally he procured their banishment to a
distant part of Borneo.[51.2] The Blu-u Kayans, another tribe in the
interior of Borneo, believe that an intrigue between an unmarried pair
is punished by the spirits with failure of the harvest, of the
fishing, and of the hunt. Hence the delinquents have to appease the
wrath of the spirits by sacrificing a pig and a certain quantity of
rice.[51.3] In Pasir, a district of Eastern Borneo, incest is thought
to bring dearth, epidemics, and all sorts of evils on the land.[51.4]
In the island of Ceram a man convicted of unchastity has to smear
every house in the village with the blood of a pig and a fowl: this is
supposed to wipe out his guilt and ward off misfortunes from the
village.[51.5]
[Sidenote: Failure of the crops and other disasters thought to be
caused by incest in Celebes.] When the harvest fails in Southern
Celebes, the Macassars and Bugineese regard it as a sure sign that
incest has been committed and that the spirits are angry. In the years
1877 and 1878 it happened that the west monsoon did not {52} blow and
that the rice crop in consequence came to nothing; moreover many
buffaloes died of a murrain. At the same time there was in the gaol at
Takalar a prisoner, who had been formerly accused of incest. Some of
the people of his district begged the Dutch governor to give the
criminal up to them, for according to the general opinion the plagues
would never cease till the guilty man had received the punishment he
deserved. All the governor’s powers of persuasion were needed to
induce the petitioners to return quietly to their villages; and when
the prisoner, having served his time, was released shortly afterwards,
he was, at his own request, given an opportunity of sailing away to
another land, as he no longer felt safe in his own country.[52.1]
[Sidenote: Disastrous effects supposed to follow from shedding the
blood of incestuous couples on the ground.] Even when the incestuous
couple has been brought to justice, their blood may not be shed; for
the people think that, were the ground to be polluted by the blood of
such criminals, the rivers would dry up and the supply of fish would
run short, the harvest and the produce of the gardens would miscarry,
edible fruits would fail, sickness would be rife among cattle and
horses, civil strife would break out, and the country would suffer
from other widespread calamities. Hence the punishment of the guilty
is such as to avoid the spilling of their blood: usually they are tied
up in a sack and thrown into the sea to drown. Yet they get on their
journey to eternity the necessary provisions, consisting of a bag of
rice, salt, dried fish, coco-nuts, and other things, among which three
quids of betel are not forgotten.[52.2] We can now perhaps understand
why the Romans used to sew up a parricide in a sack with a dog, a
cock, a viper, and an ape for company, and fling him into the sea.
They probably feared to defile the soil of Italy by spilling upon it
the blood of such a miscreant.[52.3] Amongst the Tomori of Central
Celebes {53} a person guilty of incest is throttled; no drop of his
blood may fall on the ground, for if it did, the rice would never grow
again. The union of uncle with niece is regarded by these people as
incest, but it can be expiated by an offering. A garment of the man
and one of the woman are laid on a copper vessel; the blood of a
sacrificed animal, either a goat or a fowl, is allowed to drip on the
garments, and then the vessel with its contents is set floating down
the river.[53.1] Among the Tololaki, another tribe of Central
Celebes, persons who have defiled themselves with incest are shut up
in a basket and drowned. No drop of their blood may be spilt on the
ground, for that would hinder the earth from ever bearing fruit
again.[53.2] Among the Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes in
general the penalty for incest, that is for the sexual intercourse of
parents with children or of brothers with sisters, is death. But
whereas the death-sentence for adultery is executed with a spear or a
sword, the death-sentence for incest is usually executed among the
inland tribes by clubbing or throttling; for were the blood of the
culprits to drip on the ground, the earth would be rendered barren.
The people on the coast put the guilty pair in a basket, weight it
with stones, and fling it into the sea. This prescribed manner of
putting the incestuous to death, we are informed, makes the execution
very grievous. However, the writers who furnish us with these
particulars and who have lived among the people on terms of intimacy
for many years, add that “incest seldom occurs, or rather the cases
that come to light are very few.”[53.3] In some districts of Central
Celebes, the marriage of cousins, provided they are children of two
sisters, is forbidden under pain of death; the people think that such
an alliance would anger the spirits, and that the rice and maize
harvests would fail. Strictly speaking, two such cousins who have
committed the {54} offence should be tied together, weighted with
stones, and thrown into water to drown. In practice, however, the
culprits are spared and their sin expiated by shedding the blood of a
buffalo or a goat. The blood is mixed with water and sprinkled on the
rice-fields or poured on the maize-fields, no doubt in order to
appease the angry spirits and restore its fertility to the tilled
land. The natives of these districts believe that were a brother and
sister to commit incest, the ground on which the tribe dwells would be
swallowed up. If such a crime takes place, the guilty pair are tied
together, their feet weighted with stones, and thrown into the
sea.[54.1]
[Sidenote: Excessive rains, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions
supposed to be produced by incest in Halmahera.] When it rains in
torrents, the Galelareese of Halmahera, another large East Indian
island, say that brother and sister, or father and daughter, or in
short some near kinsfolk are having illicit relations with each other,
and that every human being must be informed of it, for then only will
the rain cease to descend. The superstition has repeatedly caused
blood relations to be accused, rightly or wrongly, of incest. Further,
the people think that alarming natural phenomena, such as a violent
earthquake or the eruption of a volcano, are caused by crimes of the
same sort. Persons charged with such offences are brought to Ternate;
it is said that formerly they were often drowned on the way or, on
being haled thither, were condemned to be thrown into the
volcano.[54.2] In the Banggai Archipelago, to the east of Celebes,
earthquakes are explained as punishments inflicted by evil spirits for
indulgence in illicit love.[54.3]
[Sidenote: Breaches of sexual morality thought to blight the fruits
of the earth and otherwise disturb the course of nature in Africa.]
In some parts of Africa, also, it is believed that breaches of sexual
morality disturb the course of nature, particularly by blighting the
fruits of the earth; and probably such views {55} are much more widely
diffused in that continent than the scanty and fragmentary evidence at
our disposal might lead us to suppose. Thus, the negroes of Loango, in
West Africa, imagine that the commerce of a man with an immature girl
is punished by God with drought and consequent famine until the
transgressors expiate their transgression by dancing naked before the
king and an assembly of the people, who throw hot gravel and bits of
glass at the pair as they run the gauntlet. The rains in that country
should fall in September, but in 1898 there was a long drought, and
when the month of December had nearly passed, the sun-scorched stocks
of the fruitless Indian corn shook their rustling leaves in the wind,
the beans lay shrivelled and black on the ruddy soil, and the shoots
of the sweet potato had flowered and withered long ago. The people
cried out against their rulers for neglecting their duty to the
primeval powers of the earth; the priests of the sacred groves had
recourse to divination and discovered that God was angry with the land
on account of the immorality of certain persons unknown, who were not
observing the traditions and laws of their God and country. The feeble
old king had fled, but the slave who acted as regent in his room sent
word to the chiefs that there were people in their towns who were the
cause of God’s wrath. So every chief called his subjects together and
caused enquiries to be made, and then it was discovered that three
girls had broken the customs of their country; for they were with
child before they had passed through what is called the paint-house,
that is, before they had been painted red and secluded for a season in
token that they had attained to the age of puberty. The people were
incensed and endeavoured to punish or even kill the three girls; and
the English writer who has recorded the case has thought it worth
while to add that on the very morning when the culprits were brought
before the magistrate rain fell.[55.1] Amongst the Bavili of Loango,
who are divided into totemic clans, no man is allowed to marry a woman
of his mother’s clan; and God is {56} believed to punish a breach of
this marriage law by withholding the rains in their due season.[56.1]
Similar notions of the blighting influence of sexual crime appear to
be entertained by the Nandi of British East Africa; for we are told
that when a warrior has got a girl with child, she “is punished by
being put in Coventry, none of her girl friends being allowed to speak
to or look at her until after the child is born and buried.
[Sidenote: Sexual purity required of those who handle corn or enter a
granary.] She is also regarded with contempt for the rest of her life
and may never look inside a granary for fear of spoiling the
corn.”[56.2] Among the Basutos in like manner “while the corn is
exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it. If
the aid of a man in this state is necessary for carrying home the
harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are filled, and
only approaches to place them upon the draught oxen. He withdraws as
soon as the load is deposited at the dwelling, and under no pretext
can he assist in pouring the corn into the basket in which it is
preserved.”[56.3] The nature of the defilement which thus
disqualifies a man from handling the corn is not mentioned, but we may
conjecture that unchastity would fall under this general head. For
amongst the Basutos after a child is born a fresh fire has to be
kindled in the dwelling by the friction of wood, and this must be done
by a young man of chaste habits; it is believed that an untimely death
awaits him who should dare to discharge this holy office after having
lost his innocence.[56.4] In Morocco whoever enters a granary must
first remove his slippers and must be sexually clean. Were an unclean
person to enter, the people believe not only that the grain would lose
its blessed influence (_baraka_), but that he himself would fall ill.
A Berber told Dr. Westermarck {57} that he had suffered from painful
boils through entering a granary in a state of uncleanness.[57.1] The
same rule applies in Morocco to a vegetable garden. Only the sexually
clean may enter it, otherwise both the vegetables and the person
entering would be the worse for it.[57.2]
[Sidenote: Incest supposed by the Dinkas to be punished with
sterility.] The Dinkas of the Upper Nile believe that incest angers
the ancestral spirits (_jok_), who punish the girl by making her
barren. Even should she marry, she will have no children until she has
confessed her sin, and atonement has been made for it. Her lover must
provide a bullock for sacrifice. His father kills the animal, and the
girl’s father takes some of the contents of the large intestine and
smears it on his daughter’s abdomen and on that of her guilty partner.
Thus the taint of sin is removed, and the woman is rendered capable of
bearing children.[57.3] The Maloulekes and Hlengoues, two tribes of
Southern Africa to the north of the Thonga, think that if a young man
gets a girl, who is not his wife, with child, people will die in the
village. Hence, when the girl’s pregnancy is discovered, the lover has
to provide a girl by way of fine.[57.4]
[Sidenote: Incest enjoined in certain cases as a mode of ensuring
good luck.] It is very remarkable, however, that among tribes which
strongly disapprove of incestuous relations in general, the act of
incest is nevertheless positively enjoined in certain circumstances as
a mode of ensuring good luck. Thus in the Thonga tribe of
South-Eastern Africa, round about Delagoa Bay, there is a class of men
who devote themselves to the business of hunting hippopotamuses on the
rivers. In the pursuit of their trade they observe a number of curious
superstitions which have been handed down among them for generations
from father to son. For example, they inoculate themselves with a
certain drug which is supposed to endow them with such a power over
the hippopotamuses that when the hunter wounds one of them the animal
cannot go far away and the man can track and {58} despatch it. During
the day the hunter fishes in the river, keeping his eye all the time
on the unwieldy monsters disporting themselves in the water or
lumbering through the thickets on the banks. [Sidenote: Incest of
Thonga hippopotamus hunter with his daughter.] “When he sees that the
propitious season has come and when he is ready to undertake a hunting
expedition of one month, he first calls his own daughter to his hut
and has sexual relations with her. This incestuous act, which is
strongly taboo in ordinary life, has made of him a ‘murderer’: he has
killed something at home; he has acquired the courage for doing great
deeds on the river. Henceforth he will have no sexual relations with
his wives during the whole campaign. On the same night, immediately
after the act, he starts with his sons; they close the drift where the
beasts leave the river by putting a canoe across the track.” Meantime
the hippopotamuses are browsing in the forest or trampling down the
crops of the fields in their clumsy fashion. As they come trooping
back to the river they are stopped by the canoe in the path, and while
they are examining the strange obstacle, the hunters, lying in ambush,
dart their spears into the thick hides of the beasts. The handles of
the spears are loosely attached to the blades, but connected with them
by a long string, so that when the wounded monster, crashing
irresistibly in his rage through the thicket, plunges into the river
and sinks out of sight in the water, the handle of the spear becomes
detached from the blade and floats like a buoy on the surface, shewing
the direction taken by the beast. As soon as the hunter has thrown his
spear he runs home to tell his wife. She must at once shut herself up
in the hut and remain perfectly quiet, without eating or drinking or
crushing her mealies; for were she to do any of these things, the
wounded hippopotamus would shew fight and might kill her husband,
whereas if she keeps quiet, the animal will be quiet too. All the
hunters in the village are then called up, and embarking in a canoe,
paddle away after their prey, whose retreat is marked by the bobbing
of the spear-handle on the surface of the water and the occasional
emergence of a great flat snout to breathe. When the beast has been
despatched, and the carcase landed on the bank, it is turned on its
back and the hunter creeps between its legs {59} from behind and along
its belly and chest as far as the mouth. Then he goes away. By this
ceremony the man is supposed to take upon himself the defilement,
possibly the nature, of the animal, so that in future when he meets
hippopotamuses the animals will not perceive him to be a man but will
mistake him for an hippopotamus; and thus he will be able to slaughter
the deluded creatures with impunity.[59.1]
[Sidenote: Suggested explanation of the Thonga practice.] So far as
we can guess at the meaning of these curious rites, their general
intention seems to be to identify the hunter and his family with the
game which he hunts in order to give him full power over the animals.
This intention is manifested in the behaviour of the hunter’s wife
while the hippopotamus is wounded; she so far identifies herself with
the animal that whatever she does he is supposed to do. If she goes
about her work briskly and refreshes herself with food and drink, the
hippopotamus also will be brisk and refreshed, and will give warm work
to his pursuers; whereas if she keeps perfectly still, the animal will
make no resistance but follow the hunters like a sheep to the
slaughter. Perhaps the same train of thought partially explains the
incest which the hunter has to commit with his own daughter before he
sets out for the chase. Can it be that by this violence done to his
offspring he is supposed to acquire power over the beast? It may be
so, yet it is difficult to see why the violence should take this
particular form, and why, on the principles of homoeopathic or
imitative magic, a pretence of wounding and killing the girl with a
spear would not have served his turn better.
[Sidenote: Incest prescribed among the Antambahoaka of Madagascar.]
Another tribe of savages who imagine that in certain circumstances
incest is the road to fortune are the Antambahoaka of South-Eastern
Madagascar. Before setting out for the chase or the fishing or war or
other enterprise, every Antambahoaka arranges to have sexual relations
with his sister or with his nearest female relation; he thinks in this
way to ensure the success of his expedition.[59.2] What the {60}
exact train of thought may be which prompts these exceptional and
deliberate aberrations from the usual rules of morality, it is
difficult to understand; I mention the facts because they apparently
contradict the ordinary savage view of conduct, and so far help us to
perceive how little as yet we really know about the inmost workings of
the savage mind.
[Sidenote: Similar beliefs as to the disastrous effect of sexual
crimes among the civilized peoples of antiquity.] Leaving out of
account these remarkable and as yet not fully explained exceptions to
the rule,[60.1] we may say generally that among many savage races
breaches of the marriage laws are believed to draw down on the
community public calamities of the most serious character, and that in
particular they are thought to blast the fruits of the earth through
excessive rain or excessive drought. Traces of similar beliefs may
perhaps be detected among the civilized races of antiquity.
[Sidenote: The Hebrews.] Thus among the Hebrews we read how Job,
passionately protesting his innocence before God, declares that he is
no adulterer; “For that,” says he, “were an heinous crime; yea it were
an iniquity to be punished by the judges: for it is a fire that
consumeth unto Destruction, and would root out all mine
increase.”[60.2] In this passage the Hebrew word translated
“increase” commonly means “the produce of the earth”;[60.3] and if we
give the word its usual sense here, then Job affirms adultery to be
destructive of the fruits of the ground, which is precisely what many
savages still believe. This interpretation of his words is strongly
confirmed by two narratives in Genesis, where we read how Sarah,
Abraham’s {61} wife, was taken by a king into his harem, and how
thereafter God visited the king and his household with great plagues,
especially by closing up the wombs of the king’s wife and his
maid-servants so that they bare no children. It was not till the king
had discovered and confessed his sin, and Abraham had prayed God to
forgive him, that the king’s women again became fruitful.[61.1] These
narratives seem to imply that adultery, even when it is committed in
ignorance, is a cause of plague and especially of sterility among
women. Again, in Leviticus, after a long list of sexual crimes, we
read:[61.2] “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in
all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before you:
and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof
upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants.” This passage
seems to imply that the land itself was somehow physically affected by
sexual transgressions in such a way that it could no longer support
the inhabitants. [Sidenote: The Greeks.] Apparently the ancient
Greeks entertained a similar view of the wasting effect of incest; for
according to Sophocles the land of Thebes suffered from blight,
pestilence, and the sterility both of women and cattle under the reign
of Oedipus, who had unwittingly slain his father and married his
mother; the country was emptied of its inhabitants, and the Delphic
oracle declared that the only way to restore prosperity to it was to
banish the sinner.[61.3] No doubt the poet and his hearers set down
these public calamities in part to the guilt of parricide which rested
on Oedipus; but probably they also laid much of the evil at the door
of the incest which he had committed with his mother. [Sidenote: The
Romans.] In the reign of the emperor Claudius a Roman noble was
accused of incest with his sister. He committed suicide, his sister
was banished, and the emperor ordered that certain ancient ceremonies
derived from the laws of King Servius Tullius should be performed, and
that expiation should be made by the pontiffs at the sacred grove of
Diana.[61.4] As Diana appears to have been a goddess of fertility in
general and of the {62} fruitfulness of women in particular,[62.1]
the expiation for incest offered at her sanctuary may perhaps be
accepted as evidence that the Romans, like other peoples, attributed
to sexual immorality a tendency to blast the fruits both of the earth
and of the womb.
[Sidenote: Blighting effect attributed to incest by the ancient
Irish.] According to an ancient Irish legend Munster was afflicted in
the third century of our era with a failure of the crops and other
misfortunes. When the nobles enquired into the matter, they learned
that these calamities were the result of an incest which the king had
committed with his sister. In order to put an end to the evil they
demanded of the king his two sons, the fruit of this unholy union,
that they might consume them with fire and cast their ashes into the
running stream.[62.2] Again, Irish legend relates that Cairbre Musc
“had two sons by his sister. Her name was Duben, and theirs were Corc
and Cormac respectively. The children were twins, and the story of
their birth is no less strange than that of Dylan and Llew, for one of
them was found to have nipped off his brother’s ears before his birth.
The crime of their parents caused the crops to fail, which, according
to the idea prevalent in ancient Ireland, was its natural result, and
Cairbre was obliged to confess his guilt to the nobles of his realm,
who, when the children were born, ordered them to be burnt, that the
incest might not remain in the land. ‘Give me,’ said Cairbre’s druid,
‘that _Corc_[62.3] there, that I may place him outside Erinn, so that
the incest may not be within it.’ Corc was given to the druid, and the
latter, with his wife, whose name was Bói, took him to an island.
They had a white cow with red ears, and an ablution was performed by
them every morning on Corc, placed on the cow’s back; so in a year’s
time to the day the cow sprang away from them into the sea, and she
became a rock in it; to wit, the heathenism of the boy had entered
into her. _Bó Búi_, or Bói’s Cow, is the name of the rock, and
_Inis Búi_, or Bói’s Isle, that of the island. The boy was {63}
afterwards brought back into Erinn. Such is the story how Corc was
purged of the virulence of his original sin, and the scene is one of
the three islets called the Bull, the Cow and the Calf, not far from
Dursey Island, in the gulf called Kenmare River.”[63.1]
[Sidenote: Thus sexual irregularities are often supposed to endanger
the whole community.] Thus it appears that in the opinion of many
peoples sexual irregularities, whether of the married or the
unmarried, are not merely moral offences which affect only the few
persons immediately concerned; they are believed to involve the whole
people in danger and disaster either directly by a sort of magical
influence or indirectly by rousing the wrath of gods to whom these
acts are offensive. Nay they are often supposed to strike a blow at
the very existence of the community by blighting the fruits of the
earth and thereby cutting off the food supply. Wherever these
superstitions prevail, it is obvious that public opinion and public
justice will treat sexual offences with far greater severity than is
meted out to them by peoples who, like most civilized nations, regard
such misdemeanours as matters of private rather than of public
concern, as sins rather than crimes, which may perhaps affect the
eternal welfare of the individual sinner in a life hereafter, but
which do not in any way imperil the temporal welfare of the innocent
community as a whole. [Sidenote: Hence the extreme rigour with which
sexual crimes have been punished by many races.] And conversely,
wherever we find that incest, adultery, and fornication are treated by
the community with extreme rigour, we may reasonably infer that the
original motive for such treatment was superstition; in other words,
that wherever a tribe or nation, not content with leaving these
transgressions to be avenged by the injured parties, has itself
punished them with exceptional severity, the reason for doing so has
probably been a belief that the effect of all such delinquencies is to
disturb the course of nature and thereby to endanger the whole people,
who accordingly must protect themselves by effectually disarming and,
if necessary, exterminating the delinquents. [Sidenote: Ancient
codes.] This may explain, for example, why the Indian Laws of Manu
decreed that an adulteress should be devoured by dogs in a public
place, and that an adulterer should be roasted to death on a red-hot
iron {64} bed;[64.1] why the Babylonian code of Hammurabi sentenced
an adulterous couple to be strangled and cast into the river; and why
the same code punished incest with a mother by burning both the
culprits.[64.2] On the same supposition we can understand the
severity of the punishments meted out to certain sexual offences by
the Mosaic law. Thus, for example, under it an adulteress and her
paramour were sentenced to death:[64.3] a woman who at marriage was
found not to be a maid was stoned:[64.4] the unchaste daughter of a
priest was burned with fire;[64.5] and if a man married a woman and
her daughter, he and they were in like manner doomed to the
flames.[64.6]
[Sidenote: Rigorous penalties inflicted in Africa.] Many African
tribes repress sexual crimes by rigorous penalties, or did so until
their moral standard was modified by contact with Europeans.
[Sidenote: The Baganda, their punishments for breaches of sexual
morality.] Among the Baganda of Central Africa, “though death was
usually the punishment inflicted for adultery, an offender’s life
would sometimes be spared, and he be fined two women, if he were able
to pay them; the culprit was, however, maimed; he lost a limb, or had
an eye gouged out, and showed by his maimed condition that he had been
guilty of a crime. A slave taken in adultery with one of his master’s
wives was invariably put to death. Women were compelled by torture to
name their seducers; if the accused man denied the charge, the woman
was asked to describe some personal peculiarity of his, or some mark
on his body which could be identified; then if the man was found to
have the peculiarity, he was either fined or put to death. In order to
arrive at the truth, a man who denied a charge made against him was
sometimes stretched out with his arms and feet tied to stakes driven
firmly into the ground, a piece of barkcloth was then fastened about
his private parts, and set smouldering. As soon as the fire reached
his body, the pain became too great {65} to bear, and the man would
own himself guilty in order to be released from torture. He would then
be either killed or fined. An adulterer was called a murderer
(_musi_), because he was looked upon as a man who deliberately set
about to compass the death of the woman’s husband; either directly,
for he would go armed to visit the woman, and if he was disturbed, he
would not hesitate to strike; or indirectly, by offending the
fetiches. Men knew that, if they were caught in the act of adultery,
the penalty would be death, unless they were related to the person
wronged, in which case the latter might be willing to accept a fine,
and might content himself with mutilating the culprit. The worst
consequence to the injured husband was the anger of his fetiches and
gods, whose custodian was his wife. By her action the wife had
involved her husband in their displeasure; he was thus left exposed to
the malice of any enemy, and his danger was increased in the time of
war, because the gods had withdrawn their protection from him.”[65.1]
Thus among the Baganda adultery was regarded not simply as a civil
offence but as a sin, which brought down the anger of the gods, not as
we might expect, on the adulterer, but on the injured husband.
Further, the Baganda were divided into a number of totemic clans, and
members of any one clan were strictly prohibited from marrying or
having sexual relations with each other. “Sexual intercourse with a
member of the same clan (_kive_), or with a woman of the mother’s
clan, was punished by the death of both parties, because they were
considered to have brought the god’s displeasure on the whole
clan.”[65.2]
[Sidenote: Fornication, adultery, and incest severely punished by
other African tribes.] Among the Basoga, who border on the Baganda to
the east, when a man got a virgin with child, the guilty couple used
to be dragged off to the River Ntakwe; there stones were tied to their
ankles and legs, and, along with a sacrificial sheep, they were thrown
into the water and drowned. However, this rigorous penalty was
abolished and a fine substituted before the country came under British
rule.[65.3] Among the Kavirondo, who border on the Basoga to the {66}
east, “until quite recently adultery on the part of a wife was
punished with death, and death equally was meted out to young men and
girls who were found guilty of fornication. It was thought a shameful
thing if a girl was not found to be a virgin on her wedding
day.”[66.1] Among the Nandi, who border on the Kavirondo to the
north-east, “incest, intercourse with a step-mother, step-daughter,
cousin or other near relation, is punished by what is known as
_injoket_. A crowd of people assemble outside the house of the
culprit, who is dragged out, and the punishment is inflicted by the
women, all of whom, both young and old, strip for the occasion. The
man is flogged, his houses and crops destroyed, and some of his stock
confiscated.”[66.2] Among the Barea, a tribe on the borders of
Abyssinia, when a single woman, whether maid or widow, is found with
child, she is strangled by her father or brother, and the same
punishment is inflicted on her seducer; the child of their unlawful
union is stabbed. This custom is rigorously carried out, except when
the seducer is a noble and his paramour a vassal; in that case both
are spared, but the infant is killed.[66.3] Among the Beni Amer,
another tribe of the same region, an unmarried girl found pregnant is
put to death by her own brother, whatever her rank, and the seducer is
killed by his own brother; the child also is slain. But the law is not
so severe on a widow or divorced wife who is detected in a slip; her
seducer has only to pay a fine; but the child is buried alive. The
Beni Amer will not suffer a bastard to live.[66.4] Among the Anyanja
of British Central Africa adultery was punished by drowning and
shooting. If one of the culprits was a chief’s wife, she was tied to
her paramour, and the pair were then thrown into a river to drown or
left in the open space of the village to die of hunger and exposure. A
man who had committed a rape was bound, weighted with stones, and cast
into the lake.[66.5] Among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, {67} when
a husband detected his wife in the act of adultery, he killed both her
and her partner in guilt. For such execution he might not be indicted
for murder or manslaughter. He would merely return the blood-stained
spear to the woman’s father, who by his words in the marriage
ceremony, “You shall spear the man who lusts after your wife,” was
estopped from taking vengeance for the death of his daughter. If the
husband spared the erring couple and the wife was again taken in
adultery, the villagers themselves decreed the punishment. The
unfaithful wife and her lover were dragged outside the village and
impaled on sharp stakes amid the taunts and jeers of the bystanders,
who only desisted from their mockery when death had stilled the
writhing agony of the sufferers.[67.1] “The Hottentots,” says an old
writer, “allow not marriages between first or second cousins. They
have a traditionary law, which ordains, that both man and woman, so
near to each other in blood, who shall be convicted of joining
together either in marriage or fornication, shall be cudgel’d to
death. This law, they say, has prevail’d through all the generations
of ’em; and that they execute it at once, upon a conviction, without
any regard to wealth, power or affinity.”[67.2]
[Sidenote: Incest and adultery severely punished in the East
Indies.] We have seen that in the East Indies sexual crimes,
particularly incest, adultery, and fornication, are often viewed with
grave displeasure because they are believed to draw down the wrath of
the higher powers on the whole community. Hence it is natural that
such offences should be treated as high treason and the offenders
punished with death. A common punishment is drowning. For example,
when incest between a parent and a child or between a brother and a
sister has been detected among the Kubus, a primitive aboriginal tribe
of Sumatra, the culprits are enclosed in a large fish-trap, made of
rattan or bamboo, and sunk in a deep pool of the river. However, they
are not pinioned; nay, they are even furnished with a tin knife, and
{68} if they can cut their way out of the trap, rise through the
bubbling water to the surface, and swim ashore, they are allowed to
live.[68.1] In the island of Bali incest and adultery are punished by
drowning; the criminals are sewed up in a sack half-filled with stones
and rice and cast into the sea. A like doom is incurred by a woman who
marries a man of a lower caste; but sometimes she dies a more dreadful
death, being burnt alive. [Sidenote: Modes of execution adopted which
avoid the shedding of blood.] Both modes of execution may be adopted
in order to avoid shedding the blood of the sinners; for in Bali, the
ordinary way of despatching a criminal is to stab him to the heart
with a creese (kris) or crooked Malay sword.[68.2] In the island of
Celebes, as we saw, the blood of persons who have been guilty of
certain sexual crimes is believed to blast the ground on which it
falls;[68.3] so that it is natural in their case to resort to a
bloodless mode of execution such as drowning or burning. In Mamoedjoe,
a district on the west coast of Celebes, the incest of a father with
his daughter or of a brother with his sister is punished by binding
the culprits hand and foot, weighting them with stones, and flinging
them into the sea.[68.4] Among the Bugineese of Southern Celebes
persons of princely rank who have committed this crime are placed on a
raft of bamboos and set floating away out to sea.[68.5] [Sidenote:
Persons guilty of incest buried alive.] In Semendo, a district of
Sumatra, the punishment for incest and murder used to be to bury the
criminals alive. Before they were led to their doom, it was customary
for the villagers to feast them, every family killing a fowl for the
purpose. Then the whole population escorted the culprits to their
grave outside the village and saw the earth shovelled in upon them. In
the year 1864, at the village of Tandjong Imam, this doom was executed
on a man and his deceased wife’s sister, with whom he had been
detected in an intrigue. “Great was my emotion and indignation,” said
the humane Dutch governor, {69} “when I stood by the grave of these
poor wretches along with the unworthy chiefs who had sat on the bench
of justice during the enforced absence of Pangeran Anom and pronounced
this sentence. I told them in plain language that judges who
pronounced such a sentence of death on grounds so trivial (the request
of the family concerned) deserved themselves to undergo the same
punishment.” The Dutch Government has since issued stringent orders
that no one henceforth is to be buried alive, and has threatened with
death any person who shall dare to disregard its orders.[69.1] The
same punishment for incest is, or used to be, inflicted by the
Pasemhers, another tribe of Sumatra, but more merciful than the people
of Semendo they gave the culprits at least a chance for their life.
The guilty pair were bound back to back and buried in a deep hole, but
from the mouth of each a hollow bamboo communicated with the upper
air; and if when the grave was opened after seven days the wretches
were found to have survived a prolonged agony far worse than death,
they were granted their life.[69.2] Nor was even this dreadful fate
the worst that could befall the sinner who broke the rules of sexual
morality in Sumatra. [Sidenote: Adulterers killed and eaten.] The
Battas or Bataks of Central Sumatra condemned an adulterer to be
killed and eaten; strictly speaking he should be speared to death
first and eaten afterwards, but as the injured husband and his friends
were commonly the judges and executioners, it sometimes happened that,
passion proving too strong for a strict adherence to the letter of the
law, they cut the flesh from his living body, ate it, and drank his
blood, before it occurred to them to terminate his sufferings by a
spear-thrust. However, an adulterer occasionally escaped with his life
on the payment of a fine, always provided that his accomplice was not
the wife of a chief; for in that case there was no help for it but he
must be killed and eaten.[69.3]
Even trivial misdemeanours or acts which we should {70} deem perfectly
innocent may draw condign punishment on the thoughtless, the
imprudent, the light-hearted in the Indian Archipelago. [Sidenote:
Extreme severity of the code of sexual morality in Lombok.] Thus we
read that in the island of Lombok “the men are exceedingly jealous and
very strict with their wives. A married woman may not accept a cigar
or a sirih leaf from a stranger under pain of death. I was informed
that some years ago one of the English traders had a Balinese woman of
good family living with him--the connexion being considered quite
honourable by the natives. During some festival this girl offended
against the law by accepting a flower or some such trifle from another
man. This was reported to the Rajah (to some of whose wives the girl
was related), and he immediately sent to the Englishman’s house
ordering him to give the woman up as she must be ‘krissed.’ In vain he
begged and prayed, and offered to pay any fine the Rajah might impose,
and finally refused to give her up unless he was forced to do so. This
the Rajah did not wish to resort to, as he no doubt thought he was
acting as much for the Englishman’s honour as for his own; so he
appeared to let the matter drop. But some time afterwards he sent one
of his followers to the house, who beckoned the girl to the door, and
then saying, ‘The Rajah sends you this,’ stabbed her to the heart.
More serious infidelity is punished still more cruelly, the woman and
her paramour being tied back to back and thrown into the sea, where
some large crocodiles are always on the watch to devour the bodies.
One such execution took place while I was at Ampanam, but I took a
long walk into the country to be out of the way till it was all
over.”[70.1]
[Sidenote: The severity of the code based at bottom on
superstition.] As the Malay peoples of the Indian Archipelago, from
whom the foregoing examples are drawn, have reached a fair level of
culture, it might perhaps be thought that the extreme severity with
which they visit offences against their code of sexual morality
springs from an excessive refinement of feeling rather than from a
crude superstition; and no doubt it may well happen that extreme
sensitiveness on the point of honour, of which the Malays are
susceptible, contributes in many cases to sharpen the sword of justice
{71} and add fresh force to the stroke. Yet under this delicacy of
sentiment there appears to lie a deep foundation of superstition, as
we may see by the extraordinary and disastrous influence which in the
opinion of these people sexual crime exerts, not so much on the
criminals themselves, as on the whole realm of nature, drawing down
deluges of rain from the clouds till the crops rot in the fields,
shaking the solid earth beneath men’s feet, and blowing up into flames
the slumbering fires of the volcano, till the sky is darkened at noon
by a black canopy of falling ashes and illumined at night by the
sullen glow of the molten lava shot forth from the subterranean
furnace.[71.1] [Sidenote: A similar severity in sexual matters
observed among the Australian aborigines, the lowest of existing
savages.] And however much an over-refinement of feeling may be
invoked to explain the more than Puritanical severity of the Malay
moral code in sexual matters, no such explanation can be applied to
the like emotion of horror which similar offences excite among the
savage aborigines of Australia, the lowest and the least refined
probably of all the races of men about whom we possess accurate
information. These rude savages also treated with rigorous severity
all breaches of that widely ramified network of prohibitions in which
throughout the Australian continent, before it fell under English
rule, the two sexes lived immeshed. The whole community of a tribe or
nation was commonly subdivided into a number of minute bodies, which
we are accustomed to call classes or clans according to the principle
on which they were variously constituted. No man might marry a woman
of his own class or clan, and in most tribes his freedom of choice was
still further limited by complex rules of marriage and descent which
excluded him from seeking a wife in many more subdivisions of the
tribe, and sometimes compelled him to look for her only in one out of
them all. And the ordinary penalty for any violation of these rules
was death. The offender was lucky who escaped with his life and a body
more or less riddled with spear wounds. [Sidenote: Severe punishments
inflicted for sexual offences among the aborigines of Victoria.] Thus
one who knew the aborigines of Victoria well in the old days, before
they were first contaminated and then destroyed by contact with
European civilization, tells us that “no marriage or betrothal is
permitted without the approval {72} of the chiefs of each party, who
first ascertain that no ‘flesh’ relationship exists, and even then
their permission must be rewarded by presents. So strictly are the
laws of marriage carried out, that, should any signs of affection and
courtship be observed between those of ‘one flesh,’ the brothers, or
male relatives of the woman beat her severely; the man is brought
before the chief, and accused of an intention to fall into the same
flesh, and is severely reprimanded by the tribe. If he persists, and
runs away with the object of his affections, they beat and ‘cut his
head all over’; and if the woman was a consenting party she is half
killed. If she dies in consequence of her punishment, her death is
avenged by the man’s receiving an additional beating from her
relatives. No other vengeance is taken, as her punishment is legal. A
child born under such conditions is taken from the parents, and handed
over to the care of its grandmother, who is compelled to rear it, as
no one else will adopt it. It says much for the morality of the
aborigines and their laws that illegitimacy is rare, and is looked
upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always severely beaten by
her relatives, and sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is
occasionally killed and burned with her. The father of the child is
also punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed.
Should he survive the chastisement inflicted upon him, he is always
shunned by the woman’s relatives, and any efforts to conciliate them
with gifts are spurned, and his presents are put in the fire and
burned. Since the advent of the Europeans among them, the aborigines
have occasionally disregarded their admirable marriage laws, and to
this disregard they attribute the greater weakness and unhealthiness
of their children.”[72.1]
[Sidenote: Severe punishments inflicted for sexual offences in the
Wakelbura tribe of Queensland.] Again, in the Wakelbura tribe of
eastern Queensland the law was extremely strict as to unlawful
connexions or elopements between persons too nearly related to each
other. Such persons might be, for example, those whom we call cousins
both on the father’s and the mother’s side, as well as those who
belonged to a forbidden class. If such a man {73} carried off a woman
who had been betrothed to another, he would be pursued not only by the
male relations of the woman and of her betrothed husband, but also by
the men of his own tribal subdivision, whom he had outraged by his
breach of the marriage law; and wherever they overtook him, he would
have to fight them all. His own brothers would challenge him to fight
by throwing boomerangs or other weapons at him; and if he did not
accept the challenge, they would turn on the woman and cripple or kill
her with their weapons, unless she could escape into the bush. Nay,
the woman’s own mother would cut and perhaps slay her with her own
hands. Sooner or later the ravisher had to engage in single combat
with the man he had injured. Both were fully armed with shield, spear,
boomerang and knife. When they had exhausted their missiles, they
closed on each other with their knives, a dense ring of blacks
generally forming round the combatants to see fair play. In such a
fight the man who had broken the tribal law always came off worst; for
even if he got the better of his adversary, the other men and even his
own brothers would attack him and probably gash him with their knives.
Fatal stabs were sometimes given in these fights, but more usually, it
would seem, the onlookers interfered and wrested the weapons from the
two combatants before they proceeded to extremities. In any case the
woman who had eloped was terribly mauled with knives, and if she
survived the ordeal was restored to the man whom she had
deserted.[73.1]
[Sidenote: Severe punishment inflicted for sexual offences among the
aborigines of other parts of Australia.] Among the tribes in the
central parts of North-West Queensland, if a man eloped with a single
woman whom he might lawfully marry, but who for any reason was
forbidden to him by the tribal council, he had on returning to camp
with his wife to run the gauntlet of the outraged community, who
hacked his buttocks and shoulders with knives, beat his head and limbs
with sticks and boomerangs, and pricked the fleshy parts of his thighs
with spears, taking care, however, not to inflict fatal injuries, lest
they should incur blood revenge. But if the woman with whom the man
had eloped {74} was of a class into which he might not marry, both the
culprits were put to death, the relations on both sides tacitly
consenting to the execution.[74.1] In the Yuin tribe of New South
Wales, if a man eloped with a woman of his own tribal subdivision, all
the men would pursue him; and if he refused to give the woman up, the
sorcerer of the place would probably say to his men, “This man has
done very wrong, you must kill him”; whereupon somebody would thrust a
spear into him, his relatives not interfering lest the same fate
should befall them.[74.2] The same punishment was inflicted for the
same offence by the Wotjobaluk tribe of North-Western Victoria; but
their western neighbours, the Mukjarawaint tribe, not content with
killing the guilty man, cut off the flesh off his thighs and upper
arms, roasted and ate it, his own brother partaking of the cannibal
meal. As for the rest of the body, they chopped it up small and left
it lying on a log. The same custom is said to have been observed by
the Jupagalk tribe.[74.3] Among many tribes of Western Australia, as
well as of other parts of that continent, persons who bear the same
class-name may not marry. Any such marriage is regarded as incest and
rigorously punished. For example, “the union of Boorong and Boorong is
to the natives the union of brother and sister, although there may be
no real blood relationship between the pair, and a union of that kind
is looked upon with horror, and the perpetrators very severely
punished and separated, and if the crime is repeated they are both
killed.”[74.4] On the other side of the continent the Kamilaroi of
New South Wales similarly inflicted condign punishment on both the
culprits who persisted in marrying each other contrary to the tribal
law; the male relations of the man killed him, and the female
relations of the woman killed her. [Sidenote: Penalty of death
inflicted for the crime of speaking to a mother-in-law.] The
Kamilaroi of the Gwydir River went further; they {75} killed any man
who so much as spoke to or held any communication with his
mother-in-law,[75.1] for one of the most stringent laws of savage
etiquette is that which prohibits any direct social intercourse
between a man and his wife’s mother. The law has been variously
explained,[75.2] but a large body of evidence points to the
conclusion that this custom of mutual avoidance is simply a precaution
to prevent improper relations between the two. Hence a brief
consideration of it is appropriate in this place; for to all
appearance the custom, though it may be wholesome and beneficial in
practice, has originated purely in superstition. But before giving my
reasons for thinking so it may be well, for the sake of those who are
unfamiliar with savage etiquette, to illustrate the practice itself by
a few examples.[75.3]
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding a mother-in-law and other relations
by marriage among the Boloki of the Congo.] Speaking of the Boloki, a
Bantu tribe of the Upper Congo, an experienced missionary, the Rev.
John H. Weeks, writes as follows: “Perhaps this will be the best place
in which to make a few remarks on the mother-in-law. She and her
son-in-law may never look on each other’s face. I have often heard a
man say, ‘So-and-so, your mother-in-law is coming,’ and the person
addressed would run into my house and hide himself until his wife’s
mother had gone by. They can sit at a little distance from each other,
with their backs to one another, and talk over affairs when necessary.
_Bokilo_ means mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law,
father-in-law, sister of mother-in-law, brother of father-in-law, wife
of wife’s brother, and in fact any relation-in-law. _Bokilo_, the
noun, is derived from _kila_ = to forbid, prohibit, taboo, and
indicates that all bearing the relationship of {76} _bokilo_ can have
no intimate relationship with one another, for it is regarded as
incestuous; and it is according to native ideas just as wrong for a
daughter-in-law to speak or look at her husband’s father, as for the
son-in-law to speak or look at his wife’s mother. Some have told me
that this was to guard against all possibility of cohabitation, ‘For a
person you never look at you never desire.’ Others have said, ‘Well,
don’t you see, my wife came from her womb.’ I am strongly inclined to
the opinion that the former is the real reason.”[76.1]
From this statement it appears that a man and his wife’s mother are
not the only persons who are bound to avoid each other in society; the
same rule of social avoidance is incumbent on a man and his son’s
wife, and on many other persons of opposite sex who are connected with
each other by marriage; and in regard to all such persons it is held
that any intimate relationship between them would be incestuous. Hence
we see, what is important to bear in mind, that the rule of social
avoidance incumbent on a man and his wife’s mother is by no means
solitary of its kind, and cannot be considered apart from a large
number of similar rules of avoidance observed between other persons.
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding relations by marriage among the
Batamba of Busoga.] The same large extension of the rule appears in
the customs of the Batamba, a Bantu tribe of Busoga, a country on the
north side of the Lake Victoria Nyanza. A Catholic missionary, who has
laboured among the Batamba for nine years, describes their practice in
this matter as follows:--
“There is a very strange custom which may be considered here. If a son
marries or if a daughter does the same, then if they are grown up,
from the day the son or daughter marries, the mother, father of both
parties, the brothers and sisters of both parties are not allowed to
sleep under the same roof. If a man marries, then he builds a house
for himself, and should his parents live with him, or his brothers and
sisters, then they must have a separate house near by. They are not
forbidden to go in and visit him or her, but are not allowed to sleep
there. The reason is this. They say that otherwise sickness is caused,
and this {77} is called _endivade ya buko_, the sickness of
relationship, literally taken. The sickness is called _bujugumiro_,
trembling, from the verb _kujugumira_, to shiver or tremble. This
cannot be got out of their heads, and no amount of talking or arguing
will convince them of the opposite. I have attended many cases of this
disease and I have not known one to recover.
“Again, the father and mother of the bride and bridegroom, the aunts
and uncles of bride and bridegroom may no more shake hands or touch in
any way the bride and bridegroom, or else the same disease,
_bujugumiro_, will follow. Of course much less will they commit
themselves between each other for the fear of the same reason. And it
is never heard of that a brother and sister, aunt and nephew, niece
and uncle have ever committed themselves seriously. They are so afraid
of the disease they say will follow, that, as a man here over seventy
years of age tells me, he has never in his whole life heard of such a
misbehaviour. The people say, ‘_Jekiyinzika_ = it is impossible for
such a thing to happen.’ And no doubt one is struck with the care they
take. The disease following does not come as a punishment from the
gods, but they say, ‘_Endwada ejja yokka_, the illness comes by
itself.’”[77.1]
[Sidenote: Avoidance of blood relations as well as of connexions by
marriage.] From the foregoing account it appears that among the
Batamba the rules of social avoidance are observed between
blood-relations of opposite sexes, such as brothers and sisters,
uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, as well as between connexions by
marriage. This is a further extension of the rule of social avoidance
which it is important to bear in mind. We shall recur to it presently.
For our present purpose it deserves also to be noticed that breaches
of the custom are believed to be punished by a disease of trembling or
shivering, which, though it probably springs purely from the
imagination of the culprits, nevertheless appears to be always fatal.
Further, we learn that the mere apprehension of this disease acts as a
most efficient check upon improper relations between persons who are
connected with each other by blood or marriage.
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding mother-in-law and own daughter
among the Akamba of British East Africa.] Among the Akamba, a Bantu
tribe of British East Africa, {78} “if a man meets his mother-in-law
in the road they both hide their faces and pass by in the bush on
opposite sides of the path. If a man did not observe this custom and
at any time wanted to marry another wife, it would prove a serious
stigma, and parents would have nothing to do with him. Moreover, if a
wife heard that her husband had stopped and spoken to her mother in
the road, she would leave him. If a man has business he wishes to
discuss with his mother-in-law, he goes to her hut at night, and she
will talk to him from behind the partition in the hut.… If a girl of
the age of puberty meets her father in the road, she hides as he
passes, nor can she ever go and sit near him in the village until the
day comes when he tells her that it has been arranged for her to marry
a certain man. After marriage she does not avoid her father in any
way.”[78.1] Thus among the Akamba a man must avoid his own
marriageable, but unmarried, daughter exactly as he avoids his wife’s
mother; but the custom of avoidance ceases when his daughter marries.
This extension of the rule to a man’s own daughter, and its limitation
to the time during which the girl is nubile but single, are most
significant, and point plainly to a fear of improper relations between
father and daughter. To that point we shall return shortly.
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding parents-in-law among various tribes
of Central and East Africa.] Among the Bakerewe, a Bantu people
inhabiting a large and fertile island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, “the
wife, whether the first (_omukuru_) or the last (_omwenga_), must
always belong to a family other than that of the husband, for
marriages are not contracted between relations. Never in any case will
the new household establish itself in the immediate neighbourhood of
the wife’s parents. The reason is that the son-in-law (_omukwerima_)
and his mother-in-law (_mazara_), according to their customs, may not
see each other nor look upon each other; hence in order not to run the
risk of breaking a rule to which everybody attaches grave importance,
they go as far away as possible.”[78.2] Among some tribes of Eastern
Africa which formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan of
Zanzibar, before a young couple had children {79} they might meet
neither their father-in-law nor their mother-in-law. To avoid them
they must make a long roundabout. But if they could not do that, they
must throw themselves on the ground and hide their faces till the
father-in-law or mother-in-law had passed by.[79.1]
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding parents-in-law among the tribes of
British Central Africa and Northern Rhodesia.] Among the Anyanja, a
Bantu people of British Central Africa, “a man used never to speak to
his mother-in-law till after the birth of his first son. Neither a man
nor his wife will eat in company of their mother or father-in-law
until after birth of a child. If a man sees his mother-in-law eat, he
has insulted her and is expected to pay damages. If a man meets his
mother-in-law coming along the road and does not recognise her, she
will fall down on the ground as a sign, when he will run away. In the
same way a father-in-law will signal to his daughter-in-law; the whole
idea being that they are unworthy to be noticed till they have proved
that they can beget children.”[79.2] However, if a wife should prove
barren for three years, the rules of avoidance between the young
couple and their parents-in-law cease to be observed.[79.3] Hence the
custom of avoidance among these people is associated in some way with
the wife’s fertility. So among the Awemba, a Bantu tribe of Northern
Rhodesia, “if a young man sees his mother-in-law coming along the
path, he must retreat into the bush and make way for her, or if she
suddenly comes upon him he must keep his eyes fixed on the ground, and
only after a child is born may they converse together.”[79.4] Among
the Angoni, another Bantu tribe of British Central Africa, it would be
a gross breach of etiquette if a man were to enter his son-in-law’s
house; he may come within ten paces of the door, but no nearer. A
woman may not even approach her son-in-law’s house, and she is never
allowed to speak to him. Should they meet accidentally on a path, the
son-in-law gives way and makes a circuit to avoid encountering his
mother-in-law face to face.[79.5] Here then we {80} see that a man
avoids his son-in-law as well as his mother-in-law, though not so
strictly.
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding mother-in-law and wife of wife’s
brother among the Thonga of Delagoa Bay.] Among the Thonga, a Bantu
tribe about Delagoa Bay, when a man meets his mother-in-law or her
sister on the road, he steps out of the road into the forest on the
right hand side and sits down. She does the same. Then they salute
each other in the usual way by clapping their hands. After that they
may talk to each other. When a man is in a hut, his mother-in-law dare
not enter it, but must sit down outside without seeing him. So seated
she may salute him, “Good morning, son of So-and-so.” But she would
not dare to pronounce his name. However, when a man has been married
many years, his mother-in-law has less fear of him, and will even
enter the hut where he is and speak to him. But among the Thonga the
woman whom a man is bound by custom to avoid most rigidly is not his
wife’s mother, but the wife of his wife’s brother. If the two meet on
a path, they carefully avoid each other; he will step out of the way
and she will hurry on, while her companions, if she has any, will stop
and chat with him. She will not enter the same boat with him, if she
can help it, to cross a river. She will not eat out of the same dish.
If he speaks to her, it is with constraint and embarrassment. He will
not enter her hut, but will crouch at the door and address her in a
voice trembling with emotion. Should there be no one else to bring him
food, she will do it reluctantly, watching his hut and putting the
food inside the door when he is absent. It is not that they dislike
each other, but that they feel a mutual, a mysterious fear.[80.1]
However, among the Thonga, the rules of avoidance between connexions
by marriage decrease in severity as time passes. The strained
relations between a man and his wife’s mother in particular become
easier. He begins to call her “Mother” and she calls him “Son.” This
change even goes so far that in some cases the man may go and dwell in
the village of his wife’s parents, especially if he has children and
the children are grown up.[80.2] Again, among the Ovambo, a Bantu
{81} people of German South-West Africa, a man may not look at his
future mother-in-law while he talks with her, but is bound to keep his
eyes steadily fixed on the ground. In some cases the avoidance is even
more stringent; if the two meet unexpectedly, they separate at once.
But after the marriage has been celebrated, the social intercourse
between mother-in-law and son-in-law becomes easier on both
sides.[81.1]
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding the mother-in-law among other than
the Bantu tribes of Africa.] Thus far our examples of ceremonial
avoidance between mother-in-law and son-in-law have been drawn from
Bantu tribes. But in Africa the custom, though apparently most
prevalent and most strongly marked among peoples of the great Bantu
stock, is not confined to them. Among the Masai of British East
Africa, “mothers-in-law and their sons-in-law must avoid one another
as much as possible; and if a son-in-law enters his mother-in-law’s
hut she must retire into the inner compartment and sit on the bed,
whilst he remains in the outer compartment; they may then talk. Own
brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law must also avoid one another, though
this rule does not apply to half-brothers-in-law and
sisters-in-law.”[81.2] So, too, among the Bogos, a tribe on the
outskirts of Abyssinia, a man never sees the face of his mother-in-law
and never pronounces her name; the two take care not to meet.[81.3]
Among the Donaglas a husband after marriage “lives in his wife’s house
for a year, without being allowed to see his mother-in-law, with whom
he enters into relations only on the birth of his first son.”[81.4]
In Darfur, when a youth has been betrothed to a girl, however intimate
he may have been with her parents before, he ceases to see them until
the ceremony has taken place, and even avoids them in the street.
They, on their part, hide their faces, if they happen to meet him
unexpectedly.[81.5]
{82}
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding relations by marriage in Sumatra
and New Guinea.] To pass now from Africa to other parts of the world,
among the Looboos, a primitive tribe in the tropical forests of
Sumatra, custom forbids a woman to be in her father-in-law’s company
and a man to be in his mother-in-law’s society. For example, if a man
meets his daughter-in-law, he should cross over to the other side of
the road to let her pass as far as possible from him; but if the way
is too narrow, he takes care in time to get out of it. But no such
reserve is prescribed between a father-in-law and his son-in-law, or
between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law.[82.1] Among the
Bukaua, a Melanesian tribe of German New Guinea, the rules of
avoidance between persons connected by marriage are very stringent;
they may not touch each other or mention each other’s names. But
contrary to the usual practice the avoidance seems to be quite as
strict between persons of the same sex as between males and females.
At least the writer who reports the custom illustrates it chiefly by
the etiquette which is observed between a man and his daughter’s
husband. When a man eats in presence of his son-in-law, he veils his
face; but if nevertheless his son-in-law should see his open mouth,
the father-in-law is so ashamed that he runs away into the wood. If he
gives his son-in-law anything, such as betel or tobacco, he will never
put it in his hand, but pours it on a leaf, and the son-in-law fetches
it away. If father-in-law and son-in-law both take part in a wild boar
hunt, the son-in-law will abstain from seizing or binding the boar,
lest he should chance to touch his father-in-law. If, however, through
any accident their hands or backs should come into contact, the
father-in-law is extremely horrified, and a dog must be at once
killed, which he gives to his son-in-law for the purpose of wiping out
the stain on his honour. If the two should ever fall out about
anything, the son-in-law will leave the village and his wife, and will
stay away in some other place till his father-in-law, for his
daughter’s sake, calls him back. A man in like manner will never touch
his sister-in-law.[82.2]
{83}
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding relations by marriage among the
Indian tribes of America.] Among the low savages of the Californian
peninsula a man was not allowed for some time to look into the face of
his mother-in-law or of his wife’s other near relations; when these
women were present he had to step aside or hide himself.[83.1] Among
the Indians of the Isla del Malhado in Florida a father-in-law and
mother-in-law might not enter the house of their son-in-law, and he on
his side might not appear before his father-in-law and his relations.
If they met by accident they had to go apart to the distance of a
bowshot, holding their heads down and their eyes turned to the earth.
But a woman was free to converse with the father and mother of her
husband.[83.2] Among the Indians of Yucatan, if a betrothed man saw
his future father-in-law or mother-in-law at a distance, he turned
away as quickly as possible, believing that a meeting with them would
prevent him from begetting children.[83.3] Among the Arawaks of
British Guiana a man may never see the face of his wife’s mother. If
she is in the house with him, they must be separated by a screen or
partition-wall; if she travels with him in a canoe, she steps in
first, in order that she may turn her back to him.[83.4] Among the
Caribs “the women never quit their father’s house, and in that they
have an advantage over their husbands in as much as they may talk to
all sorts of people, whereas the husband dare not converse with his
wife’s relations, unless he is dispensed from this observance either
by their tender age or by their intoxication. They shun meeting them
and make great circuits for that purpose. If they are surprised in a
place where they cannot help meeting, the person addressed turns his
face another way so as not to be obliged to see the person, whose
voice he is compelled to hear.”[83.5] {84} Among the Araucanian
Indians of Chili a man’s mother-in-law refuses to speak to or even to
look at him during the marriage festivity, and “the point of honour
is, in some instances, carried so far, that for years after the
marriage the mother never addresses her son-in-law face to face;
though with her back turned, or with the interposition of a fence or
a partition, she will converse with him freely.”[84.1]
[Sidenote: The custom of avoiding relations by marriage cannot be
separated from the similar custom of avoiding relations by blood; both
are probably precautions to prevent improper relations between the
sexes.] It would be easy to multiply examples of similar customs of
avoidance between persons closely connected by marriage, but the
foregoing may serve as specimens. Now in order to determine the
meaning of such customs it is very important to observe that similar
customs of avoidance are practised in some tribes not merely between
persons connected with each other by marriage, but also between the
nearest blood relations of different sexes, namely, between parents
and children and between brothers and sisters;[84.2] and the customs
are so alike that it seems difficult or impossible to separate them
and to offer one explanation of the avoidance of connexions by
marriage and another different explanation of the avoidance of blood
relations. Yet this is what is done by some who attempt to explain the
customs of avoidance; or rather they confine their attention wholly to
connexions by marriage, or even to mothers-in-law alone, while they
completely ignore blood relations, although in point of fact it is the
avoidance of blood relations which seems to furnish the key to the
problem of such avoidances in general. The true explanation of all
such customs of avoidance appears to be, as I have already indicated,
that they are precautions designed to remove the temptation to sexual
intercourse between persons whose marriage union is for any reason
repugnant to the moral sense of the community. This explanation, while
it has been rejected by theorists at home, {85} has been adopted by
some of the best observers of savage life, whose opinion is entitled
to carry the greatest weight.[85.1]
[Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of mother and son, of father and
daughter, and of brother and sister among the Battas.] That a fear of
improper intimacy even between the nearest blood relations is not
baseless among races of a lower culture seems proved by the testimony
of a Dutch missionary in regard to the Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, a
people who have attained to a fairly high degree of barbaric
civilization. The Battas “observe certain rules of avoidance in regard
to near relations by blood or marriage; and we are informed that such
avoidance springs not from the strictness but from the looseness of
their moral practice. A Batta, it is said, assumes that a solitary
meeting of a man with a woman leads to an improper intimacy between
them. But at the same time he believes that incest or the sexual
intercourse of near relations excites the anger of the gods and
entails calamities of all sorts. Hence near relations are obliged to
avoid each other lest they should succumb to temptation. A Batta, for
example, would think it shocking were a brother to escort his sister
to an evening party. Even in the presence of others a Batta brother
and sister feel embarrassed. If one of them comes into the house, the
other will go away. Further, a man may never be alone in the house
with his daughter, nor a mother with her son. A man may never speak to
his mother-in-law nor a woman to her father-in-law. The Dutch
missionary who reports these customs adds that he is sorry to say that
from what he knows of the Battas he believes the maintenance of most
of these rules to be very necessary. For the same reason, he tells us,
as soon as Batta lads have reached the age of puberty they are no
longer allowed to sleep in the family house but are sent away to pass
the night in a separate building (_djambon_); and similarly as soon as
a man loses his wife by death he is excluded from the house.”[85.2]
{86}
[Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of mother and son and of brother and
sister among the Melanesians.] In like manner among the Melanesians
of the Banks’ Islands and the New Hebrides a man must not only avoid
his mother-in-law; from the time when he reaches or approaches puberty
and has begun to wear clothes instead of running about naked, he must
avoid his mother and sisters, and he may no longer live in the same
house with them; he takes up his quarters in the clubhouse of the
unmarried males, where he now regularly eats and sleeps. He may go to
his father’s house to ask for food, but if his sister is within he
must go away before he eats; if she is not there, he may sit down near
the door and eat. If by chance brother and sister meet in the path,
she runs away or hides. If a boy, walking on the sands, perceives
footprints which he knows to be those of his sister, he will not
follow them, nor will she follow his. This mutual avoidance lasts
through life. Not only must he avoid the persons of his sisters, but
he may not pronounce their names or even use a common word which
happens to form part of any one of their names. In like manner his
sisters eschew the use of his name and of all words which form part of
it. Strict, too, is a boy’s reserve towards his mother from the time
when he begins to wear clothes, and the reserve increases as he grows
to manhood. It is greater on her side than on his. He may go to the
house and ask for food and his mother may bring it out for him, but
she will not give it to him; she puts it down for him to take. If she
calls to him to come, she speaks to him in the plural, in a more
distant manner; “Come ye,” she says, not “Come thou.” If they talk
together she sits at a little distance and turns away, for she is shy
of her grown-up son. “The meaning of all this,” as Dr. Codrington
observes, “is obvious.”[86.1] [Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of a man
and his mother-in-law among the Melanesians.] When a Melanesian man
of the Banks’ Islands marries, he is bound in like manner to avoid his
mother-in-law. “The rules of avoidance are very strict and minute. As
regards the avoidance of the person, a man will not come near his
wife’s mother; the avoidance is mutual; if the two chance to meet in
a path, the woman will step out of it and stand with her back turned
till he has gone by, or perhaps if it be more {87} convenient he will
move out of the way. At Vanua Lava, in Port Patteson, a man would not
follow his mother-in-law along the beach, nor she him, until the tide
had washed out the footsteps of the first traveller from the sand. At
the same time a man and his mother-in-law will talk at a
distance.”[87.1]
[Sidenote: It is significant that mutual avoidance between blood
relations of opposite sexes begins at or near puberty.] It seems
obvious that these Melanesian customs of avoidance are the same, and
must be explained in the same way whether the woman whom a man shuns
is his wife’s mother or his own mother or his sister. Now it is highly
significant that just as among the Akamba of East Africa the mutual
avoidance of father and daughter only begins when the girl has reached
puberty, so among the Melanesians the mutual avoidance of a boy on the
one side and of his mother and sisters on the other only begins when
the boy has reached or approached puberty. Thus in both peoples the
avoidance between the nearest blood relations only commences at the
dangerous age when sexual connexion on both sides begins to be
possible. It seems difficult, therefore, to evade the conclusion that
the mutual avoidance is adopted for no other reason than to diminish
as far as possible the chances of sexual unions which public opinion
condemns as incestuous. But if that is the reason why a young
Melanesian boy, on the verge of puberty, avoids his own mother and
sisters, it is natural and almost necessary to infer that it is the
same reason which leads him, as a full-grown and married man, to
eschew the company of his wife’s mother.
[Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of mother and son, of father and
daughter, and of brother and sister in the Caroline Islands.] Similar
customs of avoidance between mothers and sons, between fathers and
daughters, and between brothers and sisters are observed by the
natives of the Caroline Islands, and the writer who records them
assigns the fear of incest as the motive for their observance. “The
prohibition of marriage,” he says, “and of sexual intercourse between
kinsfolk of the same tribe is regarded by the Central Caroline natives
as a divine ordinance; its breach is therefore, in their opinion,
punished by the higher powers with sickness or death. The law
influences in a characteristic way the whole social life of the
islanders, for efforts {88} are made to keep members of families of
different sexes apart from each other even in their youth. Unmarried
men and boys, from the time when they begin to speak, may therefore
not remain by night in the huts, but must sleep in the _fel_, the
assembly-house. In the evening their meal (_âkot_) is brought thither
to them by their mothers or sisters. Only when a son is sick may his
mother receive him in the hut and tend him there. On the other hand
entrance to the assembly-house (_fel_) is forbidden to women and girls
except on the occasion of the _pwarik_ festival; whereas female
members of other tribes are free to visit it, although, so far as I
could observe, they seldom make use of the permission. Unmarried girls
sleep in the huts with their parents.
“These restrictions, which custom and tradition have instituted within
the family, find expression also in the behaviour of the members of
families toward each other. The following persons, namely, have to be
treated with respect--the daughters by their father, the sons by their
mother, the brothers by their sisters. In presence of such relations,
as in the presence of a chief, you may not stand, but must sit down;
if you are obliged on narrow paths to pass by one of them you must
first obtain permission and then do it in a stooping or creeping
posture. You allow them everywhere to go in front; you also avoid to
drink out of the vessel which they have just used; you do not touch
them, but keep always at a certain distance from them; the head
especially is deemed sacred.”[88.1]
[Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in some
tribes.] In all these cases the custom of mutual avoidance is
observed by persons of opposite sex who, though physically capable of
sexual union, are forbidden by tradition and public opinion to have
any such commerce with each other. Thus far the blood relations whom a
man is forbidden to marry and compelled to avoid, are his own mother,
his own daughter, and his own sisters. But to this list some people
add a man’s female cousins or at least certain of them; for many races
draw a sharp line of distinction between cousins according {89} as
they are children of two brothers or of two sisters or of a brother
and a sister, and while they permit or even prefer marriage with
certain cousins, they absolutely forbid marriage with certain others.
Now, it is highly significant that some tribes which forbid a man to
marry certain of his cousins also compel him to adopt towards them the
same attitude of social reserve which in the same or other tribes a
man is obliged to observe towards his wife’s mother, his own mother,
and his own sisters, all of whom in like manner he is forbidden to
marry. [Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in New
Ireland.] Thus among the tribes in the central part of New Ireland
(New Mecklenburg) a male and a female cousin, the children of a
brother and a sister respectively, are most strictly forbidden by
custom to marry each other; indeed this prohibition is described as
the most stringent of all; the usual saying in regard to such
relations is, “The cousin is holy” (_i tábu ra kókup_). Now, in
these tribes a man is not merely forbidden to marry his female cousin,
the daughter of his father’s sister or of his mother’s brother; he
must also avoid her socially, just as in other tribes a man must avoid
his wife’s mother, his own mother, his own daughter, and his own
sisters. The cousins may not approach each other, they may not shake
hands or even touch each other, they may not give each other presents,
they may not mention each other’s names; but they are allowed to speak
to each other at a distance of some paces. These rules of avoidance,
these social barriers erected between cousins, the children of a
brother and a sister respectively, are interpreted most naturally and
simply as precautions intended to obviate the danger of a criminal
intercourse between persons whose sexual union would be regarded by
public opinion with deep displeasure. Indeed the Catholic missionary,
to whom we are indebted for the information, assumes this
interpretation of the rules as if it were too obvious to call for
serious discussion. He says that all the customs of avoidance “are
observed as outward symbols of this prohibition of marriage”; and he
adds that “were the outward sign of the prohibition of marriage, to
which the natives cleave with genuine obstinacy, abolished or even
weakened, there would be an immediate danger of the natives
contracting such {90} marriages.”[90.1] It seems difficult for a
rational man to draw any other inference. If any confirmation were
needed, it would be furnished by the fact that among these tribes of
New Ireland brothers and sisters are obliged to observe precisely the
same rules of mutual avoidance, and that incest between brother and
sister is a crime which is punished with hanging; they may not come
near each other, they may not shake hands, they may not touch each
other, they may not give each other presents; but they are allowed to
speak to each other at a distance of some paces. And the penalty for
incest with a daughter is also death by hanging.[90.2]
[Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of certain male and female cousins among
the Baganda; marriage or sexual intercourse forbidden between these
cousins under pain of death.] Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa
in like manner a man was forbidden under pain of death to marry or
have sexual intercourse with his cousin, the daughter either of his
father’s sister or of his mother’s brother; and such cousins might not
approach each other, nor hand each other anything, nor enter the same
house, nor eat out of the same dish. Were cousins to break these rules
of social avoidance, in other words, if they were to approach each
other or hand each other anything, it was believed that they would
fall ill, that their hands would tremble, and that they would be unfit
for any work.[90.3] Here, again, the prohibition of social
intercourse was in all probability merely a precaution against sexual
intercourse, for which the penalty was death. And the same may be said
of the similar custom of avoidance which among these same Baganda a
man had to observe towards his wife’s mother. “No man might see his
mother-in-law, or speak face to face with her; she covered her face,
if she passed her son-in-law, and he gave her the path and made a
detour, if he saw her coming. If she was in the house, he might not
enter, but he was allowed to speak to her from a distance. This was
said to be because he had seen her daughter’s nakedness. If a
son-in-law accidentally {91} saw his mother-in-law’s breasts, he sent
her a barkcloth in compensation, to cover herself, lest some illness,
such as tremor, should come upon him. The punishment for incest was
death; no member of a clan would shield a person guilty thereof; the
offender was disowned by the clan, tried by the chief of the district,
and put to death.”[91.1]
[Sidenote: Marriage between certain cousins forbidden among some
South African tribes but allowed among others.] The prohibition of
marriage with certain cousins appears to be widespread among African
peoples of the Bantu stock. Thus in regard to the Bantus of South
Africa we read that “every man of a coast tribe regarded himself as
the protector of those females whom we would call his cousins, second
cousins, third cousins, and so forth, on the father’s side, while some
had a similar feeling towards the same relatives on the mother’s side
as well, and classified them all as sisters. Immorality with one of
them would have been considered incestuous, something horrible,
something unutterably disgraceful. Of old it was punished by the death
of the male, and even now a heavy fine is inflicted upon him, while
the guilt of the female must be atoned by a sacrifice performed with
due ceremony by the tribal priest, or it is believed a curse will rest
upon her and her issue.… In contrast to this prohibition the native of
the interior almost as a rule married the daughter of his father’s
brother, in order, as he said, to keep property from being lost to his
family. This custom more than anything else created a disgust and
contempt for them by the people of the coast, who term such
intermarriages the union of dogs, and attribute to them the insanity
and idiocy which in recent times has become prevalent among the inland
tribes.”[91.2]
{92}
[Sidenote: Marriage between cousins allowed in some African tribes on
condition that an expiatory sacrifice is offered.] Among the Thonga,
a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, marriages between cousins are as a
rule prohibited, and it is believed that such unions are unfruitful.
However, custom permits cousins to marry each other on condition that
they perform an expiatory ceremony which is supposed to avert the
curse of barrenness from the wife. A goat is sacrificed, and the
couple are anointed with the green liquid extracted from the
half-digested grass in the animal’s stomach. Then a hole is cut in the
goat’s skin and through this hole the heads of the cousins are
inserted. The goat’s liver is then handed to them, quite raw, through
the hole in the skin, and they must tear it out with their teeth
without using a knife. Having torn it out, they eat it. The word for
liver (_shibindji_) also means “patience,” “determination.” So they
say to the couple, “You have acted with strong determination. Eat the
liver now! Eat it in the full light of the day, not in the dark! It
will be an offering to the gods.” Then the family priest prays,
saying: “You, our gods, So-and-so, look! We have done it in the
daylight. It has not been done by stealth. Bless them, give them
children!” When he has done praying, the assistants take all the
half-digested grass from the goat’s stomach and place it on the wife’s
head, saying, “Go and bear children!”[92.1] Among the Wagogo of
German East Africa marriage is forbidden between cousins who are the
children of two brothers or of two sisters, but is permitted between
cousins who are the children of a brother and sister respectively.
However, in this case it is usual for the wife’s father to kill a
sheep and put on a leather armlet, made presumably from the sheep’s
skin; otherwise it is supposed that the marriage would be
unfruitful.[92.2] Thus the Wagogo, like the Thonga, imagine that the
marriage of cousins is doomed to infertility unless an expiatory
sacrifice is offered and a peculiar use made of the victim’s skin.
Again, the Akikuyu of British East Africa forbid the marriage of
cousins and second cousins, the children and grandchildren of brothers
and sisters. If such persons {93} married, they would commit a grave
sin, and all their children would surely die; for the curse or
ceremonial pollution (_thahu_) incurred by such a crime cannot be
purged away. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that a man unwittingly
marries a first or second cousin; for instance, if a part of the
family moves away to another district, it may come about that a man
makes the acquaintance of a girl and marries her before he discovers
the relationship. In such a case, where the sin has been committed
unknowingly, the curse can be averted by the performance of an
expiatory rite. The elders take a sheep and place it on the woman’s
shoulders; there it is killed and the intestines taken out. Then the
elders solemnly sever the intestines with a sharp splinter of wood
taken from a bush of a certain sort (_mukeo_), “and they announce that
they are cutting the clan _kutinyarurira_, by which they mean that
they are severing the bond of relationship which exists between the
pair. A medicine man then comes and purifies the couple.”[93.1] In
all these cases we may assume with a fair degree of probability that
the old prohibition of marriage between cousins is breaking down, and
that the expiatory sacrifice offered when such a marriage does take
place is merely a salve to the uneasy conscience of those who commit
or connive at a breach of the ancient taboo.
[Sidenote: The mutual avoidance of male and female cousins is
probably a precaution against a criminal intimacy between them.] Thus
the prohibition of marriage between cousins, and the rules of
ceremonial avoidance observed in some tribes between persons who stand
in that relationship to each other, appear both to spring from a
belief, right or wrong, in the injurious effects of such unions and
from a desire to avoid them. The mutual avoidance of the cousins is
merely a precaution to prevent a closer and more criminal intimacy
between them. If that is so, it furnishes a confirmation of the view
that all the customs of ceremonial avoidance between blood relations
or connexions by marriage of opposite sexes are based simply on a fear
of incest.
[Sidenote: The mutual avoidance between a man and his wife’s
relations seems to be partly grounded on a fear of rendering the wife
infertile.] The theory is perhaps confirmed by the observation that
in some tribes the avoidance between a man and his {94} wife’s mother
lasts only until he has had a child by his wife;[94.1] while in
others, though avoidance continues longer, it gradually wears away
with time as the man and woman advance in years,[94.2] and in others,
again, it is observed only between a man and his future mother-in-law,
and comes to an end with his marriage.[94.3] These customs suggest
that in the minds of the people who practise them there is a close
connexion between the avoidance of the wife’s relations and the dread
of an infertile marriage. The Indians of Yucatan, as we saw, believe
that if a betrothed man were to meet his future mother-in-law or
father-in-law, he would thereby lose the power of begetting children.
Such a fear seems to be only an extension by false analogy of that
belief in the disastrous consequences of illicit sexual relations
which we dealt with in an earlier part of this chapter,[94.4] and of
which we shall have more to say presently.[94.5] From thinking,
rightly or wrongly, that sexual intercourse between certain persons is
fraught with serious dangers, the savage jumped to the conclusion that
social intercourse between them may be also perilous by virtue of a
sort of physical infection acting through simple contact or even at a
distance; or if, in many cases, he did not go so far as to suppose
that for a man merely to see or touch his mother-in-law sufficed to
blast the fertility of his wife’s womb, yet he may have thought, with
much better reason, that intimate social converse between him and her
might easily lead to something worse, and that to guard against such a
possibility it was best to raise a strong barrier of etiquette between
them. It is not, of course, to be supposed that these rules of
avoidance were the result of deliberate legislation; rather they were
the spontaneous and gradual growth of feelings and thoughts of which
the savages themselves perhaps had no clear consciousness. In what
precedes I have merely attempted to sum up in language intelligible to
civilized man the outcome of a long course of moral and social
evolution.
These considerations perhaps obviate to some extent the only serious
difficulty which lies in the way of the theory {95} here advocated.
[Sidenote: The mutual avoidance between persons of the same sex was
probably an extension by false analogy of the mutual avoidance between
persons of different sexes.] If the custom of avoidance was adopted
in order to guard against the danger of incest, how comes it that the
custom is often observed towards persons of the same sex, for example,
by a man towards his father-in-law as well as towards his
mother-in-law? The difficulty is undoubtedly serious: the only way of
meeting it that I can suggest is the one I have already indicated. We
may suppose that the deeply rooted beliefs of the savage in the fatal
effects of marriage between certain classes of persons, whether
relations by blood or connexions by marriage, gradually spread in his
mind so as to embrace the relations between men and men as well as
between men and women; till he had worked himself into the conviction
that to see or touch his father-in-law, for example, was nearly or
quite as dangerous as to touch or have improper relations with his
mother-in-law. It is no doubt easy for us to detect the flaw in this
process of reasoning; but we should beware of casting stones at the
illogical savage, for it is possible or even probable that many of our
own cherished convictions are no better founded.
[Sidenote: The custom of mutual avoidance between near relations has
probably had the effect of checking the practice of inbreeding.]
Viewed from this standpoint the customs of ceremonial avoidance among
savages assume a serious aspect very different from the appearance of
arbitrariness and absurdity which they are apt to present to the
civilized observer who does not look below the surface of savage
society. So far as these customs have helped, as they probably have
done, to suppress the tendency to inbreeding, that is, to the marriage
of near relations, we must conclude that their effect has been
salutary, if, as many eminent biologists hold, long-continued
inbreeding is injurious to the stock, whether animal or vegetable, by
rendering it in the end infertile.[95.1] However, men of science are
as yet by no means agreed as to the results of consanguineous
marriages, and a living authority on the subject has recently closed a
review of the evidence as follows: “When we take into account such
evidence as there is from animals and plants, and such studies as
those of Huth,[95.2] and {96} the instances and counter-instances of
communities with a high degree of consanguinity, we are led to the
conclusion that the prejudices and laws of many peoples against the
marriage of near kin rest on a basis not so much biological as
social.”[96.1] Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of science on
this disputed question, it will not affect the result of the present
enquiry, which merely affirms the deep and far-reaching influence
which in the long course of human history superstition has exercised
on morality. Whether the influence has on the whole been for good or
evil does not concern us. It suffices for our purpose to shew that
superstition has been a crutch to morality, whether to support it in
the fair way of virtue or to precipitate it into the miry pit of vice.
To return to the point from which we wandered into this digression, we
must leave in suspense the question whether the Australian savages
were wise or foolish who forbade a man under pain of death to speak to
his mother-in-law.
[Sidenote: Other examples of the severe punishment of sexual crime.]
I will conclude this part of my subject with a few more instances of
the extreme severity with which certain races have visited what they
deemed improper connexions between the sexes.
[Sidenote: The Indians of Brazil.] Among the Indians who inhabited
the coast of Brazil near Rio de Janeiro about the middle of the
sixteenth century, a married woman who gave birth to an illegitimate
child was either killed or abandoned to the caprice of the young men
who could not afford to keep a wife. Her child was buried alive; for
they said that were he to grow up he would only serve to perpetuate
his mother’s disgrace; he would not be allowed to go to war with the
rest for fear of the misfortunes and disasters he might draw down upon
them, and no one would eat any food, whether venison, fish, or what
not, which the miserable outcast had touched.[96.2] [Sidenote: The
natives of Ruanda.] In Ruanda, a district of Central Africa, down to
recent years any unmarried woman who was got with child used to be put
to death with her baby, whether born or unborn. A spot at the mouth of
the Akanyaru river was the place of execution, {97} where the guilty
women and their innocent offspring were hurled into the water. As
usual, this Puritanical strictness of morality has been relaxed under
European influence; illegitimate children are still killed, but their
mothers escape with the fine of a cow.[97.1] [Sidenote: The
Saxons.] Among the Saxons down to the days of St. Boniface the
adulteress or the maiden who had dishonoured her father’s house was
compelled to hang herself, was burned, and her paramour hung over the
blazing pile; or she was scourged or cut to pieces with knives by all
the women of the village till she was dead.[97.2] [Sidenote: The
Southern Slavs.] Among the Slav peoples of the Balkan peninsula women
convicted of immoral conduct used to be stoned to death. About the
year 1770 a young betrothed couple were thus executed near Cattaro in
Dalmatia, because the girl was found to be with child. The youth
offered to marry her, and the priest begged that the sentence of death
might be commuted to perpetual banishment; but the people declared
that they would not have a bastard born among them; and the two
fathers of the luckless couple threw the first stones at them. When
Miss M. Edith Durham related this case to some Montenegrin peasantry,
they all said that in the old days stoning was the proper punishment
for unchaste women; the male paramours were shot by the relations of
the girls whom they had seduced. When “that modern Messalina,” Queen
Draga of Servia, was murdered, a decent peasant woman remarked that
“she ought to be under the cursed stone heap” (_pod prokletu gomilu_).
The country-folk of Montenegro, who heard the news of the murder from
Miss Durham, “looked on it as a cleansing--a casting out of
abominations--and genuinely believed that Europe would commend the
deed, and that the removal of this sinful woman would bring prosperity
to the land.”[97.3] Even down to the second half of the {98}
nineteenth century in cases of seduction among the Southern Slavs the
people proposed to stone both the culprits to death.[98.1] This
happened, for example, in Herzegovina in the year 1859, when a young
man named Milutin seduced or (to be more exact) was seduced by three
unmarried girls and got them all with child. The people sat in
judgment upon the sinners, and, though an elder proposed to stone them
all, the court passed a milder sentence. The young man was to marry
one of the girls, to rear the infants of the other two as his
legitimate children, and next time there was a fight with the Turks he
was to prove his manhood by rushing unarmed upon the enemy and
wresting their weapons from them, alive or dead. The sentence was
fulfilled to the letter, though many years passed before the culprit
could carry out the last part of it. However, his time came in 1875,
when Herzegovina revolted against the Turks. Then Milutin ran unarmed
upon a regiment of the enemy and found among the Turkish bayonets a
hero’s death.[98.2] Even now the Old Catholics among the South Slavs
believe that a village in which a seducer is not compelled to marry
his victim will be punished with hail and excessive rain. For this
article of faith, however, they are ridiculed by their enlightened
Catholic neighbours, who hold the far more probable view that thunder
and lightning are caused by the village priest to revenge himself for
unreasonable delays in the payment of his salary. A heavy hail-storm
has been known to prove almost fatal to the local incumbent, who was
beaten within an inch of his life by his enraged parishioners.[98.3]
[Sidenote: Inference from the severe punishments inflicted for sexual
offences.] It is difficult to believe that in these and similar cases
the community would inflict such severe punishment for sexual offences
if it did not believe that its own safety, and not merely the interest
of a few individuals, was imperilled thereby.
{99}
[Sidenote: Why should illicit relations between the sexes be thought
to disturb the balance of nature?] If now we ask why illicit
relations between the sexes should be supposed to disturb the balance
of nature and particularly to blast the fruits of the earth, a partial
answer may be conjecturally suggested. It is not enough to say that
such relations are displeasing to the gods, who punish
indiscriminately the whole community for the sins of a few. For we
must always bear in mind that the gods are creations of man’s fancy;
he fashions them in human likeness, and endows them with tastes and
opinions which are merely vast cloudy projections of his own. To
affirm, therefore, that something is a sin because the gods will it
so, is only to push the enquiry one stage farther back and to raise
the further question, Why are the gods supposed to dislike and punish
these particular acts? [Sidenote: The reason why the gods of savages
are supposed to punish sexual crimes so severely may perhaps be found
in a mistaken belief that irregularities of the human sexes prevent
the reproduction of edible animals and plants and thereby strike a
fatal blow at the food supply.] In the case with which we are here
concerned, the reason why so many savage gods prohibit adultery,
fornication, and incest under pain of their severe displeasure may
perhaps be found in the analogy which many savage men trace between
the reproduction of the human species and the reproduction of animals
and plants. The analogy is not purely fanciful, on the contrary it is
real and vital; but primitive peoples have given it a false extension
in a vain attempt to apply it practically to increasing the food
supply. They have imagined, in fact, that by performing or abstaining
from certain sexual acts they thereby directly promoted the
reproduction of animals and the multiplication of plants.[99.1] All
such acts and abstinences, it is obvious, are purely superstitious and
wholly fail to effect the desired {100} result. They are not religious
but magical; that is, they compass their end, not by an appeal to the
gods, but by manipulating natural forces in accordance with certain
false ideas of physical causation. In the present case the principle
on which savages seek to propagate animals and plants is that of
magical sympathy or imitation: they fancy that they assist the
reproductive process in nature by mimicking or performing it among
themselves. Now in the evolution of society such efforts to control
the course of nature directly by means of magical rites appear to have
preceded the efforts to control it indirectly by appealing to the
vanity and cupidity, the good-nature and pity of the gods; in short,
magic seems to be older than religion.[100.1] In most races, it is
true, the epoch of unadulterated magic, of magic untinged by religion,
belongs to such a remote past that its existence, like that of our
ape-like ancestors, can be a matter of inference only; almost
everywhere in history and the world we find magic and religion side by
side, at one time allies, at another enemies, now playing into each
other’s hands, now cursing, objurgating, and vainly attempting to
exterminate one another. On the whole the lower intelligences cling
closely, though secretly, to magic, while the higher intelligences
have discerned the vanity of its pretensions and turned to religion
instead. The result has been that beliefs and rites which were purely
magical in origin often contract in course of time a religious
character; they are modified in accordance with the advance of
thought, they are translated into terms of gods and spirits, whether
good and beneficent, or evil and malignant. We may surmise, though we
cannot prove, that a change of this sort has come over the minds of
many races with regard to sexual morality. At some former time,
perhaps, straining a real analogy too far, they believed that those
relations of the human sexes which for any reason they regarded as
right and natural had a tendency to promote sympathetically the
propagation of animals and plants and thereby to ensure a supply of
food for the community; while on the contrary they may have imagined
that those relations of the human sexes which for any reason {101}
they deemed wrong and unnatural had a tendency to thwart and impede
the propagation of animals and plants and thereby to diminish the
common supply of food.
[Sidenote: Such a belief would account both for the horror with which
many savages regard such crimes, and for the severity with which they
punish them.] Such a belief, it is obvious, would furnish a
sufficient motive for the strict prohibition of what were deemed
improper relations between men and women; and it would explain the
deep horror and detestation with which sexual irregularities are
viewed by many, though certainly not by all, savage tribes. For if
improper relations between the human sexes prevent animals and plants
from multiplying, they strike a fatal blow at the existence of the
tribe by cutting off its supply of food at the roots. No wonder,
therefore, that wherever such superstitions have prevailed the whole
community, believing its very existence to be put in jeopardy by
sexual immorality, should turn savagely on the culprits, and beat,
burn, drown or otherwise exterminate them in order to rid itself of so
dangerous a pollution. And when with the advance of knowledge men
began to perceive the mistake they had made in imagining that the
commerce of the human sexes could affect the propagation of animals
and plants, they would still through long habit be so inured to the
idea of the wickedness of certain sexual relations that they could not
dismiss it from their minds, even when they discerned the fallacious
nature of the reasoning by which they had arrived at it. The old
practice would therefore stand, though the old theory had fallen: the
old rules of sexual morality would continue to be observed, but if
they were to retain the respect of the community, it was necessary to
place them on a new theoretical basis. That basis, in accordance with
the general advance of thought, was supplied by religion. Sexual
relations which had once been condemned as wrong and unnatural because
they were supposed to thwart the natural multiplication of animals and
plants and thereby to diminish the food supply, would now be condemned
because it was imagined that they were displeasing to gods or spirits,
those stalking-horses which savage man rigs out in the cast-off
clothes of his still more savage ancestors. The moral practice would
therefore remain the same, though its theoretical basis had been
shifted from magic to religion. In this or some such way as this {102}
we may conjecture that the Karens, Dyaks, and other savages reached
those curious conceptions of sexual immorality and its consequences
which we have been considering. But from the nature of the case the
development of moral theory which I have sketched is purely
hypothetical and hardly admits of verification.
[Sidenote: But the reason why savages came to regard certain sexual
relations as irregular and immoral remains obscure.] However, even if
we assume for a moment that the savages in question reached their
present view of sexual immorality in the way I have surmised, there
still remains the question, How did they originally come to regard
certain relations of the sexes as immoral? For clearly the notion that
such immorality interferes with the course of nature must have been
secondary and derivative: people must on independent grounds have
concluded that certain relations between men and women were wrong and
injurious before they extended the conclusion by false analogy to
nature. The question brings us face to face with the deepest and
darkest problem in the history of society, the problem of the origin
of the laws which still regulate marriage and the relations of the
sexes among civilized nations; for broadly speaking the fundamental
laws which we recognize in these matters are recognized also by
savages, with this difference, that among many savages the sexual
prohibitions are far more numerous, the horror excited by breaches of
them far deeper, and the punishment inflicted on the offenders far
sterner than with us. The problem has often been attacked, but never
solved. Perhaps it is destined, like so many riddles of that Sphinx
which we call nature, to remain for ever insoluble. At all events this
is not the place to broach so intricate and profound a discussion. I
return to my immediate subject.
[Sidenote: Sexual immorality is thought by many savages to injure the
delinquents themselves, their offspring, and their innocent spouses.]
In the opinion of many savages the effect of sexual immorality is not
merely to disturb, directly or indirectly, the course of nature by
blighting the crops, causing the earth to quake, volcanoes to vomit
fire, and so forth: the delinquents themselves, their offspring, or
their innocent spouses are supposed to suffer in their own persons for
the sin that has been committed. Thus among the Baganda of Central
Africa “adultery was also regarded as a danger to children; it was
thought that women who were guilty of it {103} during pregnancy caused
the child to die, either prior to birth, or at the time of birth.
Sometimes the guilty woman would herself die in childbed; or, if she
was safely delivered, she would have a tendency to devour her child,
and would have to be guarded lest she should kill it.”[103.1] “When
there was a case of retarded delivery, the relatives attributed it to
adultery; they made the woman confess the name of the man with whom
she had had intercourse, and if she died, her husband was fined by the
members of her clan, for they said: ‘We did not give our daughter to
you for the purpose of adultery, and you should have guarded her.’ In
most cases, however, the medicine-men were able to save the woman’s
life, and upon recovery she was upbraided, and the man whom she
accused was heavily fined.”[103.2] The Baganda thought that the
infidelity of the father as well as of the mother endangered the life
of the child. For “it was also supposed that a man who had sexual
intercourse with any woman not his wife, during the time that any one
of his wives was nursing a child, would cause the child to fall ill,
and that unless he confessed his guilt and obtained from the
medicine-man the necessary remedies to cancel the evil results, the
child would die.”[103.3] The common childish ailment which was
thought to be caused by the adultery of the father or mother was
called _amakiro_, and its symptoms were well recognized: they
consisted of nausea and general debility, and the only cure for them
was a frank confession by the guilty parent and the performance of a
magical ceremony by the medicine-man.[103.4]
[Sidenote: Disastrous effects of adultery on adulteress and her
child.] Similar views as to the disastrous effects of adultery on
mother and child seem to be widespread among Bantu tribes. Thus among
the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, when both mother and child die in
childbirth, great horror is expressed by all, who assert that the
woman must assuredly have committed adultery with many men to suffer
such a fate. They exhort her even with her last breath to name the
{104} adulterer; and whoever is mentioned by her is called the
“murderer” (_musoka_) and has afterwards to pay a heavy fine to the
injured husband. Similarly if the child is born dead and the mother
survives, the Awemba take it for granted that the woman has been
unfaithful to her husband, and they ask her to name the murderer of
her child, that is, the man whose guilty love has been the death of
the babe.[104.1] In like manner the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South
Africa, about Delagoa Bay, are of opinion that if a woman’s travail
pangs are unduly prolonged or she fails to bring her offspring to the
birth, she must certainly have committed adultery, and they insist
upon her making a clean breast as the only means of ensuring her
delivery; should she suppress the name even of one of several lovers
with whom she may have gone astray, the child cannot be born. So
convinced are the women of the sufferings which adultery, if
unacknowledged, entails on the guilty mother in childbed, that a woman
who knows her child to be illegitimate will privately confess her sin
to the midwife before she is actually brought to bed, in the hope
thereby of alleviating and shortening her travail pangs.[104.2]
[Sidenote: Sympathetic relation between an adulterer and the injured
husband.] Further, the Thonga believe that adultery establishes a
physical relationship of mutual sympathy between the adulterer and the
injured husband such that the life of the one is in a manner bound up
with the life of the other; indeed this relationship is thought to
arise between any two men who have had sexual connexion with the same
woman. As a native put it to a missionary, “They have met together in
one life through the blood of that woman; they have drunk from the
same pool.” To express it otherwise, they have formed a blood covenant
with each other through the woman as intermediary. “This establishes
between them a most curious mutual dependence: should one of them be
ill, the other must not visit him; the patient might die. If he runs
a thorn into his foot, the other must not help him to extract it. It
is taboo. The wound would not heal. If he dies, his rival must not
assist at his mourning or he would die {105} himself.” Hence if a man
has committed adultery, as sometimes happens, with one of his father’s
younger wives, and the father dies, his undutiful son may not take the
part which would otherwise fall to him in the funeral rites; indeed
should he attempt to attend the burial, his relations would drive him
away in pity, lest by this mark of respect and perhaps of remorse he
should forfeit his life.[105.1] [Sidenote: Injurious effects of
adultery on the innocent husband, wife, or child.] In like manner the
Akikuyu of British East Africa believe that if a son has adulterous
intercourse with one of his father’s wives, the innocent father, not
the guilty young scapegrace, contracts a dangerous pollution
(_thahu_), the effect of which is to make him ill and emaciated or to
break out into sores or boils, and even in all probability to die, if
the danger is not averted by the timely intervention of a
medicine-man.[105.2] The Anyanja of British Central Africa believe
that if a man commits adultery while his wife is with child, she will
die; hence on the death of his wife the widower is often roundly
accused of having killed her by his infidelity.[105.3] Without going
so far as this, the Masai of German East Africa hold that if a father
were to touch his infant on the day after he had been guilty of
adultery, the child would fall sick.[105.4] According to the Akamba
of British East Africa, if a woman after giving birth to a child is
false to her husband before her first menstruation, the child will
surely die.[105.5] [Sidenote: Injurious effects of incest on the
offspring.] The Akamba are also of opinion that if a woman is guilty
of incest with her brother she will be unable to bring to the birth
the seed which she has conceived by him. In that case the man must
purge his sin by bringing a big goat to the elders, and the woman is
ceremonially smeared with the contents of the {106} animal’s
stomach.[106.1] Among the Washamba of German East Africa it happened
that a married woman lost three children, one after the other, by
death. A diviner being called in to ascertain the cause of this
calamity, attributed it to incest of which she had been accidentally
guilty with her father.[106.2]
[Sidenote: Wife’s infidelity at home thought to endanger the absent
husband in the chase or the war.] Again, it appears to be a common
notion with savages that the infidelity of a wife prevents her husband
from killing game, and even exposes him to imminent risk of being
himself killed or wounded by wild beasts. This belief is entertained
by the Wagogo and other peoples of East Africa, by the Moxos Indians
of Bolivia, and by Aleutian hunters of sea-otters. In such cases any
mishap that befalls the husband during the chase is set down by him to
the score of his wife’s misconduct at home; he returns in wrath and
visits his ill-luck on the often innocent object of his suspicions
even, it may be, to the shedding of her blood.[106.3] While the
Huichol Indians of Mexico are away seeking for a species of cactus
which they regard as sacred, their women at home are bound to be
strictly chaste; otherwise they believe that they would be visited
with illness and would endanger the success of the men’s
expedition.[106.4] An old writer on Madagascar tells us that though
Malagasy women are voluptuous they will not allow themselves to be
drawn into an intrigue while their husbands are absent at the wars,
for they believe that infidelity at such a time would cause the absent
spouse to be wounded or slain.[106.5] The Baganda of Central Africa
held similar views as to the fatal effect which a wife’s adultery at
home might have on her absent husband at the wars; they thought that
the gods resented her misconduct and withdrew their favour and
protection from her warrior spouse, thus punishing the innocent
instead of the guilty. Indeed, it was believed that {107} if a woman
were even to touch a man’s clothing while her husband was away with
the army, it would bring misfortune on her husband’s weapon, and might
even cost him his life. The gods of the Baganda were most particular
about women strictly observing the taboos during their husbands’
absence and having nothing to do with other men all that time. On his
return from the war a man tested his wife’s fidelity by drinking water
from a gourd which she handed to him before he entered his house. If
she had been unfaithful to him during his absence, the water was
supposed to make him ill; hence should it chance that he fell sick
after drinking the draught, his wife was at once clapped into the
stocks and tried for adultery; and if she confessed her guilt and
named her paramour, the offender was heavily fined or even put to
death.[107.1] Similarly among the Bangala or the Boloki of the Upper
Congo, “when men went to fight distant towns their wives were expected
not to commit adultery with such men as were left in the town, or
their husbands would receive spear wounds from the enemy. The sisters
of the fighters would take every precaution to guard against the
adultery of their brothers’ wives while they were on the
expedition.”[107.2] So among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte
Islands, while the men were away at the wars, their wives “all slept
in one house to keep watch over each other; for, if a woman were
unfaithful to her husband while he was with a war-party, he would
probably be killed.”[107.3] If only King David had held this belief
he might have contented himself with a single instead of a double
crime, and need not have sent his Machiavellian order to put the
injured husband in the forefront of the battle.[107.4]
[Sidenote: Injurious effect of wife’s infidelity on her husband.]
The Zulus imagine that an unfaithful wife who touches her husband’s
furniture without first eating certain herbs causes him to be seized
with a fit of coughing of which he soon dies. Moreover, among the
Zulus “a man who has {108} had criminal intercourse with a sick
person’s wife is prohibited from visiting the sick-chamber; and, if
the sick person is a woman, any female who has committed adultery with
her husband must not visit her. They say that, if these visits ever
take place, the patient is immediately oppressed with a cold
perspiration and dies. This prohibition was thought to find out the
infidelities of the women and to make them fear discovery.”[108.1]
[Sidenote: African chiefs thought to be injuriously affected by the
incontinence of their subjects.] For a similar reason, apparently,
during the sickness of a Caffre chief his tribe was bound to observe
strict continence under pain of death.[108.2] The notion seems to
have been that any act of incontinence would through some sort of
magical sympathy prove fatal to the sick chief. The Ovakumbi, a tribe
in the south of Angola, think that the carnal intercourse of young
people under the age of puberty would cause the king to die within the
year, if it were not severely punished. The punishment for such a
treasonable offence used to be death.[108.3] Similarly, in the
kingdom of Congo, when the sacred pontiff, called the Chitomé, was
going his rounds throughout the country, all his subjects had to live
strictly chaste, and any person found guilty of incontinence at such
times was put to death without mercy. They thought that universal
chastity was essential to the preservation of the life of the pontiff,
whom they revered as the head of their religion and their common
father. Accordingly when he was abroad he took care to warn his
faithful subjects by a public crier, that no man might plead ignorance
as an excuse for a breach of the law.[108.4]
[Sidenote: Injurious effects of adultery on the adulteress.]
Speaking of the same region of West Africa, an old writer tells us
that “conjugal chastity is singularly respected among these people;
adultery is placed in the list of the greatest crimes. By an opinion
generally received, the women are persuaded that if they were to
render themselves guilty of infidelity, the greatest misfortunes would
overwhelm {109} them, unless they averted them by an avowal made to
their husbands, and in obtaining their pardon for the injury they
might have done.”[109.1] [Sidenote: Dangerous pollution supposed to
be incurred by unchastity.] The Looboos of Sumatra think that an
unmarried young woman who has been got with child falls thereby into a
dangerous state called _looï_, which is such that she spreads
misfortune wherever she goes. Hence when she enters a house, the
people try to drive her out by force.[109.2] Amongst the Sulka of New
Britain unmarried people who have been guilty of unchastity are
believed to contract thereby a fatal pollution (_sle_) of which they
will die, if they do not confess their fault and undergo a public
ceremony of purification. Such persons are avoided: no one will take
anything at their hands: parents point them out to their children and
warn them not to go near them. The infection which they are supposed
to spread is apparently physical rather than moral in its nature; for
special care is taken to keep the paraphernalia of the dance out of
their way, the mere presence of persons so polluted being thought to
tarnish the paint on the instruments. Men who have contracted this
dangerous taint rid themselves of it by drinking sea-water mixed with
shredded coco-nut and ginger, after which they are thrown into the
sea. Emerging from the water they put off the dripping clothes which
they wore during their state of defilement and cast them away. This
purification is believed to save their lives, which otherwise must
have been destroyed by their unchastity.[109.3] Among the Buduma of
Lake Chad, in Central Africa, at the present day “a child born out of
wedlock is looked on as a disgrace, and must be drowned. If this is
not done, great misfortunes {110} will happen to the tribe. All the
men will fall sick, and the women, cows and goats will become
barren.”[110.1]
[Sidenote: Conclusion.] These examples may suffice to shew that
among many races sexual immorality, whether in the form of adultery,
fornication, or incest, is believed of itself to entail, naturally and
inevitably, without the intervention of society, most serious
consequences not only on the culprits themselves, but also on the
community, often indeed to menace the very existence of the whole
people by destroying the food supply. I need hardly remind you that
all these beliefs are entirely baseless; no such consequences flow
from such acts; in short, the beliefs in question are a pure
superstition. Yet we cannot doubt that wherever this superstition has
existed it must have served as a powerful motive to deter men from
adultery, fornication, and incest. If that is so, then I think I have
proved my third proposition, which is, that among certain races and at
certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage,
and has thereby contributed to the stricter observance of the rules of
sexual morality both among the married and the unmarried.
V.
RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE
{111}
[Sidenote: Superstition as a prop to the security of human life.] I
pass now to my fourth and last proposition, which is, that among
certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the
respect for human life and has thereby contributed to the security of
its enjoyment.
[Sidenote: The fear of ghosts.] The particular superstition which
has had this salutary effect is the fear of ghosts, especially the
ghosts of the murdered. The fear of ghosts is widespread, perhaps
universal, among savages; it is hardly extinct among ourselves. If it
were extinct, some learned societies might put up their shutters. Dead
or alive, the fear of ghosts has certainly not been an unmixed
blessing. Indeed it might with some show of reason be maintained that
no belief has done so much to retard the economic and thereby the
social progress of mankind as the belief in the immortality of the
soul; for this belief has led race after race, generation after
generation, to sacrifice the real wants of the living to the imaginary
wants of the dead. The waste and destruction of life and property
which this faith has entailed are enormous and incalculable.
[Sidenote: Disastrous consequences entailed by the fear of the
dead.] Without entering into details I will illustrate by a single
example the disastrous economic, political, and moral consequences
which flow from that systematic destruction of property which the fear
of the dead has imposed on many races. Speaking of the Patagonians,
the well-informed and intelligent traveller d’Orbigny observes: “They
have no laws, no punishments inflicted on the guilty. Each lives as he
pleases, and the greatest thief is the most highly esteemed, because
he is the most dexterous. A motive {112} which will always prevent
them from abandoning the practice of theft, and at the same time will
always present an obstacle to their ever forming fixed settlements, is
the religious prejudice which, on the death of one of their number,
obliges them to destroy his property. A Patagonian, who has amassed
during the whole of his life an estate by thieving from the whites or
exchanging the products of the chase with neighbouring tribes, has
done nothing for his heirs; all his savings are destroyed with him,
and his children are obliged to rebuild their fortunes afresh,--a
custom which, I may observe in passing, is found also among the
Tamanaques of the Orinoco, who ravage the field of the deceased and
cut down the trees which he has planted;[112.1] and among the
Yuracares, who abandon and shut up the house of the dead, regarding it
as a profanation to gather a single fruit from the trees of his field.
It is easy to see that with such customs they can nourish no real
ambition since their needs are limited to themselves; it is one of the
causes of their natural indolence and is a motive which, so long as it
exists, will always impede the progress of their civilization. Why
should they trouble themselves about the future when they have nothing
to hope from it? The present is all in all in their eyes, and their
only interest is individual; the son will take no care of his father’s
herd, since it will never come into his possession; he busies himself
only with his own affairs and soon turns his thoughts to looking after
himself and getting a livelihood. This custom has certainly something
to commend it from the moral point of view in so far as it destroys
all the motives for that covetousness in heirs which is too often to
be seen in our cities. The desire or the hope of a speedy death of
their parents cannot exist, since the parents leave absolutely nothing
to their children; but on the other hand, if the Patagonians had
preserved hereditary properties, they would without doubt have been
to-day in possession of numerous herds, and would necessarily have
been more formidable to the whites, since their power in that case
would have been more than doubled, whereas their present habits will
infallibly leave them in a stationary state, from which nothing but a
radical change {113} will be able to deliver them.”[113.1] Thus
poverty, indolence, improvidence, political weakness, and all the
hardships of a nomadic life are the miserable inheritance which the
fear of the dead entails on these wretched Indians. Heavy indeed is
the toll which superstition exacts from all who pass within her gloomy
portal.
[Sidenote: Fear of the ghosts of the slain a check on murder.] But I
am not here concerned with the disastrous and deplorable consequences,
the unspeakable follies and crimes and miseries, which have flowed in
practice from the theory of a future life. My business at present is
with the more cheerful side of the subject, with the wholesome, though
groundless, terror which ghosts, apparitions, and spectres strike into
the breasts of hardened ruffians and desperadoes. So far as such
persons reflect at all and regulate their passions by the dictates of
prudence, it seems plain that a fear of ghostly retribution, of the
angry spirit of their victim, must act as a salutary restraint on
their disorderly impulses; it must reinforce the dread of purely
secular punishment and furnish the choleric and malicious with a fresh
motive for pausing before they imbrue their hands in blood. This is so
obvious, and the fear of ghosts is so notorious, that both might
perhaps be taken for granted, especially at this late hour of the
evening. But for the sake of completeness I will mention a few
illustrative facts, taking them almost at random from distant races in
order to indicate the wide diffusion of this particular superstition.
I shall try to shew that while all ghosts are feared, the ghosts of
slain men are especially dreaded by their slayers.
[Sidenote: Ancient Greek belief as to the anger of a ghost at his
slayer.] The ancient Greeks believed that the soul of any man who had
just been killed was angry with his slayer and troubled him; hence
even an involuntary homicide had to {114} depart from his country for
a year until the wrath 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 country of the dead man as well as his
own.[114.1] The legend of the matricide Orestes, how he roamed from
place to place pursued and maddened by the ghost of his murdered
mother, reflects faithfully the ancient Greek conception of the fate
which overtakes the murderer at the hands of the ghost.[114.2]
[Sidenote: Among the Greeks a manslayer was dreaded and shunned
because he was thought to be haunted by the angry and dangerous ghost
of his victim.] But it is important to observe that not only does the
hag-ridden homicide go in terror of his victim’s ghost; he is himself
an object of fear and aversion to the whole community on account of
the angry and dangerous spirit which dogs his steps. It was probably
more in self-defence than out of consideration for the manslayer that
Attic law compelled him to quit the country. This comes out clearly
from the provisions of the law. For in the first place, on going into
banishment the homicide had to follow a prescribed road:[114.3]
obviously it would have been hazardous to let him stray about the
country with a wrathful ghost at his heels. In the second place, if
another charge was brought against a banished homicide, he was allowed
to return to Attica to plead in his defence, but he might not set foot
on land; he had to speak from a ship, and even the ship might not cast
anchor or put out a gangway. The judges avoided all contact with the
culprit, for they judged the case sitting or standing on the
shore.[114.4] Plainly the intention of this rule was literally to
insulate the slayer, lest by touching Attic earth even indirectly
through the anchor or the gangway he should blast it by a sort of
electric shock, as we might say; though doubtless the Greeks would
have said that the blight was wrought by contact with the ghost, by a
sort of effluence of death. For the same reason if such a man, sailing
the {115} sea, happened to be wrecked on the coast of the country
where his crime had been committed, he was allowed to camp on the
shore till a ship came to take him off, but he was expected to keep
his feet in sea-water all the time,[115.1] evidently to neutralise
the ghostly infection and prevent it from spreading to the soil. For
the same reason, when the turbulent people of Cynaetha in Arcadia had
perpetrated a peculiarly atrocious massacre and had sent envoys to
Sparta, all the Arcadian states through which the envoys took their
way ordered them out of the country; and after their departure the
Mantineans purified themselves and their belongings by sacrificing
victims and carrying them round the city and the whole of their
land.[115.2] So when the Athenians had heard of a massacre at Argos,
they caused purificatory offerings to be carried round the public
assembly.[115.3]
[Sidenote: The legend of Orestes reflects the Greek horror of a
manslayer.] No doubt the root of all such observances was a fear of
the dangerous ghost which haunts the murderer and against which the
whole community as well as the homicide himself must be on its guard.
The Greek practice in these respects is clearly mirrored in the legend
of Orestes; for it is said that the people of Troezen would not
receive him in their houses until he had been purified of his
guilt,[115.4] that is, until he had been rid of his mother’s ghost.
The Akikuyu of British East Africa think that if a man who has killed
another comes and sleeps at a village and eats with a family in their
hut, the persons with whom he has eaten contract a dangerous pollution
which might prove fatal to them were it not removed in time by a
medicine-man. The very skin on which the homicide slept has absorbed
the taint and might infect any one else who slept on it. So a
medicine-man is sent for to purify the hut and its occupants.[115.5]
[Sidenote: Manslayers purged of the stain of human blood by being
smeared with the blood of pigs.] The {116} Greek mode of purifying a
homicide was to kill a sucking pig and wash the hands of the guilty
man in its blood: until this ceremony had been performed the manslayer
was not allowed to speak.[116.1] Among the hill-tribes near Rajamahal
in Bengal, if two men quarrel and blood be shed, the one who cut the
other is fined a hog or a fowl, “the blood of which is sprinkled over
the wounded person, to purify him, and to prevent his being possessed
by a devil.”[116.2] In this case the blood-sprinkling is avowedly
intended to prevent the man from being haunted by a spirit; only it is
not the aggressor but his victim who is supposed to be in danger and
therefore to stand in need of purification. We have seen that among
these and other savage tribes pig’s blood is sprinkled on persons and
things as a mode of purifying them from the pollution of sexual
crimes.[116.3] Among the Cameroon negroes in West Africa accidental
homicide can be expiated by the blood of an animal. The relations of
the slayer and of the slain assemble. An animal is killed, and every
person present is smeared with its blood on his face and breast. They
think that the guilt of manslaughter is thus atoned for, and that no
punishment will overtake the homicide.[116.4] In Car Nicobar a man
possessed by devils is cleansed of them by being rubbed all over with
pig’s blood and beaten with leaves. The devils are supposed to be thus
swept off like flies from the man’s body to the leaves, which are then
folded up and tied tightly with a special kind of string. A
professional exorciser administers the beating, and at every stroke
with the leaves he falls down with his face on the floor and calls out
in a squeaky {117} voice, “Here is a devil.” This ceremony is
performed by night; and before daybreak all the packets of leaves
containing the devils are thrown into the sea.[117.1] The Greeks
similarly used laurel leaves as well as pig’s blood in purificatory
ceremonies.[117.2] In all such cases we may assume that the
purification was originally conceived as physical rather than as
moral, as a sort of detergent which washed, swept, or scraped the
ghostly or demoniacal pollution from the person of the ghost-haunted
or demon-possessed man. The motive for employing blood in these rites
of cleansing is not clear. Perhaps the purgative virtue ascribed to it
may have been based on the notion that the offended spirit accepts the
blood as a substitute for the blood of the man or woman.[117.3]
However, it is doubtful whether this explanation could cover all the
cases in which blood is sprinkled as a mode of purification. Certainly
it is odd, as the sage Heraclitus long ago remarked, that blood-stains
should be thought to be removed by blood-stains, as if a man who had
been bespattered with mud should think to cleanse himself by
bespattering himself with more mud.[117.4] But the ways of man are
wonderful and sometimes past finding out.
[Sidenote: The matricide Orestes is said to have recovered his wits
by biting off one of his own fingers.] There was a curious story that
after Orestes had gone mad through murdering his mother he recovered
his wits by biting off one of his own fingers; the Furies of his
murdered mother, which had appeared black to him before, appeared
white as soon as he had mutilated himself in this way: it was as if
the taste of his own blood sufficed to avert or disarm the wrathful
ghost.[117.5] A hint of the way in which the blood may have been
supposed to produce this result is furnished by the practice of some
savages. [Sidenote: Manslayers commonly taste their victims’ blood in
order not to be haunted by their ghosts.] The Indians of Guiana
believe that an avenger of blood who has slain his man must go mad
unless he tastes the blood of his victim; the notion apparently is
that the ghost drives him crazy, {118} just as the ghost of
Clytemnestra did to Orestes, who was also, be it remembered, an
avenger of blood. In order to avert this consequence the Indian
manslayer resorts on the third night to the grave of his victim,
pierces the corpse with a sharp-pointed stick, and withdrawing it
sucks the blood of the murdered man. After that he goes home with an
easy mind, satisfied that he has done his duty and that he has nothing
more to fear from the ghost.[118.1] A similar custom was observed by
the Maoris in battle. When a warrior had slain his foe in combat, he
tasted his blood, believing that this preserved him from the avenging
spirit (_atua_) of his victim; for they imagined that “the moment a
slayer had tasted the blood of the slain, the dead man became a part
of his being and placed him under the protection of the _atua_ or
guardian-spirit of the deceased.”[118.2] Thus in the opinion of these
savages, by swallowing a portion of their victim they made him a part
of themselves and thereby converted him from an enemy into an ally;
they established, in the strictest sense of the words, a
blood-covenant with him. The Aricara Indians also drank the blood of
their slain foes and proclaimed the deed by the mark of a red hand on
their faces.[118.3] The motive for this practice may have been, as
with the Maoris, a desire to appropriate and so disarm the ghost of an
enemy. In antiquity some of the Scythians used to drink the blood of
the first foes they killed; and they also tasted the blood of the
friends with whom they made a covenant, for “they take that to be the
surest pledge of good faith.”[118.4] [Sidenote: Homicides supposed
to go mad unless they taste the blood of their victim.] The motive of
the two customs was probably the same. “To the present day, when a
person of another tribe has been slain by a Nandi, the blood must be
carefully washed off the spear or sword into a cup made of grass, and
drunk by the slayer. If this is not done it is thought that the man
will become frenzied.”[118.5] So {119} among some tribes of the Lower
Niger “it is customary and necessary for the executioner to lick the
blood that is on the blade”; moreover “the custom of licking the blood
off the blade of a sword by which a man has been killed in war is
common to all these tribes, and the explanation given me by the Ibo,
which is generally accepted, is, that if this was not done, the act of
killing would so affect the strikers as to cause them to run amok
among their own people; because the sight and smell of blood render
them absolutely senseless as well as regardless of all consequences.
And this licking the blood is the only sure remedy, and the only way
in which they can recover themselves.”[119.1] So, too, among the
Shans of Burma “it was the curious custom of executioners to taste the
blood of their victims, as they believed if this were not done illness
and death would follow in a short time. In remote times Shan soldiers
always bit the bodies of men killed by them in battle.”[119.2]
Strange as it may seem, this truly savage superstition exists
apparently in Italy to this day. There is a widespread opinion in
Calabria that if a murderer is to escape he must suck his victim’s
blood from the reeking blade of the dagger with which he did the
deed.[119.3] We can now perhaps understand why the matricide Orestes
was thought to have recovered his wandering wits as soon as he had
bitten off one of his fingers. By tasting his own blood, which was
also that of his victim, since she was his mother, he might be
supposed to form a blood-covenant with the ghost and so to convert it
from a foe into a friend. [Sidenote: Various precautions taken by
manslayers against the ghosts of their victims.] The Kabyles of North
Africa think that if a murderer leaps seven times over his victim’s
grave within three or seven days of the murder, he will be quite safe.
Hence the fresh grave of a murdered man is carefully guarded.[119.4]
The Lushai {120} of North-Eastern India believe that if a man kills an
enemy the ghost of his victim will haunt him and he will go mad,
unless he performs a certain ceremony which will make him master of
the dead man’s soul in the other world. The ceremony includes the
sacrifice of an animal, whether a pig, a goat, or a mithan.[120.1]
Among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, “according to a superstition
common among Central African tribes, unless the slayers were purified
from blood-guiltiness they would become mad. On the night of return no
warrior might sleep in his own hut, but lay in the open _nsaka_ in the
village. The next day, after bathing in the stream and being anointed
with lustral medicine by the doctor, he could return to his own
hearth, and resume intercourse with his wife.”[120.2] In all such
cases the madness of the slayer is probably attributed to the ghost of
the slain, which has taken possession of him.
[Sidenote: The custom of secluding and purifying homicides is
intended to protect them against the angry spirits of the slain, which
are thought to madden their slayers.] That the Greek practice of
secluding and purifying a homicide was essentially an exorcism, in
other words, that its aim was to ban the dangerous ghost of his
victim, is rendered practically certain by the similar rites of
seclusion and purification which among many savage tribes have to be
observed by victorious warriors with the avowed intention of securing
them against the spirits of the men whom they have slain in battle.
These rites I have illustrated elsewhere,[120.3] but a few cases may
be quoted here by way of example. Thus among the Basutos “ablution is
especially 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.”[120.4] According to another account of the Basuto
custom, “warriors {121} who have killed an enemy are purified. The
chief has to wash them, sacrificing an ox in the presence of the whole
army. They are also anointed with the gall of the animal, which
prevents the ghost of the enemy from pursuing them any
farther.”[121.1] Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South Africa,
about Delagoa Bay, “to have killed an enemy on the battle-field
entails an immense glory for the slayers; but that glory is fraught
with great danger. They have killed.… So they are exposed to the
mysterious and deadly influence of the _nuru_ and must consequently
undergo a medical treatment. What is the _nuru_? _Nuru_, the spirit of
the slain which tries to take its revenge on the slayer. It haunts him
and may drive him into insanity: his eyes swell, protrude and become
inflamed. He will lose his head, be attacked by giddiness
(_ndzululwan_) and the thirst for blood may lead him to fall upon
members of his own family and to stab them with his assagay. To
prevent such misfortunes, a special medication is required: the
slayers must _lurulula tiyimpì ta bu_, take away the _nuru_ of their
sanguinary expedition.… In what consists this treatment? The slayers
must remain for some days at the capital. They are taboo. They put on
old clothes, eat with special spoons, because their hands are ‘hot,’
and off special plates (_mireko_) and broken pots. They are forbidden
to drink water. Their food must be cold. The chief kills oxen for
them; but if the meat were hot it would make them swell internally
‘because they are hot themselves, they are defiled (_ba na nsila_).’
If they eat hot food, the defilement would enter into them. ‘They are
black (_ntima_). This black must be removed.’ During all this time
sexual relations are absolutely forbidden to them. They must not go
home, to their wives. In former times the Ba-Ronga used to tattoo them
with special marks from one eyebrow to the other. Dreadful medicines
were inoculated in the incisions, and there remained pimples ‘which
gave them the appearance of a buffalo when it frowns.’ After some days
a medicine-man comes to purify them, ‘to remove their black.’ There
seem to be various means of doing it, according to Mankhelu. Seeds of
all kinds are put into a {122} broken pot and roasted, together with
drugs and _psanyi_[122.1] of a goat. The slayers inhale the smoke
which emanates from the pot. They put their hands into the mixture and
rub their limbs with it, especially the joints.… Insanity threatening
those who shed blood might begin early. So, already on the
battle-field, just after their deed, warriors are given a preventive
dose of the medicine by those who have killed on previous occasions.…
The period of seclusion having been concluded by the final
purification, all the implements used by the slayers during these
days, and their old garments, are tied together and hung by a string
to a tree, at some distance from the capital, where they are left to
rot.”[122.2]
[Sidenote: With some savages temporary insanity seems to be really
caused by the sight or even thought of blood.] The accounts of the
madness which is apt to befall slayers seem too numerous and too
consistent to be dismissed as pure fictions of the savage imagination.
However we may reject the native explanation of such fits of frenzy,
the reports point to a real berserker fury or unbridled thirst for
blood which comes over savages when they are excited by combat, and
which may prove dangerous to friends as well as to foes. The question
is one on which students of mental disease might perhaps throw light.
Meantime it deserves to be noticed that even the people who have staid
at home and have taken no share in the bloody work are liable to fall
into a state of frenzy when they hear the war-whoops which proclaim
the approach of the victorious warriors with their ghastly trophies.
Thus we are told that among the Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central
Celebes, when these notes of triumph were heard in the distance the
whole population of the village would turn out to meet and welcome the
returning braves. At the mere sound some of those who had remained at
home, especially women, would be seized with a frenzy, and rushing
forth would bite the severed heads of the slain foes, and they were
not to be brought to their senses till they had drunk palm wine or
water out of the skulls. If the warriors returned empty-handed, these
{123} furies would fall upon them and bite their arms. There was a
regular expression for this state of temporary insanity excited by the
sight or even the thought of human blood; it was called _merata
lamoanja_ or _merata raoa_, “the spirit is come over them,” by which
was probably meant that the madness was caused by the ghosts of the
slaughtered foes. When any of the warriors themselves suffered from
this paroxysm of frenzy, they were healed by eating a piece of the
brains or licking the blood of the slain.[123.1]
[Sidenote: Means taken by manslayers in Africa to rid themselves of
the ghosts of their victims.] Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in
British East Africa, 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 cow’s dung, over his body to prevent the
spirit of the slain man from troubling him.[123.2] Here cow’s dung
serves these negroes as a detergent of the ghost, just as pig’s blood
served the ancient Greeks. Among the Wawanga, about Mount Elgon in
British East Africa, “a man returning from a raid, on which he has
killed one of the enemy, may not enter his hut until he has taken
cow-dung and rubbed it on the cheeks of the women and children of the
village and purified himself by the sacrifice of a goat, a strip of
skin from the forehead of which he wears round the right wrist during
the four following nights.”[123.3] 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.[123.4] In some of these cases the
slayer shaves his head, precisely as the matricide Orestes is said to
have shorn his hair when he came to his senses.[123.5] From this
Greek tradition we may infer with some probability that the hair of
Greek homicides, {124} like that of these African warriors, was
regularly cropped as one way of ridding them of the ghostly infection.
Among the Ba-Yaka, a Bantu people of the Congo Free State, “a man who
has been killed in battle is supposed to send his soul to avenge his
death on the person of the man who killed him; the latter, however,
can escape the vengeance of the dead by wearing the red tail-feathers
of the parrot in his hair, and painting his forehead red.”[124.1]
Perhaps, as I have suggested elsewhere, this costume is intended to
disguise the slayer from his victim’s ghost.[124.2] [Sidenote:
Precautions taken by the Natchez Indians.] 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.[124.3]
[Sidenote: Ghosts of the slain dreaded by the Kai of German New
Guinea.] The Kai of German New Guinea stand in great fear of the
ghosts of the men whom they have slain in war. On their way back from
the field of battle or the scene of massacre they hurry in order to be
safe at home or in the shelter of a friendly village before nightfall;
for all night long the spirits of the dead are believed to dog the
footsteps of their slayers, in the hope of coming up with them and
recovering the lost portions of their souls which adhere with the
clots of their blood to the spears and clubs that dealt them the
death-blow. Only so can these poor restless ghosts find rest and
peace. Hence the slayers are careful not to bring back the
blood-stained weapons with them into the village; for that would be
the first place where the ghosts would look for them. They hide them,
therefore, in the forest at a safe distance from the village, where
the ghosts can never find them; and when the spirits are weary of the
fruitless search, they go away back to their dead bodies lying, it may
be, among the blackened ruins of their {125} desolated home. Then the
victors come forth, and taking up the weapons from their
hiding-places, wash them clean of blood and bring them back to the
village.[125.1] But “as more or less of the soul-stuff of their slain
foes always sticks to the victors, none of their people may touch them
after their return to the village. They are strictly shunned by their
friends for several days. People go shyly out of their way. If any one
in the village gets a pain in his stomach, it is assumed that he has
sat down on the place of one of the warriors. If somebody complains of
toothache, he must have eaten a fruit which had been touched by one of
the combatants. All the leavings of the men’s food must be most
carefully put out of the way, lest a pig should get at them, for that
would be the death of the animal. Therefore the remains of their meals
are burnt or buried. The warriors themselves cannot suffer much from
the soul-stuff of the foes, because they treat themselves with the
disinfecting sap of a creeper. But even so they are not secure against
all the dangers that threaten them from this quarter.”[125.2]
[Sidenote: Customs observed by manslayers in British New Guinea.]
Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in British 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 {126} nearest water, and standing
straddle-legs in it washes himself. All young untried warriors swim
between his legs. This is supposed to impart his 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.”[126.1] In this last case the true nature of such so-called
purifications is clearly manifest: they are in fact rites of exorcism
observed for the purpose of banning a dangerous spirit.
[Sidenote: Customs observed by murderers among the Omaha Indians.]
Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America a murderer whose life was
spared by the kinsmen of his victim 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 had to pull his robe around him and to keep it tied at the
neck, even in warm 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, nor might it be blown about by
the wind. No one would eat with him, and only one of his kindred was
allowed to remain with him in his tent. When the tribe went hunting,
he was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of a mile from the
rest of the people, “lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high
wind which might cause damage.”[126.2] The reason here alleged for
banishing the murderer from the camp of the hunters gives the clue to
all the other restrictions laid on him: he was haunted by the ghost
and therefore dangerous; hence people kept aloof from him, just as
they are said to have done from the ghost-ridden Orestes.
Among the Chinook Indians of Oregon and Washington, “when a person has
been killed, an old man who has a {127} guardian spirit is asked to
work over the murderer. [Sidenote: Ceremonies observed by homicides
among the Chinook Indians.] The old man takes coal and mixes it with
grease. He puts it on to the face of the murderer. He gives him a head
ring of cedar bark. Cedar bark is also tied around his ankles and
knees and around his wrists. For five days he does not drink water. He
does not sleep, and does not lie down. He always stands. At night he
walks about and whistles on bone whistles. He always says ‘_ä ä
ä_.’ For five days he does not wash his face. Then on the next
morning the old man washes his face. He takes off that coal. He
removes the black paint from his face. He puts red paint on his face.
A little coal is mixed with the red paint. The old man puts this again
on to his face. Sometimes this is done by an old man, sometimes by an
old woman. The cedar bark which was tied to his legs and arms is taken
off and buckskin straps are tied around his arms and his legs. Now,
after five days he is given water. He is given a bucket, out of which
he drinks. Now food is roasted for him, until it is burned. When it is
burned black it is given to him. He eats standing. He takes five
mouthsful, and no more. After thirty days he is painted with new red
paint. Good red paint is taken. Now he carries his head ring and his
bucket to a spruce tree and hangs it on top of the tree. Then the tree
will dry up. People never eat in company of a murderer. He never eats
sitting, but always standing. When he sits down to rest he kneels on
one leg. The murderer never looks at a child and must not see people
while they are eating.”[127.1] All these measures are probably
intended to rid the murderer of the clinging ghost of his victim, and
to keep him in quarantine till the riddance has been effected.
[Sidenote: Ghosts of slain kinsfolk, fellow-townsmen, and
fellow-clansfolk especially dreaded.] While the spirit of a murdered
man is thus feared by everybody, it is natural that it should be
specially dreaded by those against whom for any reason he may be
conceived to bear a grudge. For example, among the Yabim of German New
Guinea, when the relations of a murdered man have accepted a bloodwit
instead of avenging his death, they must allow the family of the
victim to mark them with chalk on the brow. Were this {128} not done,
the ghost of their dead kinsman might come and trouble them for not
doing their duty by him; he might drive away their pigs or loosen
their teeth.[128.1] The ghosts of murdered kinsfolk and neighbours
are naturally more formidable than those of foreigners and strangers;
for their wrath is hotter and they have more opportunities of wreaking
their anger on the hard-hearted friends who either did them to death
with their own hands or left their blood unavenged. Indeed some people
only fear the wraiths of such persons, and regard with indifference
all other ghosts, let them mow and gibber as much as they like. Thus
among the Boloki of the Upper Congo “a homicide is not afraid of the
spirit of the man he has killed when the slain man belongs to any of
the neighbouring towns, as disembodied spirits travel in a very
limited area only; but when he kills a man belonging to his own town
he is filled with fear lest the spirit shall do him some harm. There
are no special rites that he can observe to free himself from these
fears, but he mourns for the slain man as though he were a member of
his own family. He neglects his personal appearance, shaves his head,
fasts for a certain period, and laments with much weeping.”[128.2]
Again, a Kikuyu man does not incur ceremonial pollution (_thahu_) by
the slaughter of a man of another tribe, nor even of his own tribe,
provided his victim belongs to another clan; but if the slain man is
a member of the same clan as his slayer, the case is grave indeed.
However, it is possible by means of a ceremony to bind over the ghost
to keep the peace. For this purpose the murderer and the oldest
surviving brother of his victim are seated facing each other on two
trunks of banana trees; here they are solemnly fed by two elders with
vegetable food of all kinds, which has been provided for the purpose
by their mothers and sprinkled with the contents of the stomach of a
sacrificed sheep. Next day the elders proceed to the sacred {129}
fig-tree (_mugumo_), which plays a great part in the religious rites
of the Akikuyu. There they sacrifice a pig and deposit some of the
fat, the intestines, and the more important bones at the foot of the
tree, while they themselves feast on the more palatable parts of the
animal. They think that the ghost of the murdered man will visit the
tree that very night in the outward shape of a wild cat and consume
the meat, and that this offering will prevent him from returning to
the village and troubling the inhabitants.[129.1]
[Sidenote: Ghosts of the slain dreaded by the Toradjas of Central
Celebes.] The Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes are greatly
concerned about the souls of men who have been slain in battle. They
appear to think that men who have been killed in war instead of dying
by disease have not exhausted their vital energy and that therefore
their departed spirits are more powerful than the common ruck of
ghosts; and as on account of the unnatural manner of their death they
cannot be admitted into the land of souls they continue to prowl about
the earth, furious with the foes who have cut them off untimely in the
prime of manhood, and demanding of their friends that they shall wage
war on the enemy and send forth an expedition every year to kill some
of them. If the survivors pay no heed to this demand of the
bloodthirsty ghosts, they themselves are exposed to the vengeance of
these angry spirits, who pay out their undutiful friends and relatives
by visiting them with sickness and death. Hence with the Toradjas war
is a sacred duty in which every member of the community is bound to
bear a part; even women and children, who cannot wage real war, must
wage mimic warfare at home by hacking with bamboo swords at an old
skull of the enemy, while with their shrill voices they utter the
war-whoop.[129.2] Thus among these people, as among many more tribes
of savages, a belief in the immortality of {130} the soul has been one
of the most fruitful causes of bloodshed by keeping up a perpetual
state of war between neighbouring communities, who dare not make peace
with each other for fear of mortally offending the spirits of the
dead.[130.1]
[Sidenote: Ghosts of all who have died violent deaths are dangerous.
How the Karens propitiate such ghosts.] But, whether friends or foes,
the ghosts of all who have died a violent death are in a sense a
public danger; for their temper is naturally soured and they are apt
to fall foul of the first person they meet without nicely
discriminating between the innocent and the guilty. The Karens of
Burma, for example, think that the spirits of all such persons go
neither to the upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world of woe,
but linger on earth and wander about invisible. They make men sick to
death by stealing their souls. Accordingly these vampire-like beings
are exceedingly dreaded by the people, who seek to appease their anger
and repel their cruel assaults by propitiatory offerings and the most
earnest prayers and supplications.[130.2] They put red, yellow, and
white rice in a basket and leave it in the forest, saying: “Ghosts of
such as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of hunger
or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger’s tooth or the
serpent’s fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of such as died of
small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, O ill-treat us not, seize
not upon our persons, do us no harm. O stay here in this wood. We will
bring hither red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for your
subsistence.”[130.3]
[Sidenote: The angry ghosts of the slain are sometimes forcibly
driven away with noise and clamour.] However, it is not always by
fair words and propitiatory offerings that the community attempts to
rid itself of these invisible but dangerous intruders. People
sometimes resort to more forcible measures. “Once,” says a traveller
among the Indians of North America, “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
{131} from entering the village.”[131.1] Again, after the North
American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to death, they
used to run through the village, beating the walls, the furniture, and
the roofs of the huts with sticks and yelling at the pitch of their
voices to drive away the angry ghost of the victim, lest he should
seek to avenge the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated
body.[131.2] Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New
Guinea, when a murder has been committed in the village, the
inhabitants assemble for several evenings successively and shriek and
shout to frighten away the ghost, in case he should attempt to come
back.[131.3] The Yabim, a tribe in German New Guinea, believe that
“the dead can both help and harm, but the fear of their harmful
influence is predominant. Especially the people are of opinion that
the ghost of a slain man haunts his murderer and brings misfortune on
him. Hence it is necessary to drive away the ghost with shrieks and
the beating of drums. The model of a canoe laden with taro and tobacco
is got ready to facilitate his departure.”[131.4] So when the Bukaua
of German New Guinea have won a victory over their foes and have
returned home, they kindle a fire in the middle of the village and
hurl blazing brands in the direction of the battle-field, while at the
same time they make an ear-splitting din, to keep at bay the angry
spirits of the slain.[131.5] When the cannibal Melanesians of the
Bismarck Archipelago have eaten a human body, they shout, blow horns,
shake spears, and beat the bushes for the purpose of driving away the
ghost of the man or woman whose flesh has just furnished the
banquet.[131.6] The Fijians used to bury the sick and aged alive,
{132} and having done so they always made a great uproar with bamboos,
shell-trumpets, and so forth in order to scare away the spirits of the
buried people and prevent them from returning to their homes; and by
way of removing any temptation to hover about their former abodes they
dismantled the houses of the dead and hung them with everything that
in their eyes seemed most repulsive.[132.1] Among the Angoni, a Zulu
tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain
foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, and
hang garments of their victims on their persons. 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 banish the
ghosts of the slain, which otherwise might bring sickness and
misfortune on the people.[132.2]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken against the ghosts of executed criminals
and other dangerous persons.] In Travancore the spirits of men who
have died a violent death by drowning, hanging, or other means are
supposed to become demons, wandering about to inflict injury in
various ways upon mankind. Especially the ghosts of murderers who have
been hanged are believed to haunt the place of execution and its
neighbourhood. To prevent this it used to be customary to cut off the
criminal’s heels with a sword or to hamstring him as he was turned
off.[132.3] The intention of thus mutilating the body was no doubt to
prevent the ghost from walking. How could he walk if he were hamstrung
or had no heels? With precisely the same intention it has been
customary with some peoples to maim in various ways the dead bodies
not only of executed criminals but of other persons; for all ghosts
are more or less dreaded. When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of
Bering Strait used in the old days to cut the sinews of his arms and
legs “in order to prevent the shade from returning to the body and
causing it to walk at night as a ghoul.”[132.4] The Omaha {133}
Indians said that when a man was killed by lightning he should be
buried face downwards, and that the soles of his feet should be slit;
for if this were not done, his ghost would walk.[133.1] The Herero of
South Africa think that the ghosts of bad people appear and are just
as mischievous as in life; for they rob, steal, and seduce women and
girls, sometimes getting them with child. To prevent the dead from
playing these pranks the Herero used to cut through the backbone of
the corpse, tie it up in a bunch, and sew it into an ox-hide.[133.2]
A simple way of disabling a dangerous ghost is to dig up his body and
decapitate it. This is done by West African negroes and also by the
Armenians; to make assurance doubly sure the Armenians not only cut
off the head but smash it or stick a needle into it or into the dead
man’s heart.[133.3]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken in India against the ghosts of women who
die in pregnancy, childbed, or soon after it.] The Hindoos of the
Punjaub believe that if a mother dies within thirteen days of her
delivery, she will return in the guise of a malignant spirit to
torment her husband and family. To prevent this some people drive
nails through her head and eyes, while others also knock nails on
either side of the door of the house.[133.4] A gentler way of
attaining the same end is to put a nail or a piece of iron in the
clothes of the poor dead mother,[133.5] or to knock nails into the
earth round the places where she died, and where her dead body was
washed and cremated. Some people put pepper in the eyes of the corpse
to prevent the ghost from seeing her way back to the house.[133.6] In
Bilaspore, if a mother dies leaving very young children, they tie her
hands and feet before burial to prevent her from getting up by {134}
night and going to see her orphaned little ones.[134.1] The Oraons of
Bengal are firmly convinced that any woman who dies in pregnancy or
childbirth becomes an evil and dangerous spirit (_bhut_), who, if
steps are not taken to keep her off, will come back and tickle to
death those whom she loved best in life. “To prevent her, therefore,
from coming back, they carry her body as far away as they can, but no
woman will accompany her to her last resting-place lest similar
misfortune should happen to her. Arrived at the burial-place, they
break the feet above the ankle, twist them round, bringing the heels
in front, and then drive long thorns into them. They bury her very
deep with her face downwards, and with her they bury the bones of a
donkey, and pronounce the _anathema_, ‘If you come home may you turn
into a donkey’; the roots of a palm-tree are also buried with her; and
they say, ‘May you come home only when the leaves of the palm-tree
wither,’ and when they retire they spread mustard seeds all along the
road saying, ‘When you try to come home pick up all these.’ They then
feel pretty safe at home from her nocturnal visits, but woe to the man
who passes at night near the place where she has been buried. She will
pounce upon him, twist his neck, and leave him senseless on the
ground, until brought to by the incantations of a sorcerer.”[134.2]
Among the Lushais of Assam, when a woman died in childbed, the
relatives offer a sacrifice to her departed soul, “but the rest of
that village treat the day as a holiday and put a small green branch
on the wall of each house on the outside near the doorpost to keep out
the spirit of the dead woman.”[134.3]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken in Burma against the ghosts of women who
die in pregnancy or childbed.] Among the Shans of Burma, when a woman
dies with an unborn child, it is believed that her spirit turns into a
malignant ghost, “who may return to haunt her husband’s home and
torment him, unless precautions are taken to keep her away. To begin
with, her unborn child is removed by an operation; then mother and
child are wrapped in separate mats and buried without coffins. If this
be not done, the same {135} misfortune may occur again to the woman,
in her future life, and the widower will suffer from the attacks of
the ghost. When the bodies are being removed from the house, part of
the mat wall in the side of the house is taken down, and the dead
woman and her baby are lowered to the ground through the aperture. The
hole through which the bodies have passed is immediately filled with
new mats, so that the ghost may not know how to return.”[135.1] The
Kachins of Burma are so afraid of the ghosts of women dying in
childbed that no sooner has such a death taken place than the husband,
the children, and almost all the people in the house take to flight
lest the ghost should bite them. They bandage the eyes of the dead
woman with her own hair to prevent her from seeing anything; they wrap
the corpse in a mat and carry it out of the house not by the ordinary
door, but by an opening made for the purpose either in the wall or in
the floor of the room where she breathed her last. Then they convey
the body to a deep ravine where foot of man seldom penetrates, and
there, having heaped her clothes, her jewellery, and all her
belongings over her, they set fire to the pile and reduce the whole to
ashes. “Thus they destroy all the property of the unfortunate woman in
order that her soul may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and
to bite the people in the attempt.” When this has been done, the
officiating priest scatters some burnt grain of a climbing plant
(_shămien_), inserts in the earth the pestle which the dead woman
used to husk the rice, and winds up the exorcism by cursing and
railing at her ghost, saying: “Wait to come back to us till this grain
sprouts and this pestle blossoms, till the fern bears fruit, and the
cocks lay eggs.” The house in which the woman died is generally pulled
down, and the timber may only be used as firewood or to build small
hovels in the fields. Till a new house can be built for them, the
widower and the orphans receive the hospitality of their nearest
relatives, a father or a brother; their other friends would not dare
to receive them from fear of the ghost. {136} Occasionally the dead
mother’s jewels are spared from the fire and given away to some poor
old crones, who do not trouble their heads about ghosts. If the
medicine-man who attended the woman in life and officiated at the
funeral is old, he may consent to accept the jewels as the fee for his
services; but in that case no sooner has he got home than he puts the
jewels in the henhouse. If the hens remain quiet, it is a good omen
and he can keep the trinkets with an easy mind; but if the fowl
flutter and cackle, it is a sign that the ghost is sticking to the
jewels, and in a fright he restores them to the family. The old man or
old woman into whose hands the trinkets of the dead woman thus
sometimes fall cannot dispose of them to other members of the tribe;
for nobody who knows where the things come from would be so rash as to
buy them. However, they may find purchasers among the Shans or the
Chinese, who do not fear Kachin ghosts.[136.1]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken in the Indian Archipelago against the
ghosts of women who die in childbed.] The ghosts of women who die in
childbed are much dreaded in the Indian Archipelago; it is supposed
that they appear in the form of birds with long claws and are
exceedingly dangerous to their husbands and also to pregnant women. A
common way of guarding against them is to put an egg under each armpit
of the corpse, to press the arms close against the body, and to stick
needles in the palms of the hands. The people believe that the ghost
of the dead woman will be unable to fly and attack people; for she
will not spread out her arms for fear of letting the eggs fall, and
she will not clutch anybody for fear of driving the needles deeper
into her palms. Sometimes by way of additional precaution another egg
is placed under her chin, thorns are thrust into the joints of her
fingers and toes, her mouth is stopped with ashes, and her hands,
feet, and hair are nailed to the coffin.[136.2] [Sidenote: Attempts
to lame and otherwise disable ghosts.] Some Sea Dyaks of Borneo sow
the ground {137} near cemeteries with bits of sticks to imitate
caltrops, in order that the feet of any ghosts who walk over them may
be lamed.[137.1] The Besisi of the Malay Peninsula bury their dead in
the ground and let fall knives on the grave to prevent the ghost from
getting up out of it.[137.2] The Tunguses of Turukhansk on the
contrary put their dead up in trees, and then lop off all the branches
to prevent the ghost from scrambling down and giving them
chase.[137.3] The Herbert River natives in Queensland used to cut
holes in the stomach, shoulders, and lungs of their dead and fill the
holes with stones, in order that, weighed down with this ballast, the
ghost might not stray far afield; to limit his range still further
they commonly broke his legs.[137.4] Other Australian blacks put hot
coals in the ears of their departed brother; this keeps the ghost in
the body for a time, and allows the relations to get a good start away
from him. Also they bark the trees in a circle round the spot, so that
when the ghost does get out and makes after them, he wanders round and
round in a circle, always returning to the place from which he
started.[137.5] The ancient Hindoos put fetters on the feet of their
dead that they might not return to the land of the living.[137.6] The
Tinneh Indians of Alaska grease the hands of a corpse, so that when
his ghost grabs at people’s souls to carry them {138} off with him
they slip through his greasy fingers and escape.[138.1]
[Sidenote: The way home barricaded against ghosts.] Some peoples bar
the road from the grave to prevent the ghost from following them. The
Tunguses make the barrier of snow or trees.[138.2] Amongst the
Mangars, one of the fighting tribes of Nepal, “when the mourners
return home, one of their party goes ahead and makes a barricade of
thorn bushes across the road midway between the grave and the house of
the deceased. On the top of the thorns he puts a big stone on which he
takes his stand, holding a pot of burning incense in his left hand and
some woollen thread in his right. One by one the mourners step on the
stone and pass through the smoke of the incense to the other side of
the thorny barrier. As they pass, each takes a piece of thread from
the man who holds the incense and ties it round his neck. The object
of this curious ceremony is to prevent the spirit of the dead man from
coming home with the mourners and establishing itself in its old
haunts. Conceived of as a miniature man, it is believed to be unable
to make its way on foot through the thorns, while the smell of the
incense, to which all spirits are highly sensitive, prevents it from
surmounting this obstacle on the shoulders of one of the
mourners.”[138.3] The Chins of Burma burn their dead and collect the
bones in an earthen pot. Afterwards, at a convenient season, the pot
containing the bones is carried away to the ancestral burial-place,
which is generally situated in the depth of the jungle. “When the
people convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with them
some cotton-yarn, and whenever they come to any stream or other water,
they stretch a thread across, whereby the spirit of the deceased, who
accompanies them, may get across it too. When they have duly deposited
the bones and food for the spirit in the cemetery they return home,
{139} after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to follow them
back to the village. At the same time they block the way by which they
return by putting a bamboo across the path.”[139.1] Thus the mourners
make the way to the grave as easy as possible for the ghost, but
obstruct the way by which he might return from it.
[Sidenote: Devices of the North American Indians to keep ghosts at
bay.] The Algonquin Indians, not content with beating the walls of
their huts to drive away the ghost, stretched nets round them in order
to catch the spirit in the meshes, if he attempted to enter the house.
Others made stinks to keep him off.[139.2] The Ojebways also resorted
to a number of devices for warding off the spirits of the dead. These
have been described as follows by a writer who was himself an Ojebway:
“If the deceased was a husband, it is often the custom for the widow,
after the burial is over, to spring or leap over the grave, and then
run zigzag behind the trees, as if she were fleeing from some one.
This is called running away from the spirit of her husband, that it
may not haunt her. In the evening of the day on which the burial has
taken place, when it begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns
through the hole left at the top of the wigwam. As soon as this firing
ceases, the old women commence knocking and making such a rattling at
the door as would frighten away any spirit that would dare to hover
near. The next ceremony is, to cut into narrow strips, like ribbon,
thin birch bark. These they fold into shapes, and hang round inside
the wigwam, so that the least puff of wind will move them. With such
scarecrows as these, what spirit would venture to disturb their
slumbers? Lest this should not prove effectual, they will also
frequently take a deer’s tail, and after burning or singeing off all
the hair, will rub the necks or faces of the children before they lie
down to sleep, thinking that the offensive smell will be another
preventive to the spirit’s entrance. I well remember when I used to be
daubed over with this disagreeable fumigation, and had great faith in
it all. Thinking that the soul lingers about the body a long time
before it {140} takes its final departure, they use these means to
hasten it away.”[140.1]
[Sidenote: Spirits of the dead greatly feared by the Lengua Indians
of the Gran Chaco.] The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco in South
America live in great fear of the spirits of their dead. They imagine
that any one of these disembodied spirits can become incarnate again
and take a new lease of life on earth, if only it can contrive to get
possession of a living man’s body during the temporary absence of his
soul. For like many other savages they imagine that the soul absents
itself from the body during sleep to wander far away in the land of
dreams. So when night falls, the ghosts of the dead come crowding to
the villages and lurk about, hoping to find vacant bodies into which
they can enter. Such are to the thinking of the Lengua Indian the
perils and dangers of the night. When he awakes in the morning from a
dream in which he seemed to be hunting or fishing far away, he
concludes that his soul cannot yet have returned from such a far
journey, and that the spirit within him must therefore be some ghost
or demon, who has taken possession of his corporeal tenement in the
absence of its proper owner. And if these Indians dread the spirits of
the departed at all times, they dread them doubly at the moment when
they have just shuffled off the mortal coil. No sooner has a person
died than the whole village is deserted. Even if the death takes place
shortly before sunset the place must at all costs be immediately
abandoned, lest with the shades of night the ghost should return and
do a mischief to the villagers. Not only is the village deserted, but
every hut is burned down and the property of the dead man destroyed.
For these Indians believe that, however good and kind a man may have
been in his lifetime, his ghost is always a source of danger to the
peace and prosperity of the living. The night after his death his
disembodied spirit comes back to the village, and chilled by the cool
night air looks about for a fire at which to warm himself. He rakes in
the ashes to find at least a hot coal which he may blow up into a
flame. But if they are all cold and dead, he flings a handful of them
in the air {141} and departs in dudgeon. Any Indian who treads on such
ashes will have ill-luck, if not death, following at his heels. To
prevent such mishaps the villagers take the greatest pains to collect
and bury all the ash-heaps before they abandon the village. What the
fate of a hamlet would be in which the returning ghost found the
inhabitants still among their houses, no Indian dares to imagine.
Hence it happens that many a village which was full of life at noon is
a smoking desert at sunset. And as the Lenguas ascribe all sickness to
the machinations of evil spirits and sorcerers, they mutilate the
persons of their dying or dead in order to counteract and punish the
authors of the disease. For this purpose they cut off the portion of
the body in which the evil spirit is supposed to have ensconced
himself. A common operation performed on the dying or dead man is
this. A gash is made with a knife in his side, the edges of the wound
are drawn apart with the fingers, and in the wound are deposited a
dog’s bone, a stone, and the claw of an armadillo. It is believed that
at the departure of the soul from the body the stone will rise up to
the Milky Way and will stay there till the author of the death has
been discovered. Then the stone will come shooting down in the shape
of a meteor and kill, or at least stun, the guilty party. That is why
these Indians stand in terror of falling stars. The claw of the
armadillo serves to grub up the earth and, in conjunction with the
meteor, to ensure the destruction of the evil spirit or the sorcerer.
What the virtue of the dog’s bone is supposed to be has not yet been
ascertained by the missionaries.[141.1]
[Sidenote: A scapegoat for ghosts.] The Bhotias, who inhabit the
Himalayan district of British India, perform an elaborate ceremony for
transferring the spirit of a deceased person to an animal, which is
finally beaten by all the villagers and driven away, that it may not
come back. Having thus expelled the ghost the {142} people return
joyfully to the village with songs and dances. In some places the
animal which thus serves as a scapegoat is a yak, the forehead, back,
and tail of which must be white. But elsewhere, under the influence of
Hindooism, sheep and goats have been substituted for yaks.[142.1]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by widows in Africa against their
husbands’ ghosts.] Widows and widowers are especially obnoxious to
the ghosts of their deceased spouses, and accordingly they have to
take special precautions against them. For example, among the Ewe
negroes of Agome, in German Togoland, a widow is bound to remain for
six weeks in the hut where her husband lies buried. She is naked, her
hair is shaved off, and she is armed with a stick with which to repel
the too pressing familiarities of her husband’s ghost; for were she to
submit to them, she would die on the spot. At night she sleeps with
the stick under her, lest the wily ghost should attempt to steal it
from her in the hours of slumber. Before she eats or drinks she always
puts some coals on the food or in the beverage, to prevent her dead
husband from eating or drinking with her; for if he did so, she would
die. If any one calls to her, she may not answer, for her dead husband
would hear her, and she would die. She may not eat beans or flesh or
fish, nor drink palm-wine or rum, but she is allowed to smoke tobacco.
At night a fire is kept up in the hut, and the widow throws powdered
peppermint leaves and red pepper on the flames to make a stink, which
helps to keep the ghost from the house.[142.2]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by widows and widowers in British
Columbia against the ghosts of their spouses.] Among many tribes of
British Columbia the conduct of a widow and a widower for a long time
after the death of their spouse is regulated by a code of minute and
burdensome restrictions, all of which appear to be based on the notion
that these persons, being haunted by the ghost, are not only
themselves in peril, but are also a source of danger to others. Thus
among the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia widows and widowers
fence their beds with thorn bushes to keep off the ghost of the
deceased; indeed they {143} lie on such bushes, in order that the
ghost may be under little temptation to share their bed of thorns.
They must build a sweat-house on a creek, sweat there all night, and
bathe regularly in the creek, after which they must rub their bodies
with spruce branches. These branches may be used only once for this
purpose; afterwards they are stuck in the ground all round about the
hut, probably to fence off the ghost. The mourners must also use cups
and cooking vessels of their own, and they may not touch their own
heads or bodies. Hunters may not go near them, and any person on whom
their shadow were to fall would at once be ill.[143.1] Again, among
the Tsetsaut Indians, when a man dies his brother is bound to marry
the widow, but he may not do so before the lapse of a certain time,
because it is believed that the dead man’s ghost haunts his widow and
would do a mischief to his living rival. During the time of her
mourning the widow eats out of a stone dish, carries a pebble in her
mouth, and a crab-apple stick up the back of her jacket. She sits
upright day and night. Any person who crosses the hut in front of her
is a dead man. The restrictions laid on a widower are similar.[143.2]
Among the Lkungen or Songish Indians, in Vancouver Island, widow and
widower, after the death of husband or wife, are forbidden to cut
their hair, as otherwise it is believed that they would gain too great
power over the souls and welfare of others. They must remain alone at
their fire for a long time and are forbidden to mingle with other
people. When they eat, nobody may see them. They must keep their faces
covered for ten days. For two days after the burial they fast and are
not allowed to speak. After that they may speak a little, but before
addressing any one they must go into the woods and clean themselves in
ponds and with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they call
out his name when they first break their fast, and they bite very hard
in eating. That is believed to kill their enemy, probably (though this
is not said) by directing the {144} attention of the ghost to him.
They may not go near the water nor eat fresh salmon, or the fish might
be driven away. They may not eat warm food, else their teeth would
fall out.[144.1] Among the Bella Coola Indians the bed of a mourner
is protected against the ghost of the deceased by thorn-bushes stuck
into the ground at each corner. He rises early in the morning and goes
out into the woods, where he makes a square with thorn-bushes, and
inside of this square, where he is probably supposed to be safe from
the intrusion of the ghost, he cleanses himself by rubbing his body
with cedar-branches. He also swims in ponds, and after swimming he
cleaves four small trees and creeps through the clefts, following the
course of the sun. This he does on four subsequent mornings, cleaving
new trees every day. We may surmise that the intention of creeping
through the cleft trees is to give the slip to the ghost. The mourner
also cuts his hair short, and the cut hair is burnt. If he did not
observe these regulations, it is believed that he would dream of the
deceased, which to the savage mind is another way of saying that he
would be visited by his ghost. Amongst these Indians the rules of
mourning for a widower or widow are especially strict. For four days
he or she must fast and may not speak a word, else the dead wife or
husband would come and lay a cold hand on the mouth of the offender,
who would die. They may not go near water and are forbidden to catch
or eat salmon for a whole year. During that time also they may not eat
fresh herring or candle-fish (olachen). Their shadows are deemed
unlucky and may not fall on any person.[144.2]
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by widows and widowers among the
Thompson Indians.] Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia
widows or widowers, on the death of their husbands or wives, went out
at once and passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times. The
intention of this ceremony is not reported, but we may conjecture that
it was supposed to deter the ghost from following for fear of
scratching himself or herself on the thorns. For four days after the
death widows and {145} widowers had to wander about at evening or
break of day wiping their eyes with fir-twigs, which they hung up in
the branches of trees, praying to the Dawn. They also rubbed their
eyes with a small stone taken from under running water, then threw it
away, while they prayed that they might not become blind. The first
four days they might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed
sticks, and spat out the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the
first four of water, into the fire. For a year they had to sleep on a
bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread
at the foot, head, and middle. Many also wore a few small twigs of
rose-bush on their persons. The use of the rose-bush was no doubt to
keep off the ghost through fear of the prickles. They were forbidden
to eat fresh fish and flesh of any kind for a year. A widower might
not fish at another man’s fishing-place or with another man’s net. If
he did, it would make the station and the net useless for the season.
If a widower transplanted a trout into another lake, before releasing
it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chewing deer-fat, he
spat some of the grease out on its head, so as to remove the baneful
effect of his touch. Then he let it go, bidding the fish farewell, and
asking it to propagate its kind. Any grass or branches upon which a
widow or widower sat or lay down withered up. If a widow were to break
sticks or branches, her own hands or arms would break. She might not
cook food nor fetch water for her children, nor let them lie down on
her bed, nor should she lie or sit where they slept. Some widows wore
a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, lest the
ghost of her dead husband should have connexion with her. A widower
might not fish or hunt, because it was unlucky both for him and for
other hunters. He did not allow his shadow to pass in front of another
widower or of any person who was supposed to be gifted with more
knowledge or magic than ordinary.[145.1] Among the Lillooet Indians
of British Columbia the rules enjoined on widows and widowers were
somewhat similar. But a widower had to observe a {146} singular custom
in eating. He ate his food with the right hand passed underneath his
right leg, the knee of which was raised.[146.1] The motive for
conveying food to his mouth in this roundabout fashion is not
mentioned: we may conjecture that it was to baffle the hungry ghost,
who might be supposed to watch every mouthful swallowed by the
mourner, but who could hardly suspect that food passed under the knee
was intended to reach the mouth.
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by widows and widowers among the
Kwakiutl Indians.] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia we
are told “the regulations referring to the mourning period are very
severe. In case of the death of husband or wife, the survivor has to
observe the following rules: for four days after the death the
survivor must sit motionless, the knees drawn up toward the chin. On
the third day all the inhabitants of the village, including children,
must take a bath. On the fourth day some water is heated in a wooden
kettle, and the widow or widower drips it upon his head. When he
becomes tired of sitting motionless, and must move, he thinks of his
enemy, stretches his legs slowly four times, and draws them up again.
Then his enemy must die. During the following sixteen days he must
remain on the same spot, but he may stretch out his legs. He is not
allowed, however, to move his hands. Nobody must speak to him, and
whosoever disobeys this command will be punished by the death of one
of his relatives. Every fourth day he takes a bath. He is fed twice a
day by an old woman at the time of low water, with salmon caught in
the preceding year, and given to him in the dishes and spoons of the
deceased. While sitting so his mind is wandering to and fro. He sees
his house and his friends as though far, far away. If in his visions
he sees a man near by, the latter is sure to die at no distant day; if
he sees him very far away, he will continue to live long. After the
sixteen days have passed, he may lie down, but not stretch out. He
takes a bath every eighth day. At the end of the first month he takes
off his clothing, and dresses the stump of a tree with it. After
another month has passed he may sit in a corner {147} of the house,
but for four months he must not mingle with others. He must not use
the house door, but a separate door is cut for his use. Before he
leaves the house for the first time he must three times approach the
door and return, then he may leave the house. After ten months his
hair is cut short, and after a year the mourning is at an
end.”[147.1]
Though the reasons for the elaborate restrictions thus imposed on
widows and widowers by the Indians of British Columbia are not always
stated, we may safely infer that one and all they are dictated by fear
of the ghost, who, haunting the surviving spouse, surrounds him or her
with a dangerous atmosphere, a contagion of death, which necessitates
his seclusion both from the people themselves and from the principal
sources of their food supply, especially from the fisheries, lest the
infected person should poison them by his malignant presence.
[Sidenote: Social ostracism of widowers in New Guinea dictated by
fear of the ghosts of their dead wives.] We can, therefore,
understand the extraordinary treatment of a widower by the Papuans of
Issoudun in British New Guinea. His miseries begin with the moment of
his wife’s death. He is immediately stripped of all his ornaments,
abused and beaten by his wife’s relations, his house is pillaged, his
gardens devastated, there is no one to cook for him. He sleeps on his
wife’s grave till the end of his mourning. He may never marry again.
By the death of his wife he loses all his rights. It is civil death
for him. Old or young, chief or plebeian, he is no longer anybody, he
does not count. He may not hunt or fish with the others; his presence
would bring misfortune; the spirit of his dead wife would frighten the
fish or the game. He is no longer heard in the discussions. He has no
voice in the council of elders. He may not take part in a dance; he
may not own a garden. If one of his children marries, he has no right
to interfere in anything or receive any present. If he were dead, he
could not be ignored more completely. He has become a nocturnal
animal. He is forbidden to shew himself in public, to traverse the
village, to walk in the roads and paths. Like a boar, he must go in
the grass or {148} the bushes. If he hears or sees any one, especially
a woman, coming from afar, he must hide himself behind a tree or a
thicket. If he wishes to go hunting or fishing by himself, he must go
at night. If he has to consult any one, even the missionary, he does
it in great secrecy and by night. He seems to have lost his voice, and
only speaks in a whisper. He is painted black from head to foot. The
hair of his head is shaved, except two tufts which flutter on his
temples. He wears a skull-cap which covers his head completely to the
ears; it ends in a point at the back of his neck. Round his waist he
wears one, two, or three sashes of plaited grass; his arms and legs
from the knees to the ankles are covered with armlets and leglets of
the same sort; and round his neck he wears a similar ornament. His
diet is strictly regulated, but he does not observe it more than he
can help, eating in secret whatever is given him or he can lay his
hands on. “His tomahawk accompanies him everywhere and always. He
needs it to defend himself against the wild boars and also against the
spirit of his dead wife, who might take a fancy to come and play him
some mischievous prank; for the souls of the dead come back often and
their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the spirits
without exception are bad and have no pleasure but in harming the
living. Happily people can keep them at bay by a stick, fire, an
arrow, or a tomahawk. The condition of a widower, far from exciting
pity or compassion, only serves to render him the object of horror and
fear. Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being more
or less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to give the
lie to public opinion. They are forced to become idlers and thieves,
since they are forbidden to work: no work, no gardens; no gardens, no
food: steal then they must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied
without some audacity and knavery at a pinch.”[148.1]
[Sidenote: The widespread fear of ghosts among mankind has probably
had the effect of making men less ready to take each other’s lives.]
It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply evidence of the terror
which a belief in ghosts has spread among mankind, and of the
consequences, sometimes tragical, sometimes {149} ludicrous, which
that belief has brought in its train.[149.1] The preceding instances
may suffice for my purpose, which is merely to indicate the
probability that this widespread superstition has served a useful
purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human life. For it is
reasonable to suppose that men are more loth to spill the blood of
their fellows when they believe that by so doing they expose
themselves to the vengeance of an angry and powerful spirit whom it is
difficult either to evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we
are not left wholly to conjecture. [Sidenote: In China the faith in
the power of ghosts is universal.] In the vast empire of China, as we
are assured by the best living authority on Chinese religion, the fear
of ghosts has actually produced this salutary result. Amongst the
Chinese the faith in the existence of the dead, in their power to
reward kindness and avenge injury, is universal and inveterate; it has
been handed down from an immemorial past, and it is nourished in the
experience, or rather in the mind, of everybody by hundreds of ghost
stories, all of which are accepted as authentic. Nobody doubts that
ghosts may interfere at any moment for good or evil in the business of
life, in the regulation of human destiny. To the Chinese their dead
are not what our dead are to most of us, a dim sad memory, a shadowy
congregation somewhere far away, to whom we may go in time, but who
cannot come to us or exercise any influence on the land of the living.
On the contrary, in the opinion of the Chinese the dead not only exist
but keep up a most lively intercourse, an active interchange of good
and evil, with the survivors. There is, indeed, even in China, a line
of demarcation between men and spirits, between the living and the
dead, but it is said to be very faint, almost imperceptible. This
perpetual commerce between the two worlds, the material and the
spiritual, is a source both of bane and of blessing: the spirits of
the departed rule human destiny with a rod of iron or of gold. From
them man has everything to hope, but also much to fear. Hence as a
natural consequence it is to the ghosts, to the souls of the dead,
that the Chinaman {150} pays his devotions; it is around their dear or
dreadful figures as a centre that his religion revolves. To ensure
their goodwill and help, to avert their wrath and fierce attacks, that
is the first and the last object of his religious ceremonies.[150.1]
[Sidenote: In China respect for human life is enforced by fear of
ghosts.] This faith of the Chinese in the existence and power of the
dead, we are informed, “indubitably exercises a mighty and salutary
influence upon morals. It enforces respect for human life and a
charitable treatment of the infirm, the aged and the sick, especially
if they stand on the brink of the grave. Benevolence and humanity,
thus based on fears and selfishness, may have little ethical value in
our eye; but for all that, their existence in a country where culture
has not yet taught man to cultivate good for the sake of good alone,
may be greeted as a blessing. Those virtues are even extended to
animals, for, in fact, these too have souls which may work vengeance
or bring reward. But the firm belief in ghosts and their retributive
justice has still other effects. It deters from grievous and provoking
injustice, because the wronged party, thoroughly sure of the avenging
power of his own spirit when disembodied, will not always shrink from
converting himself into a wrathful ghost by committing suicide,” in
order to wreak in death that vengeance on his oppressor which he could
not exact in life. Cases of suicide committed with this intention are
said to be far from rare in China.[150.2] “This simple complex of
tenets,” says Professor de Groot, “lays disrespect for human lives
under great restraint. [Sidenote: In particular, the fear of ghosts
acts as a check on the practice of infanticide.] Most salutarily also
they work upon female infanticide, a monstrous custom practised
extensively among the poor in Amoy and the surrounding farming
districts, as in many other parts of the Empire. The fear that the
souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, induces many a
father or mother to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up, in
the street for adoption into some family or into a
foundling-hospital.” Humane and well-to-do people take advantage of
these superstitious fears to inculcate a merciful treatment of female
infants; for they print and circulate gratuitously tracts which set
forth many gruesome {151} examples of punishments inflicted upon
unnatural fathers and mothers by the ghosts of their murdered
daughters. These highly-coloured narratives, though they bear all the
marks of a florid fancy, are said to answer their benevolent purpose
perfectly; for they sink deep into the credulous minds to which they
are addressed: they touch the seared conscience and the callous heart
which no appeal to mere natural affection could move to pity.[151.1]
[Sidenote: The fear of ghosts operates in a twofold way to enforce
respect for human life: it furnishes the individual with a motive for
abstaining from murder, and it furnishes the community with a motive
for punishing the murderer.] But while the fear of the ghost has thus
operated directly to enhance the sanctity of human life by deterring
the cruel, the passionate, and the malignant from the shedding of
blood, it has operated also indirectly to bring about the same
salutary result. For not only does the hag-ridden murderer himself
dread his victim’s ghost, but the whole community, as we have seen,
dreads it also and believes itself endangered by the murderer’s
presence, since the wrathful spirit which pursues him may turn on
other people and rend them. Hence society has a strong motive for
secluding, banishing, or exterminating the culprit in order to free
itself from what it believes to be an imminent danger, a perilous
pollution, a contagion of death.[151.2] To put it in another way, the
community has an interest in punishing homicide. Not that the
treatment of homicides by the tribe or state was originally conceived
as a punishment inflicted on them: rather it was viewed as a measure
of self-defence, a moral quarantine, a process of spiritual
purification and disinfection, an exorcism. It was a mode of cleansing
the people generally and sometimes the homicide himself from the
ghostly infection, which to the primitive mind appears to be something
material and tangible, something that can be literally washed or
scoured away by water, pig’s blood, sheep’s blood, or other
detergents. But when this purification took the form of laying the
manslayer under restraint, banishing him from the country, or putting
him to death in order to appease his victim’s ghost, it was for all
practical purposes indistinguishable from punishment, and the fear of
it would {152} act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been
designed to be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is about to
be hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told that hanging is
not a punishment but a purification. But the one conception slides
easily and almost imperceptibly into the other; so that what was at
first a religious rite, a solemn consecration or sacrifice, comes in
course of time to be a purely civil function, the penalty which
society exacts from those who have injured it: the sacrifice becomes
an execution, the priest steps back and the hangman comes forward.
Thus criminal justice was probably based in large measure on a crude
form of superstition long before the subtle brains of jurists and
philosophers deduced it logically, according to their various
predilections, from a rigid theory of righteous retribution, a
far-sighted policy of making the law a terror to evil-doers, or a
benevolent desire to reform the criminal’s character and save his soul
in another world by hanging or burning his body in this one. If these
deductions only profess to justify theoretically the practice of
punishment, they may be well or ill founded; but if they claim to
explain it historically, they are certainly false. You cannot thus
reconstruct the past by importing into one age the ideas of another,
by interpreting the earliest in terms of the latest products of mental
evolution. You may make revolutions in that way, but you cannot write
history.
[Sidenote: When the fear of ghosts has diminished, the fear of the
law remains to protect the lives of peaceful citizens.] If these
views are correct, the dread of the ghost has operated in a twofold
way to protect human life. On the one hand it has made every
individual for his own sake more reluctant to slay his fellow, and on
the other hand it has roused the whole community to punish the slayer.
It has placed every man’s life within a double ring-fence of morality
and law. The hot-headed and the cold-hearted have been furnished with
a double motive for abstaining from the last fatal step: they have had
to fear the spirit of their victim on the one side and the lash of the
law on the other: they are in a strait between the devil and the deep
sea, between the ghost and the gallows. And when with the progress of
thought the shadow of the ghost passes away, the grim shadow of the
gallows remains to protect society without the aid of superstitious
terrors. It is thus that custom often {153} outlives the motive which
originated it. If only an institution is good in practice, it will
stand firm after its old theoretical basis has been shattered: a new
and more solid, because a truer, foundation will be discovered for it
to rest upon. More and more, as time goes on, morality shifts its
ground from the sands of superstition to the rock of reason, from the
imaginary to the real, from the supernatural to the natural. In the
present case the State has not ceased to protect the lives of its
peaceful citizens because the faith in ghosts is shaken. It has found
a better reason than old wives’ fables for guarding with the flaming
sword of Justice the approach to the Tree of Life.
VI.
CONCLUSION
{154}
[Sidenote: Summary of results.] To sum up this brief review of the
influence which superstition has exercised on the growth of
institutions, I think I have shewn, or at least made probable:--
I. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical
government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and
maintenance of civil order:
II. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby
contributed to the security of its enjoyment:
III. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to a
stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the
married and the unmarried:
IV. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has
strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed to
the security of its enjoyment.
[Sidenote: By strengthening the respect for government, private
property, marriage, and human life superstition has rendered a great
service to humanity.] But government, private property, marriage, and
respect for human life are the pillars on which rests the whole fabric
of civil society. Shake them and you shake society to its foundations.
Therefore if government, private property, marriage, and respect for
human life are all good and essential to the very existence of civil
society, then it follows that by strengthening every one of them
superstition has rendered a great service to humanity. It has supplied
multitudes with a motive, a wrong motive it is true, for {155} right
action; and surely it is better, far better for the world that men
should do right from wrong motives than that they should do wrong with
the best intentions. What concerns society is conduct, not opinion: if
only our actions are just and good, it matters not a straw to others
whether our opinions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and it
is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong action;
hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every effort should be
made to correct it. But of the two evils wrong action is in itself
infinitely worse than false opinion; and all systems of religion or
philosophy which lay more stress on right opinion than on right
action, which exalt orthodoxy above virtue, are so far immoral and
prejudicial to the best interests of mankind: they invert the true
relative importance, the real ethical value, of thought and action,
for it is by what we do, not by what we think, that we are useful or
useless, beneficent or maleficent to our fellows. As a body of false
opinions, therefore, superstition is indeed a most dangerous guide in
practice, and the evils which it has wrought are incalculable. But
vast as are these evils, they ought not to blind us to the benefit
which superstition has conferred on society by furnishing the
ignorant, the weak, and the foolish with a motive, bad though it be,
for good conduct. It is a reed, a broken reed, which has yet supported
the steps of many a poor erring brother, who but for it might have
stumbled and fallen. It is a light, a dim and wavering light, which,
if it has lured many a mariner on the breakers, has yet guided some
wanderers on life’s troubled sea into a haven of rest and peace. Once
the harbour lights are passed and the ship is in port, it matters
little whether the pilot steered by a Jack-o’-lantern or by the stars.
[Sidenote: Superstition at the bar. Sentence of death.] That, ladies
and gentlemen, is my plea for Superstition. Perhaps it might be urged
in mitigation of the sentence which will be passed on the hoary-headed
offender when he stands at the judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not
doubt it, is death. But it will not be executed in our time. There
will be a long, long reprieve. It is as his advocate, not as his
executioner, that I have appeared before you {156} to-night. At Athens
cases of murder were tried before the Areopagus by night,[156.1] and
it is by night that I have spoken in defence of this power of
darkness. But it grows late, and with my sinister client I must vanish
before the cocks crow and the morning breaks grey in the east.
THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
{157}
{158}
THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
{159}
[_A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th,
1908._]
[Sidenote: Social Anthropology.] The subject of the chair which I
have the honour to hold is Social Anthropology. As the subject is
still comparatively new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I
shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking
out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least the
boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my province.
[Sidenote: Anthropology a study of recent date.] Strange as it may
seem, in the large and thriving family of the sciences, Anthropology,
or the Science of Man, is the latest born. So young indeed is the
study that three of its distinguished founders in England, Professor
E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr. Francis Galton, are happily still
with us. It is true that particular departments of man’s complex
nature have long been the theme of special studies. Anatomy has
investigated his body, psychology has explored his mind, theology and
metaphysics have sought to plumb the depths of the great mysteries by
which he is encompassed on every hand. But it has been reserved for
the present generation, or rather for the generation which is passing
away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire
not merely into the physical and mental structure of the individual,
but to compare the various races of men, to trace their affinities,
and by means of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be
the evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest
times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to {160}
discover the general laws to which the particular facts may be
supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, because
research in all departments has rendered it antecedently probable that
everywhere law and order will be found to prevail if we search for
them diligently, and that accordingly the affairs of man, however
complex and incalculable they may seem to be, are no exception to the
uniformity of nature. Anthropology, therefore, in the widest sense of
the word, aims at discovering the general laws which have regulated
human history in the past, and which, if nature is really uniform, may
be expected to regulate it in the future.
[Sidenote: The scope of Social Anthropology more limited than that of
Sociology; it includes only the rudimentary phases of human society.]
Hence the science of man coincides to a certain extent with what has
long been known as the philosophy of history as well as with the study
to which of late years the name of Sociology has been given. Indeed it
might with some reason be held that Social Anthropology, or the study
of man in society, is only another expression for Sociology. Yet I
think that the two sciences may be conveniently distinguished, and
that while the name of Sociology should be reserved for the study of
human society in the most comprehensive sense of the words, the name
of Social Anthropology may with advantage be restricted to one
particular department of that immense field of knowledge. At least I
wish to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I for one do not
pretend to treat of the whole of human society, past, present, and
future. Whether any single man’s compass of mind and range of learning
suffice for such a vast undertaking, I will not venture to say, but I
do say without hesitation or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I
can only speak of what I have studied, and my studies have been mostly
confined to a small, a very small part of man’s social history. That
part is the origin, or rather the rudimentary phases, the infancy and
childhood, of human society, and to that part accordingly I propose to
limit the scope of Social Anthropology, or at all events my treatment
of it. My successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview
beyond the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my knowledge
imposes on me. They may survey the latest developments as well as the
earliest beginnings of custom {161} and law, of science and art, of
morality and religion, and from that survey they may deduce the
principles which should guide mankind in the future, so that those who
come after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and our
fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge is wisdom, and
it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and wider acquaintance with
the past history of mankind will in time enable our statesmen to mould
the destiny of the race in fairer forms than we of this generation
shall live to see.
“_Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire_
_To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,_
_Would we not shatter it to bits--and then_
_Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!_”
[Sidenote: At least the present lecturer limits himself to these
phases.] But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you must not
expect your professor of Social Anthropology to aid and abet you. He
is no seer to discern, no prophet to foretell a coming heaven on
earth, no mountebank with a sovran remedy for every ill, no Red Cross
Knight to head a crusade against misery and want, against disease and
death, against all the horrid spectres that war on poor humanity. It
is for others with higher notes and nobler natures than his to sound
the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He is only a student, a
student of the past, who may perhaps tell you a little, a very little,
of what has been, but who cannot, dare not tell you what ought to be.
Yet even the little that he can contribute to the elucidation of the
past may have its utility as well as its interest when it finally
takes its place in that great temple of science to which it is the
ambition of every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief that
if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without any
ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however insignificant
and useless it may appear, will yet at last be found to work together
with the whole accumulated store for the general good of mankind.
[Sidenote: Social Anthropology embraces the study, first, of
savagery, and, second, of folklore, that is, of the traces of savagery
in civilization.] Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I
understand it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is limited to the
crude beginnings, the rudimentary development of human society: it
does not include the maturer phases of that complex growth, still less
does it embrace the practical problems {162} with which our modern
statesmen and lawgivers are called upon to deal. The study might
accordingly be described as the embryology of human thought and
institutions, or, to be more precise, as that enquiry which seeks to
ascertain, first, the beliefs and customs of savages, and, second, the
relics of these beliefs and customs which have survived like fossils
among peoples of higher culture. [Sidenote: All civilization evolved
from savagery.] In this description of the sphere of Social
Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors of the civilized nations
were once savages, and that they have transmitted, or may have
transmitted, to their more cultured descendants ideas and institutions
which, however incongruous with their later surroundings, were
perfectly in keeping with the modes of thought and action of the ruder
society in which they originated. In short, the definition assumes
that civilization has always and everywhere been evolved out of
savagery. The mass of evidence on which this assumption rests is in my
opinion so great as to render the induction incontrovertible. At
least, if any one disputes it I do not think it worth while to argue
with him. There are still, I believe, in civilized society people who
hold that the earth is flat and that the sun goes round it; but no
sensible man will waste time in the vain attempt to convince such
persons of their error, even though these flatteners of the earth and
circulators of the sun appeal with perfect justice to the evidence of
their senses in support of their hallucination, which is more than the
opponents of man’s primitive savagery are able to do.
[Sidenote: Hence a study of savagery essential to an understanding of
the evolution of humanity.] Thus the study of savage life is a very
important part of Social Anthropology. For by comparison with
civilized man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded
stage of social development, and an examination of his customs and
beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the
evolution of the human mind that an examination of the embryo supplies
of the evolution of the human body. To put it otherwise, a savage is
to a civilized man as a child is to an adult; and just as the gradual
growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a sense
recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the species, so a
study of savage society at various stages of evolution enables us to
follow approximately, though of {163} course not exactly, the road by
which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled in their
progress upward through barbarism to civilization. In short, savagery
is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand what
primitive man was we must know what the savage now is.
[Sidenote: Savages of the present day are primitive only in a
relative sense, namely by comparison with civilized peoples; their
customs and beliefs are in fact the product of a long course of
evolution as to which we can know little or nothing.] But here it is
necessary to guard against a common misapprehension. The savages of
to-day are primitive only in a relative, not in an absolute sense.
They are primitive by comparison with us; but they are not primitive
by comparison with truly primæval man, that is, with man as he was
when he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of existence.
Indeed, compared with man in his absolutely pristine state even the
lowest savage of to-day is doubtless a highly developed and cultured
being, since all evidence and all probability are in favour of the
view that every existing race of men, the rudest as well as the most
civilized, has reached its present level of culture, whether it be
high or low, only after a slow and painful progress upwards, which
must have extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, of years.
Therefore when we speak of any known savages as primitive, which the
usage of the English language permits us to do, it should always be
remembered that we apply the term primitive to them in a relative, not
in an absolute sense. What we mean is that their culture is
rudimentary compared with that of the civilized nations, but not by
any means that it is identical with that of primæval man. It is
necessary to emphasize this relative use of the term primitive in its
application to all known savages without exception, because the
ambiguity arising from the double meaning of the word has been the
source of much confusion and misunderstanding. Careless or
unscrupulous writers have made great play with it for purposes of
controversy, using the word now in the one sense and now in the other
as it suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving, or at
all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order to avoid
these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear steadily in mind
that while Social Anthropology has much to say of primitive man in the
relative sense, it has nothing whatever to say about primitive man in
the absolute sense, {164} and that for the very simple reason that it
knows nothing whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at
present, is never likely to know anything. To construct a history of
human society by starting from absolutely primordial man and working
down through thousands or millions of years to the institutions of
existing savages might possibly have merits as a flight of
imagination, but it could have none as a work of science. To do this
would be exactly to reverse the proper mode of scientific procedure.
It would be to work _a priori_ from the unknown to the known instead
of _a posteriori_ from the known to the unknown. For we do know a good
deal about the social state of the savages of to-day and yesterday,
but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, about absolutely primitive
human society. Hence a sober enquirer who seeks to elucidate the
social evolution of mankind in ages before the dawn of history must
start, not from an unknown and purely hypothetical primæval man, but
from the lowest savages whom we know or possess adequate records of;
and from their customs, beliefs, and traditions as a solid basis of
fact he may work back a little way hypothetically through the
obscurity of the past; that is, he may form a reasonable theory of the
way in which these actual customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown
up and developed in a period more or less remote, but probably not
very remote, from the one in which they have been observed and
recorded. But if, as I assume, he is a sober enquirer, he will never
expect to carry back this reconstruction of human history very far,
still less will he dream of linking it up with the very beginning,
because he is aware that we possess no evidence which would enable us
to bridge even hypothetically the gulf of thousands or millions of
years which divides the savage of to-day from primæval man.
[Sidenote: For example, the marriage customs and systems of
relationship prevalent among many savage tribes appear to have been
evolved from a preceding, but not necessarily primitive, state of
sexual promiscuity.] It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an
example. The matrimonial customs and modes of tracing relationships
which prevail among some savage races, and even among peoples at a
higher stage of culture, furnish very strong grounds for believing
that the systems of marriage and consanguinity which are now in vogue
among civilized peoples must have been immediately preceded at a more
or less distant time by very different modes of counting kin and
regulating marriage; {165} in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden
degrees of kinship have replaced an older system of much wider and
looser sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such
looser and wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely
primitive condition of mankind; it is only to say that actually
existing customs and traditions clearly indicate the extensive
prevalence of such relations at some former time in the history of our
race. How remote that time was, we cannot tell; but, estimated by the
whole vast period of man’s existence on earth, it seems probable that
the era of sexual communism to which the evidence points was
comparatively recent; in other words, that for the civilized races the
interval which divides that era from our own is to be reckoned by
thousands rather than by hundreds of thousands of years, while for the
lowest of existing savages, for example, the aborigines of Australia,
it is possible or probable that the interval may not be greater than a
few centuries. Be that as it may, even if on the strength of the
evidence I have referred to we could demonstrate the former prevalence
of a system of sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this
would only carry us back a single step in the long history of our
species; it would not justify us in concluding that such a system had
been practised by truly primæval man, still less that it had
prevailed among mankind from the beginning down to the comparatively
recent period at which its existence may be inferred from the evidence
at our disposal. About the social condition of primæval man, I
repeat, we know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to speculate. Our
first parents may have been as strict monogamists as Whiston or Dr.
Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. We have no
information on the subject, and are never likely to get any. In the
countless ages which have elapsed since man and woman first roamed the
happy garden hand in hand or jabbered like apes among the leafy boughs
of the virgin forest, their relations to each other may have undergone
innumerable changes. For human affairs, like the courses of the
heaven, seem to run in cycles: the social pendulum swings to and fro
from one extremity of the scale to the other: in the political sphere
it has swung from democracy to despotism, and back again from
despotism to democracy; {166} and so in the domestic sphere it may
have oscillated many a time between libertinism and monogamy.
[Sidenote: The second department of Social Anthropology is folklore,
or the study of savage survivals in civilization.] If I am right in
my definition of Social Anthropology, its province may be roughly
divided into two departments, one of which embraces the customs and
beliefs of savages, while the other includes such relics of these
customs and beliefs as have survived in the thought and institutions
of more cultured peoples. The one department may be called the study
of savagery, the other the study of folklore. I have said something of
savagery: I now turn to folklore, that is, to the survivals of more
primitive ideas and practices among peoples who in other respects have
risen to a higher plane of culture. That such survivals may be
discovered in every civilized nation will hardly now be disputed by
anybody. When we read, for example, of an Irishwoman roasted to death
by her husband on a suspicion that she was not his wife but a fairy
changeling,[166.1] or again, of an Englishwoman dying of lockjaw
because she had anointed the nail that wounded her instead of the
wound,[166.2] we may be sure that the beliefs to which these poor
creatures fell victims were not learned by them in school or at
church, but had been transmitted from truly savage ancestors through
many generations of outwardly though not really civilized descendants.
Beliefs and practices of this sort are therefore rightly called
superstitions, which means literally survivals. It is with
superstitions in the strict sense of the word that the second
department of Social Anthropology is concerned.
[Sidenote: Such survivals are due to the essential inequality of men,
many of whom remain at heart savages under a civilized exterior.] If
we ask how it happens that superstitions linger among a people who in
general have reached a higher level of culture, the answer is to be
found in the natural, universal, and ineradicable inequality of men.
Not only are different races differently endowed in respect of
intelligence, courage, industry, and so forth, but within the same
nation men of the same generation differ enormously in inborn capacity
and worth. No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous {167}
than that of the natural equality of men. It is true that the
legislator must treat men as if they were equal, because laws of
necessity are general and cannot be made so as to fit the infinite
variety of individual cases. But we must not imagine that because men
are equal before the law they are therefore intrinsically equal to
each other. The experience of common life sufficiently contradicts
such a vain imagination. At school and at the universities, at work
and at play, in peace and in war, the mental and moral inequalities of
human beings stand out too conspicuously to be ignored or disputed. On
the whole the men of keenest intelligence and strongest characters
lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, outwardly at least,
society is cast. [Sidenote: Mankind dominated by an enlightened
minority.] As such men are necessarily few by comparison with the
multitude whom they lead, it follows that the community is really
dominated by the will of an enlightened minority[167.1] even in
countries where the ruling power is nominally vested in the hands of
the numerical majority. In fact, disguise it as we may, the government
of mankind is always and everywhere essentially aristocratic. No
juggling with political machinery can evade this law of nature.
However it may seem to lead, the dull-witted majority in the end
follows a keener-witted minority. That is its salvation and the secret
of progress. The higher human intelligence sways the lower, just as
the intelligence of man gives him the mastery over the brutes. I do
not mean that the ultimate direction of society rests with its nominal
governors, with its kings, its statesmen, its legislators. [Sidenote:
The uncrowned kings.] The true rulers of men are the thinkers who
advance knowledge; for just as it is through his superior knowledge,
not through his superior strength, that man bears rule over the rest
of the animal creation, so among men themselves it is knowledge which
in the long run directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the
discoverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and unsceptred
kings of mankind; monarchs, statesmen, and law-givers are but their
ministers, who sooner or later do their bidding by carrying out the
ideas of these master {168} minds. The more we study the inward
workings of society and the progress of civilization, the more clearly
shall we perceive how both are governed by the influence of thoughts
which, springing up at first we know not how or whence in a few
superior minds, gradually spread till they have leavened the whole
inert lump of a community or of mankind. The origin of such mental
variations, with all their far-reaching train of social consequences,
is just as obscure as is the origin of those physical variations on
which, if biologists are right, depends the evolution of species, and
with it the possibility of progress. Perhaps the same unknown cause
which determines the one set of variations gives rise to the other
also. We cannot tell. All we can say is that on the whole in the
conflict of competing forces, whether physical or mental, the
strongest at last prevails, the fittest survives. In the mental sphere
the struggle for existence is not less fierce and internecine than in
the physical, but in the end the better ideas, which we call the
truth, carry the day. The clamorous opposition with which at their
first appearance they are regularly greeted, whenever they conflict
with old prejudices, may retard but cannot prevent their final
victory. [Sidenote: The tombs of the prophets.] It is the practice
of the mob first to stone and then to erect useless memorials to their
greatest benefactors. All who set themselves to replace ancient error
and superstition by truth and reason must lay their account with
brickbats in their life and a marble monument after death.
[Sidenote: Superstition the creed of the laggards in the march of
intellect.] I have been led into making these remarks by the wish to
explain why it is that superstitions of all sorts, political, moral,
and religious, survive among peoples who have the opportunity of
knowing better. The reason is that the better ideas, which are
constantly forming in the upper stratum, have not yet filtered through
from the highest to the lowest minds. Such a filtration is generally
slow, and by the time that the new notions have penetrated to the
bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often already obsolete
and superseded by others at the top. Hence it is that if we could open
the heads and read the thoughts of two men of the same generation and
country but at opposite ends of the intellectual scale, we should
probably find their minds as {169} different as if the two belonged to
different species. Mankind, as it has been well said, advances in
_échelons_; that is, the columns march not abreast of each other but
in a straggling line, all lagging in various degrees behind the
leader. The image well describes the difference not only between
peoples, but between individuals of the same people and the same
generation. Just as one nation is continually outstripping some of its
contemporaries, so within the same nation some men are constantly
outpacing their fellows, and the foremost in the race are those who
have thrown off the load of superstition which still burdens the backs
and clogs the footsteps of the laggards. To drop metaphor,
superstitions survive because, while they shock the views of
enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony with
the thoughts and feelings of others who, though they are drilled by
their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians or
savages at heart. That is why, for example, the barbarous punishments
for high treason and witchcraft and the enormities of slavery were
tolerated and defended in this country down to modern times.
[Sidenote: Superstitions either public or private.] Such survivals
may be divided into two sorts, according as they are public or
private; in other words, according as they are embodied in the law of
the land or are practised with or without the connivance of the law in
holes and corners. [Sidenote: Examples of public superstitions.] The
examples I have just cited belong to the former of these two classes.
Witches were publicly burned and traitors were publicly disembowelled
in England not so long ago, and slavery survived as a legal
institution still later. The true nature of such public superstitions
is apt, through their very publicity, to escape detection, because
until they are finally swept away by the rising tide of progress,
there are always plenty of people to defend them as institutions
essential to the public welfare and sanctioned by the laws of God and
man.
[Sidenote: The wide prevalence of private superstitions constitutes a
standing menace to civilization.] It is otherwise with those private
superstitions to which the name of folklore is usually confined. In
civilized society most educated people are not even aware of the
extent to which these relics of savage ignorance survive at their
doors. The discovery of their wide prevalence was indeed only made
last century, chiefly through the researches of the brothers {170}
Grimm in Germany. Since their day systematic enquiries carried on
among the less educated classes, and especially among the peasantry,
of Europe have revealed the astonishing, nay, alarming truth that a
mass, if not the majority, of people in every civilized country is
still living in a state of intellectual savagery, that, in fact, the
smooth surface of cultured society is sapped and mined by
superstition. Only those whose studies have led them to investigate
the subject are aware of the depth to which the ground beneath our
feet is thus, as it were, honeycombed by unseen forces. We appear to
be standing on a volcano which may at any moment break out in smoke
and fire to spread ruin and devastation among the gardens and palaces
of ancient culture wrought so laboriously by the hands of many
generations. After looking on the ruined Greek temples of Paestum and
contrasting them with the squalor and savagery of the Italian
peasantry, Renan said, “I trembled for civilization, seeing it so
limited, built on so weak a foundation, resting on so few individuals
even in the country where it is dominant.”[170.1]
[Sidenote: It is the earliest and crudest superstitions that survive
longest, because they answer to the calibre of the lowest minds. Hence
while the surface of society is constantly changing, its depths, like
those of the ocean, remain almost motionless.] If we examine the
superstitious beliefs which are tacitly but firmly held by many of our
fellow-countrymen, we shall find, perhaps to our surprise, that it is
precisely the oldest and crudest superstitions which are most
tenacious of life, while views which, though also erroneous, are more
modern and refined, soon fade from the popular memory. For example,
the high gods of Egypt and Babylon, of Greece and Rome, have for ages
been totally forgotten by the people and survive only in the books of
the learned; yet the peasants, who never even heard of Isis and
Osiris, of Apollo and Artemis, of Jupiter and Juno, retain to this day
a firm belief in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, those
lesser creatures of the mythical fancy in which their fathers believed
long before the great deities of the ancient world were ever thought
of, and in which, to all appearance, their descendants will continue
to believe long after the great deities of the present day shall have
gone the way of all their predecessors. The reason why the higher
forms of superstition or religion (for the religion of one generation
is {171} apt to become the superstition of the next) are less
permanent than the lower is simply that the higher beliefs, being a
creation of superior intelligence, have little hold on the minds of
the vulgar, who nominally profess them for a time in conformity with
the will of their betters, but readily shed and forget them as soon as
these beliefs have gone out of fashion with the educated classes. But
while they dismiss without a pang or an effort articles of faith which
were only superficially imprinted on their minds by the weight of
cultured opinion, the ignorant and foolish multitude cling with a
sullen determination to far grosser beliefs which really answer to the
coarser texture of their undeveloped intellect. Thus while the avowed
creed of the enlightened minority is constantly changing under the
influence of reflection and enquiry, the real, though unavowed, creed
of the mass of mankind appears to be almost stationary, and the reason
why it alters so little is that in the majority of men, whether they
are savages or outwardly civilized beings, intellectual progress is so
slow as to be hardly perceptible. The surface of society, like that of
the sea, is in perpetual motion; its depths, like those of the ocean,
remain almost unmoved.
[Sidenote: The early history of mankind, reconstructed from the joint
testimony of savagery and folklore, is full of gaps, which can only be
imperfectly bridged by the Comparative Method.] Thus from an
examination, first, of savagery and, second, of its survivals in
civilization, the study of Social Anthropology attempts to trace the
early history of human thought and institutions. The history can never
be complete, unless science should discover some mode of reading the
faded record of the past of which we in this generation can hardly
dream. We know indeed that every event, however insignificant, implies
a change, however slight, in the material constitution of the
universe, so that the whole history of the world is, in a sense,
engraved upon its face, though our eyes are too dim to read the
scroll. It may be that in the future some wondrous reagent, some magic
chemical, may yet be found to bring out the whole of nature’s secret
handwriting for a greater than Daniel to interpret to his fellows.
That will hardly be in our time. With the resources at present at our
command we must be content with a very brief, imperfect, and in large
measure conjectural account of man’s mental and social development in
prehistoric ages. {172} As I have already pointed out, the evidence,
fragmentary and dubious as it is, only runs back a very little way
into the measureless past of human life on earth; we soon lose the
thread, the faintly glimmering thread, in the thick darkness of the
absolutely unknown. Even in the comparatively short space of time, a
few thousand years at most, which falls more or less within our ken,
there are many deep and wide chasms which can only be bridged by
hypotheses, if the story of evolution is to run continuously.
[Sidenote: The legitimacy of the Comparative Method in social
anthropology rests on the similarity of the human mind in all races.]
Such bridges are built in anthropology as in biology by the
Comparative Method, which enables us to borrow the links of one chain
of evidence to supply the gaps in another. For us who deal, not with
the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of
human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on
the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in
all races of men. I have laid stress on the great inequalities which
exist not only between the various races, but between men of the same
race and generation; but it should be clearly understood and
remembered that these divergencies are quantitative rather than
qualitative, they consist in differences of degree rather than of
kind. The savage is not a different sort of being from his civilized
brother: he has the same capacities, mental and moral, but they are
less fully developed: his evolution has been arrested, or rather
retarded, at a lower level. And as savage races are not all on the
same plane, but have stopped or tarried at different points of the
upward path, we can to a certain extent, by comparing them with each
other, construct a scale of social progression and mark out roughly
some of the stages on the long road that leads from savagery to
civilization. In the kingdom of mind such a scale of mental evolution
answers to the scale of morphological evolution in the animal kingdom.
[Sidenote: It is only of late years that the importance of savagery
as a document of human history has been understood.] From what I have
said I hope you have formed some idea of the extreme importance which
the study of savage life possesses for a proper understanding of the
early history of mankind. The savage is a human document, a record of
man’s efforts to raise himself above the level of the beast. It is
only of late years that the full value of the document {173} has been
appreciated; indeed, many people are probably still of Dr. Johnson’s
opinion, who, pointing to the three large volumes of _Voyages to the
South Seas_ which had just come out, said: “Who will read them
through? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them
through; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read
through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of
savages is like another.”[173.1] But the world has learned a good
deal since Dr. Johnson’s day; and the records of savage life, which
the sage of Bolt Court consigned without scruple to the rats and mice,
have now their place among the most precious archives of humanity.
Their fate has been like that of the Sibylline Books. They were
neglected and despised when they might have been obtained complete;
and now wise men would give more than a king’s ransom for their
miserably mutilated and imperfect remains. It is true that before our
time civilized men often viewed savages with interest and described
them intelligently, and some of their descriptions are still of great
scientific value. [Sidenote: Great impulse given to the study of
savagery by the discovery of America and of the Pacific.] For
example, the discovery of America naturally excited in the minds of
the European peoples an eager curiosity as to the inhabitants of the
new world, which had burst upon their gaze, as if at the waving of a
wizard’s wand the curtain of the western sky had suddenly rolled up
and disclosed scenes of glamour and enchantment. Accordingly some of
the Spaniards who explored and conquered these realms of wonder have
bequeathed to us accounts of the manners and customs of the Indians,
which for accuracy and fulness of detail probably surpass any former
records of an alien race. Such, for instance, is the great work of the
Franciscan friar Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, and such the work
of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself half an Inca, on the Incas of Peru.
Again, the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth century, with
its revelation of fairy-like islands scattered in profusion over a sea
of eternal summer, drew the eyes and stirred the imagination of
Europe; and to the curiosity thus raised in many minds, though not in
Dr. Johnson’s, we owe some precious descriptions of the islanders,
who, in those days of sailing ships, appeared to dwell so remote from
us {174} that the poet Cowper fancied their seas might never again be
ploughed by English keels.[174.1]
[Sidenote: The passing of the savage.] These and many other old
accounts of savages must always retain their interest and value for
the study of Social Anthropology, all the more because they set before
us the natives in their natural unsophisticated state, before their
primitive manners and customs had been altered or destroyed by
European influence. Yet in the light of subsequent research these
early records are often seen to be very defective, because the
authors, unaware of the scientific importance of facts which to the
ordinary observer might appear trifling or disgusting, have either
passed over many things of the highest interest in total silence or
dismissed them with a brief and tantalizing allusion. It is
accordingly necessary to supplement the reports of former writers by a
minute and painstaking investigation of the living savages in order to
fill up, if possible, the many yawning gaps in our knowledge.
Unfortunately this cannot always be done, since many savages have
either been totally exterminated or so changed by contact with
Europeans that it is no longer possible to obtain trustworthy
information as to their old habits and traditions. But whenever the
ancient customs and beliefs of a primitive race have passed away
unrecorded, a document of human history has perished beyond recall.
Unhappily this destruction of the archives, as we may call it, is
going on apace. In some places, for example, in Tasmania, the savage
is already extinct; in others, as in Australia, he is dying. In others
again, for instance in Central and Southern Africa, where the numbers
and inborn vigour of the race shew little or no sign of succumbing in
the struggle for existence, the influence of traders, officials, and
missionaries is so rapidly disintegrating and effacing the native
customs, that with the passing of the older generation even the memory
of them will soon in many places be gone. It is therefore a matter of
the most urgent scientific importance to secure without delay full and
accurate reports of these perishing or changing peoples, to take
permanent copies, so {175} to say, of these precious monuments before
they are destroyed. It is not yet too late. Much may still be learned,
for example, in West Australia, in New Guinea, in Melanesia, in
Central Africa, among the hill tribes of India and the forest Indians
of the Amazons. There is still time to send expeditions to these
regions, to subsidize men on the spot, who are conversant with the
languages and enjoy the confidence of the natives; for there are such
men who possess or can obtain the very knowledge we require, yet who,
unaware or careless of its inestimable value for science, make no
effort to preserve the treasure for posterity, and, if we do not
speedily come to the rescue, will suffer it to perish with them. In
the whole range of human knowledge at the present moment there is no
more pressing need than that of recording this priceless evidence of
man’s early history before it is too late. For soon, very soon, the
opportunities which we still enjoy will be gone for ever. In another
quarter of a century probably there will be little or nothing of the
old savage life left to record. The savage, such as we may still see
him, will then be as extinct as the dodo. The sands are fast running
out: the hour will soon strike: the record will be closed: the book
will be sealed. [Sidenote: The duty of our generation to posterity.]
And how shall we of this generation look when we stand at the bar of
posterity arraigned on a charge of high treason to our race, we who
neglected to study our perishing fellow-men, but who sent out costly
expeditions to observe the stars and to explore the barren ice-bound
regions of the poles, as if the polar ice would melt and the stars
would cease to shine when we are gone? Let us awake from our slumber,
let us light our lamps, let us gird up our loins. The Universities
exist for the advancement of knowledge. It is their duty to add this
new province to the ancient departments of learning which they
cultivate so diligently. Cambridge, to its honour, has led the way in
equipping and despatching anthropological expeditions; it is for
Oxford, it is for Liverpool, it is for every University in the land to
join in the work.
[Sidenote: The duty of the State.] More than that, it is the public
duty of every civilized state actively to co-operate. In this respect
the United States of America, by instituting a bureau for the study of
the aborigines within its dominions, has set an example {176} which
every enlightened nation that rules over lower races ought to imitate.
[Sidenote: The duty of England.] On none does that duty, that
responsibility, lie more clearly and more heavily than on our own, for
to none in the whole course of human history has the sceptre been
given over so many and so diverse races of men. We have made ourselves
our brother’s keepers. Woe to us if we neglect our duty to our
brother! It is not enough for us to rule in justice the peoples we
have subjugated by the sword. We owe it to them, we owe it to
ourselves, we owe it to posterity, who will require it at our hands,
that we should describe them as they were before we found them, before
they ever saw the English flag and heard, for good or evil, the
English tongue. The voice of England speaks to her subject peoples in
other accents than in the thunder of her guns. Peace has its triumphs
as well as war: there are nobler trophies than captured flags and
cannons. [Sidenote: _Monumentum aere perennius._] There are
monuments, airy monuments, monuments of words, which seem so fleeting
and evanescent, that will yet last when your cannons have crumbled and
your flags have mouldered into dust. When the Roman poet wished to
present an image of perpetuity, he said that he would be remembered so
long as the Roman Empire endured, so long as the white-robed
procession of the Vestals and Pontiffs should ascend the Capitol to
pray in the temple of Jupiter. That solemn procession has long ceased
to climb the slope of the Capitol, the Roman Empire itself has long
passed away, like the empire of Alexander, like the empire of
Charlemagne, like the empire of Spain, yet still amid the wreck of
kingdoms the poet’s monument stands firm, for still his verses are
read and remembered. I appeal to the Universities, I appeal to the
Government of this country to unite in building a monument, a
beneficent monument, of the British Empire, a monument
“_Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens_
_Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis_
_Annorum series, et fuga temporum._”
[The End]
INDEX
{177}
Aborigines of Australia, the severity with which they punish sexual
offences, 71 _sqq._
Abraham and Sarah, 60 _sq._
Abyssinia, 66, 81
Action and opinion, their relative values for society, 155
Adulterer and injured husband, physical relationship supposed to exist
between, 104 _sq._
---- called a murderer, 65, 104
Adultery, expiation for, 44 _sq._; disastrous effects supposed to flow
from, 44 _sqq._, 60 _sq._; punishment of, 46, 50 _sq._, 63 _sqq._;
supposed to be dangerous to the culprits, their spouses, and their
offspring, 102 _sqq._ _See also_ Infidelity.
Africa, superstitious veneration for kings in, 12 _sqq._; superstition
as a support of property in, 38 _sqq._; disastrous effects supposed to
flow from sexual immorality in, 54 _sqq._; British Central, 66, 79,
105; British East, 77, 81, 92, 105, 115, 123; German East, 92, 105,
106; North, 119
Akamba, the, of British East Africa, 77 _sq._, 105
Akikuyu, the, of British East Africa, 92, 105, 115, 128
Aleutian hunters, 106
Algonquin Indians, their modes of keeping off ghosts, 139
Amboyna, taboo in, 27 _sq._
America, Indians of North, 130 _sq._; the discovery of, 173
Amulets for the protection of fruit-trees, 29 _sqq._
Analogy between the reproduction of men, animals, and plants, 99
_sqq._
Ancestor-worship, 7
Anger of gods or spirits at sexual offences, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54,
55 _sq._, 57, 61, 63, 107
Angola, 108; Cazembes of, 11
Angoni, the, of British Central Africa, 79, 132
Annam, savages of, 46
Annamites, the, 33
Anne, Queen, 18
Anointing the nail instead of the wound, 166
Antambahoaka, the, of Madagascar, 59
Anthropology, social, the scope of, 157 _sqq._
Anyanja, the, of British Central Africa, 66, 79, 105
Arab merchant in Darfur, 39
Araucanians of Chili, 84
Arawaks of British Guiana, 83
Areopagus, trials for murder before the, 156
Argos, massacre at, 115
Aricara Indians, 118
Armenians, their mutilation of the dead, 133
Assam, tribes of, 45
Attic law as to homicides, 114
_Atua_, guardian spirit, 118
_Atua tonga_, divinity, 8
Aunt, incest with, 50, 51
Australia, aborigines of, the severity with which they punish sexual
offences, 71 _sqq._
----, Western, 74
Australian aborigines, their precautions against ghosts, 137
Avebury, Lord, 159
Avoidance, ceremonial, of relations by marriage, 75 _sqq._; a
precaution against incest, 75, 84 _sqq._, 93; of wife’s mother, 75
_sqq._, 86 _sq._, 90 _sq._; between father-in-law and daughter-in-law,
76; between various relations, 76 _sq._; between father and daughter,
78, 85, 87; between father-in-law and son-in-law, 79 _sq._; of wife of
wife’s brother, 80; of brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, 81; of
future parents-in-law, 81, 83; between woman and her father-in-law,
82; between a man and his father-in-law, 82, 83; of blood relations,
84 _sqq._; between brother and sister, 85, {178} 86, 87, 88, 90;
between mother and son, 85, 86, 87
Awemba, the, of Northern Rhodesia, 66, 79, 103 _sq._, 120
Babylonian code of Hammurabi, 64
---- kings, their curses, 37 _sq._
Baddat Dyaks of Borneo, 48
Baganda, punishment of sexual offences among the, 64 _sq._; rules of
ceremonial avoidance among the, 90 _sq._; their ideas as to adultery,
102 _sq._; their ideas as to effect of wife’s infidelity on absent
husband, 106 _sq._
Bakerewe, a Bantu people, 78
Bali, punishment of incest and adultery in, 68
Balkan peninsula, the Slavs of the, 97
Balonda, the, 38
Bangala, the, of the Upper Congo, 107
Banggai Archipelago, 54
Banishment of homicides, 113 _sqq._
Banks’ Islands, 6, 86
Banner, a fairy, 17
Bantu tribes, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 103, 123
Bantus, the, of South Africa, their customs as to the marriage of
cousins, 91
Barea, the, tribe on the borders of Abyssinia, 66
Barring the road from the grave against the ghost, 138 _sq._
Basis of morality shifted from supernatural to natural, 153
Basoga, the, of Central Africa, 65
Bastards put to death, 96, 97
Basutos, the, 56; purification for homicide among the, 120 _sq._
Batamba, the, of Busoga, 76
Batang Lupar river in Borneo, 48
Battas, or Bataks, of Sumatra, their ideas as to sexual immorality,
46; their punishment of adultery, 69; their rules of ceremonial
avoidance, 85
Bavili, the, of Loango, 55
Ba-Yaka, the, of the Congo Free State, 124
Beech, M. W. H., 129 _n._ 1
Belief in immortality a fruitful source of war, 129 _sq._; waste of
life and property entailed by the, 111 _sq._
Bella Coola Indians, mourning customs of the, 144
Beni Amer, tribe on the borders of Abyssinia, 66
Bering Strait, 132
Besisi, the, of the Malay Peninsula, 137
Bhotias, the, of the Himalayas, 141
Bilaspore in India, 133
Bismarck Archipelago, 131
Black and white Furies, 117
Blood of pigs used in expiatory ceremonies, 44 _sqq._; of incestuous
persons not to be shed on the ground, 52, 53, 68; of pigs used in
ceremonies of purification, 116 _sq._; of the slain drunk by the
slayers, 118 _sq._
Blood covenant, 118, 119
---- relations, ceremonial avoidance of, 84 _sqq._
Blu-u Kayans, the, of Borneo, 51
Boas, Franz, quoted, 126 _sq._, 146 _sq._
Bogos, tribe on borders of Abyssinia, 81
Bolivia, 106
Boloki, the, of the Congo, 39, 75, 107, 128
Borneo, the Sea Dyaks of, 34, 47 _sq._, 51, 136; pagan tribes of, 49
_sq._; tribes of Dutch, 50 _sq._
Brazil, Indians of, 96
British Columbia, mourning customs among the tribes of, 142 _sqq._
Brooke, Charles, quoted, 50
Brooke, Rajah, 12
Brother and sister, ceremonial avoidance between, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88,
90; incest of, 51, 54, 59, 60 _n._ 1, 62, 67, 68
Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, mutual avoidance of, 81
Buduma, the, of Lake Chad, 109
Bugineese, the, of Celebes, 51
Bukaua, tribe of German New Guinea, 82, 131
Bureau of Ethnology in the U.S. America, 175
Burgundians, the, 16
Burma, 119, 130, 134, 135, 138; the Karens of, 44 _sq._
Burning as punishment of sexual crime, 63, 64, 68
Buru, an East Indian island, 109 _n._ 3
Burying alive as punishment, 46, 68, 69
Busoga, 76
Cairbre Musc, Irish legend of, 62
Calabria, superstition as to murderers in, 119
Californian Indians, 83
Cambridge in relation to anthropology, 175
Cameroon negroes, 116
Car Nicobar, rite of purification in, 116 _sq._
Caribs, the, 83
Caroline Islands, rules of ceremonial avoidance in the, 87 _sq._
Cazembes of Angola, 11
Celebes, 68
---- Central, 12, 29, 30, 52, 53, 122
---- Southern, 51
Celts of Ireland and Scotland, 17
Central Provinces of India, 33
{179}
Ceram, island of, 51; taboo in, 28
---- Laut Islands, taboo in, 28 _sq._
Ceylon, modes of protecting property in, 33
Chad, Lake, 109
Charms to protect property, 25 _sqq._, 38 _sq._, 41 _sqq._; for the
protection of fruit-trees, 29 _sqq._
Chastity required of those who handle corn or enter a granary, 56
_sq._
Chiefs, supernatural powers attributed to, 6 _sqq._
Children supposed to suffer for the adultery of their father or
mother, 102 _sqq._
Chili, 84
Chinese, their faith in ghosts, 149 _sqq._
Chinook Indians, their purification of homicides, 126 _sq._
Chins of Burma, their burial customs, 138 _sq._
Chitomé, the sacred pontiff of Congo, 108
Circumcision, orgies at, in Fiji, 60 _n._ 1
Civilization evolved from savagery, 162; endangered by superstition,
170
Clan, marriage within the, forbidden, 45, 65, 71; marriage within
mother’s clan forbidden, 55
Claudius, the emperor, 61
Clytemnestra, ghost of, 118
Codrington, Dr. R. H., 6, 85 _n._ 1, 86
Communism, era of sexual, 164 _sq._
Comparative Method in anthropology, legitimacy of the, 172
Condon, Father M. A., quoted, 76 _sq._
Confession of sin, 45, 57, 61, 62, 64 _sq._, 103, 104, 107, 109
Congo, the, 39, 75, 107, 108, 124
Consanguineous marriages, question as to the results of, 95 _sq._
Continence required at certain times, 106 _sq._, 108
Corc and Cormac, Irish legend of, 62 _sq._
Corn, chastity required of persons who handle, 56 _sq._
Corpses mutilated in order to disable the ghosts, 132 _sq._, 134, 136,
137
Cousins, marriage of, 88 _sq._, 91; expiation for, 47 _sq._, 92 _sq._;
forbidden, 47, 48, 53, 67, 72, 89, 90, 91, 92; punished, 67; supposed
to be unfruitful, 92
----, mutual avoidance between male and female, 88 _sqq._
Cow’s dung as a detergent of ghosts, 123
Cowper, the poet, 174
Crawford, Raymond, 17 _n._ 5
Criminals, precautions against the ghosts of executed, 132
Crops, chiefs and kings thought to have power over the, 11 _sq._, 15,
16 _sq._; supposed to be blighted by sexual immorality, 44 _sq._, 46,
48, 49, 50 _sqq._
Cross-stick taboo, 25
Cumana in South America, 33
Curses as modes of protecting property, 24 _sq._, 28, 29, 31 _sq._, 34
_sqq._, 40 _sq._
Cycles in human affairs, 165 _sq._
Cynaetha in Arcadia, 115
_Damzogs_, guardian-spirits of property, 39 _sq._
Darfur, 39, 81
Daughter, incest with, 49, 51, 54, 58, 67, 68; and father, mutual
avoidance of, 78
David, his sin, 107
Dawson, James, quoted, 71 _sq._
Dead, the fear of the, 111 _sq._; carried out of house by a special
opening, 135
De Groot, Professor J. J. M., quoted, 150 _sq._
Delagoa Bay, 57, 80, 92, 104, 121
Delphic oracle, 61
Demeter and Persephone, 36
Destruction of the property of the dead, 111 _sq._, 135
Deuteronomy, 37
Development of moral theory, hypothetical, 102
“Devil going on his wife,” 54 _n._ 2
Devils, exorcism of, 116 _sq._
Diana, sacred grove of, 61
Dinkas, the, of the Upper Nile, 57
Divinity of Maori chiefs, 7 _sqq._; of kings, 10 _sqq._
Donaglas, the, 81
d’Orbigny, A., quoted, 111 _sqq._
Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, 131
Dos Santos, J., Portuguese historian, 13, 14
Drinking water as test of wife’s fidelity, 107
Drowning as a punishment for sexual offences, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 65,
66, 67, 68
Dunvegan, 17
Durham, Miss M. Edith, 97
Dyaks of Borneo, 47 _sq._, 51, 137; curses among the, 34 _sqq._
---- of Sarawak, 11
Early history of mankind, the imperfection of the record, 171 _sq._
Earthquakes thought to be caused by sexual immorality, 54
East Indies, sexual offences severely punished in, 67 _sqq._
Edward the Confessor, 18
Egypt, divinity of kings in ancient, 14 _sq._
Ekoi, the, of Southern Nigeria, 39
Epidemics supposed to be caused by incest, 46, 51
Eruptions of volcanoes supposed to be caused by incest, 54
{180}
Esquimaux of Bering Strait, 132
Evolution, a scale of mental, 172
Ewe negroes of Togoland, 142
---- speaking tribes of the Slave Coast, 41
Executioners taste the blood of their victims, 119
Exorcism of devils, 116 _sq._
Expiation for sexual immorality, 44 _sqq._, 57, 61, 62 _sq._; for
marriage of cousins, 92 _sq._; for incest, 105 _sq._; for homicide,
128 _sq._
Extinction of the savage, 174 _sq._
_Fady_, or taboo, in Madagascar, 31 _sq._
Fairy banner, 17
---- changeling, 166
Father, incest with, 106
---- and daughter, mutual avoidance of, 78, 85, 87
Father-in-law avoided ceremonially by his daughter-in-law, 82; avoided
ceremonially by his son-in-law, 82, 83
Fear of ghosts, 111 _sqq._; salutary effect of, 111, 113, 149 _sqq._;
of women who die in pregnancy or childbed, 133 _sqq._
Fertility of women and cattle, supposed power of chiefs and kings over
the, 14, 16; of land supposed to be impaired by sexual offences, 44
_sqq._
----, Diana a goddess of, 61 _sq._
Fetishes in Guinea, 41
Fetters put on the dead, 137
Fidelity, test of conjugal, 107
Fig-tree, sacred, among the Akikuyu, 128 _sq._
Fiji, authority of chiefs in, 7; taboo in, 27; orgies at circumcision
in, 60 _n._ 1
Fijians, their custom of driving away ghosts, 131 _sq._
Finger, sacrifice of, 117
First-fruits offered to chiefs, 7
Fish sacred, 36
Floods supposed to be caused by incest, 49
Folklore, a department of Social Anthropology, 166, 169
Food-supply supposed to be affected by improper relations between the
sexes, 100 _sq._
Fornication, expiation for, 44 _sq._; disastrous effects supposed to
flow from, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 63, 65, 96; punishment of,
44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 63, 65, 66, 96 _sqq._
Frenzy caused by sight or thought of blood, 122 _sq._
Fruit-trees, charms for the protection of, 29 _sqq._
Furies of Clytemnestra, 117
Galelareese, the, of Halmahera, 54
Galton, Sir Francis, 159
Garcilasso de la Vega, quoted, 15 _sq._; on the Incas, 173
Gardens, superstition as to, 57
Gennep, A. van, 31
Ghostly power ascribed to chiefs, 6 _sq._
Ghosts as protectors of property, 26; the fear of, 111 _sqq._;
salutary effect of belief in, 111, 113, 149 _sqq._; of all who have
died violent deaths accounted dangerous, 130; of bad people,
precautions against the, 132 _sq._; disabled by the mutilation of
their corpses, 132 _sq._, 134, 136, 137; blinded, 133
---- and goblins outlast the high gods, 170 _sq._
---- of slain especially dreaded by their slayers, 113 _sqq._; thought
to drive their slayers mad, 117 _sqq._; precautions taken by slayers
against the, 117 _sqq._, 123 _sqq._; scared or driven away, 126, 130
_sqq._; especially dreaded by their kinsfolk and neighbours, 127
_sqq._
---- of women dying in pregnancy or childbed especially feared, 133
_sqq._
Girdle of red feathers, badge of royalty, 10
Girschner, Max, quoted, 87 _sq._
Goat, expiatory sacrifice of, 92
Gods or spirits angry at sexual offences, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 55
_sq._, 57, 61, 63, 107; the creations of man’s fancy, 99; the
stalking-horses of savages, 101; the high, ephemeral compared to
ghosts and goblins, 170 _sq._
Government, superstition as a prop of, 6 _sqq._; of mankind
essentially aristocratic, 167
Governors, supernatural powers attributed to, 6
Granaries, superstitions concerning, 56 _sq._
Gran Chaco, Indians of the, 140
Granddaughter, incest with, 48
Grave, the road from the, barred against the ghost, 138 _sq._
Greasing the hands of the dead, 137 _sq._
Greece, superstitious veneration for kings in Homeric, 16
_Greegrees_, charms, 42
Greek purification of homicides, 116, 120, 123 _sq._
Greeks, the ancient, their use of curses, 36 _sq._; their ideas as to
incest, 61; their customs as to homicide, 113 _sq._
Grimm, the brothers, 169 _sq._
Guiana, British, 83; Indians of, their notion as to homicides, 117
_sq._
Guinea, fetishes in, 41
Gula, Babylonian goddess, 38
Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands, 107
{181}
Hair of homicides shaved, 123 _sq._, 128
Halmahera, East Indian island, 54
Hammurabi, code of, 64
Hanging as punishment for incest, 90
Hebrews, their ideas as to adultery, 60 _sq._
Heraclitus on purification for homicide, 117
Herbert River in Queensland, 137
Herero, the, of South Africa, 133
Herzegovina, 98
Hindoos of the Punjaub, 133; ancient, burial custom of the, 137
Hippopotamus hunters, superstitions of, 57 _sqq._
History regulated by general laws, 160; of mankind, imperfection of
the early records, 171 _sq._
Hlengoues, the, of South-East Africa, 57
Hobley, C. W., 105 _n._ 2; quoted, 115 _n._ 5
Homicide, purification for, 114, 115 _sqq._, 120 _sqq._, 123 _sqq._;
expiation for, 128 _sq._
Homicides fear the ghosts of their victims, 113 _sqq._; secluded, 114
_sq._, 120, 121 _sq._, 124, 125 _sqq._; taste the blood of their
victims, 118 _sq._
Horror of sexual irregularities among savages, suggested reason for,
101
Hose, Ch., and McDougall, W., quoted, 49 _sq._
Hottentots forbid marriage of cousins, 67
Howitt, A. W., 75 _n._ 1, 85 _n._ 1
Huichol Indians of Mexico, 106
Human history regulated by general laws, 160
---- life, superstition as a prop to the security of, 111 _sqq._
Huth, A. H., 95
Hypotheses, their place in science, 172
Ibo, the, of Nigeria, 119
Iguana used in magic, 30 _sq._
Illegitimate children put to death, 96 _sq._
Immorality, sexual, disastrous effects believed to flow from, 44
_sqq._, 63; supposed to disturb the course of nature, 99 _sqq._;
original ground of the conception unknown, 102; supposed to be
injurious to the culprits themselves and their relations, 102 _sqq._;
superstition as to, 110
Immortality, waste of life and property entailed by the belief in, 111
_sq._; belief in, a fruitful source of war, 129 _sq._
Impalement as punishment of adultery, 67
Inbreeding, question of the effects of, 95 _sq._
Incas of Peru, 173
Incest, disastrous effects supposed to flow from, 45 _sqq._, 61; with
granddaughter, 48; with adopted daughter, 49; punishment of, 49 _sq._,
51, 52 _sqq._, 90, 91; with aunt, 50, 51; with a mother, 51, 61, 67;
with a niece, 51, 53; with a daughter, 51, 54, 58, 67, 68; with a
sister, 51, 54, 59, 60 _n._ 1, 62, 67, 68, 105; enjoined in certain
circumstances, 57 _sqq._; expiation for, 105 _sq._; with father,
106
India, superstitious veneration for kings in ancient, 16
Indian Archipelago, precautions against ghosts of women dying in
childbed in the, 136
Indians of North America, their custom of driving away the ghosts of
the slain, 130 _sq._
Infanticide in China checked by fear of ghosts, 150 _sq._
Infection, physical, supposed to be spread by unchaste persons, 109
Infertile marriage, dread of, 94
Infertility thought to be caused by sexual immorality, 57, 60 _sq._;
of women and cattle supposed to be caused by fornication, 109 _sq._
Infidelity of husband supposed to be dangerous to his offspring, 103;
of wife supposed to endanger her husband, 106 _sqq._ _See also_
Adultery
Inoculation, magical, of hunters, 57 _sq._; of homicides, 121
Insanity, temporary, caused by blood, 122 _sq._
Institutions, early history of, imperfections in the records, 171
_sq._
Ireland, superstitions as to kings in ancient, 17
Irish legend as to incest of brother and sister, 62
Ishtar, the goddess, 38
Isla del Malhado in Florida, 83
Issoudun in British New Guinea, 147
Ja-Luo, the, of Kavirondo, 123
Job on adultery, 60
Johnson, Dr. S., 17, 18; on _Voyages to the South Seas_, 173
_Jok_, ancestral spirits, 57
Joustra, M., 85 _n._ 1
Jupagalk tribe of Australia, 74
Juris, the, of Brazil, 33
Kabyles, the, of North Africa, 119
Kachins of Burma, their fear of the ghosts of women dying in childbed,
135 _sq._
Kai, the, of German New Guinea, their fear of the ghosts of the slain,
124 _sq._
Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales, 74
{182}
Karens of Burma, their ideas as to sexual immorality, 44 _sq._; their
dread of ghosts, 130
Kavirondo, the, of British East Africa, 65, 123
Kawars, the, 33
Kayans, the, of Borneo, 49, 50, 51
Khasis, the, of Assam, 45
Kickapoo Indians, 130
Kikuyu. _See_ Akikuyu
King’s Evil, touching for, 17 _sq._
Kings, superstitious veneration for, 10 _sqq._
---- of Tahiti, their sacredness 10 _sq._
Kouis, the, of Laos, 32
Kubus, the, of Sumatra, 67
Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 146
_sq._
Landmarks protected by gods and curses, 37 _sq._
Laos, 32
Laurel leaves used in purificatory rites, 117
Laws regulating marriage, their origin unknown, 102; which regulate
human history, 160
Leaden tablets, 36
Leaping over grave of murdered man, 119
Leaves used in exorcism, 116 _sq._
Lengua Indians, their fear of ghosts, 140 _sq._
Leviticus, 61
Licence, periods of, 60 _n._ 1
Lightning a punishment of incest, 45
Lillooet Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 145
_sq._
Livingstone, David, quoted, 38
Lkungen or Songish Indians of Vancouver Island, mourning customs of
the, 143
Loango, the king of, 12, 13; ideas as to sexual immorality in, 54
_sq._
Lombok, sexual offences severely punished in, 70
Looboos, a people of Sumatra, 82, 109
_Looï_, pollution incurred by unchastity, 109
Loowoo, in Celebes, 12
Louis XV., 18
Louis XVI., 18
Low, Hugh, 48
Lushai, the, of North-Eastern India, 119 _sq._
Macassars, the, of Celebes, 51
McDougall, W., and Hose, Ch., quoted, 49 _sq._
Macleods, chief of the, 17
Madagascar, 59, 106; taboo in, 31 _sq._
Madness supposed to be caused by homicide, 117 _sqq._
Magic older than religion, 100
Magical rites tend to become religious, 100
Maiming as a punishment of adultery, 64
Malagasy charms, 31
Malay Archipelago, taboo in the, 27 _sq._
---- Peninsula, 137
---- peoples, the severity with which they punish sexual offences, 70
_sq._
---- region, divinity of kings in the, 11 _sqq._
Maloulekes, the, of South-Eastern Africa, 57
Mamoedjoe, district of Celebes, 68
Man, the science of, 159 _sq._; primæval, unknown, 163 _sq._
_Mana_, supernatural power, 6
Mangars, a tribe of Nepal, 138
Mankind dominated by an enlightened minority, 167 _sq._
Manslayer. _See_ Homicide
Mantineans, their purification, 115
Manu, laws of, 16, 63
Maori chiefs, authority of, 7 _sqq._; esteemed gods, 7 _sq._
Maoris, taboo among the, 20 _sqq._
Marks of taboo to protect property, 25 _sqq._, 38 _sq._, 41 _sqq._
Marquesas Islands, taboo in the, 23 _sq._
Marrah, in Darfur, 39
Marriage, superstition in relation to, 44 _sqq._
---- of cousins, different customs as to the, 88 _sq._, 91; forbidden,
89, 90, 91, 92, supposed to be unfruitful, 92; expiation for the, 92
_sq._
---- laws, their origin unknown, 102
Marriages, consanguineous, question as to the results of, 95 _sq._
Masai, the, of British East Africa, 81; of German East Africa, 105
Medicine-man, respect for, 14
Melanesia, taboo as a preserver of property in, 26 _sq._
Melanesians, authority of chiefs among the, 6 _sq._; rules of
ceremonial avoidance amongst the, 86 _sq._; of the Bismarck
Archipelago, 131
Men Aziottenos, 37
Men naturally unequal, 166 _sq._
Mental evolution, a scale of, 172
Meteors, superstition as to, 141
Milky Way, 141
Mimic warfare, 129
Mimicry in magic, 100
Minority, mankind dominated by an enlightened, 167 _sq._
Montenegrin peasantry, their strict views of sexual immorality, 97
Moral theory, hypothetical development of, 102
{183}
Morality, sexual, enforced by superstition, 44 _sqq._; change in the
theoretical basis of, 101 _sq._; basis of, shifted from supernatural
to natural, 153
Morocco, superstitions concerning granaries in, 56 _sq._
Mosaic law, punishments for sexual offences under the, 64
Mother, incest with a, 51, 61; and son, ceremonial avoidance between,
85, 86, 87
Mother-in-law, ceremonial avoidance of, 75 _sqq._, 86 _sq._, 90 _sq._
Mount Elgon, 123
Mourning customs of widows and widowers, 142 _sqq._
Moxos Indians of Bolivia, 106
Mukjarawaint tribe of Victoria, 74
Murderer, rules observed by pardoned, 126
Murderers, their precautions against the ghosts of their victims, 117
_sqq._
Mutilation of corpses in order to disable the ghosts, 132 _sq._, 134,
136, 137; of the dying or dead, 141
Nails used to prevent ghosts from walking, 133
Names of kings sacred, 10
Nandi, the, of British East Africa, 14, 56, 66, 118; curses among the,
40 _sq._
Natchez Indians of North America, 124
Natural inequality of men, 166 _sq._
Nature, why illicit relations between the sexes are thought to disturb
the balance of, 99 _sqq._
---- the Sphinx, 102
Nebuchadnezzar, the king, quoted, 37 _sq._
Nepal, 138
Nets to catch ghosts, 139
New Britain, 109; taboo in, 26 _sq._
---- Guinea, British, 125, 147; Dutch, 131; German, 82, 124, 127, 131
---- Hebrides, 86
---- Ireland, 89, 90
---- Mecklenburg, 89
---- South Wales, 74
---- Zealand, authority of chiefs in, 7 _sqq._ Nias, the island of, 46
_sq._; curses in, 34
Niece, incest with, 51, 53
Niger, tribes of the Lower, 119
Nile, the Upper, 57
Ninib, Babylonian god, 38
_Nuru_, the spirit of the slain, 121
Nusku, Babylonian god, 38
Oaths and imprecations as preservers of property, 24 _sqq._ _See also_
Curses
_Obeah_ man, magician, 42
_Obi_, magic, 42
Oedipus, the incest of, 61
Ojèbways, their modes of keeping off ghosts, 139 _sq._
Omaha Indians, 132 _sq._; their customs as to pardoned murderers, 126
Opinion and action, their relative values for society, 155
Orang Glai, the, savages of Annam, 46
Oraons of Bengal, their fear of the ghosts of women dying in childbed
or pregnancy, 134
Oregon, Chinook Indians of, 126
Orestes, the matricide, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 126
Orinoco, the, 112
Ottawa Indians, 131
Ovakumbi, a tribe of Angola, 108
Ovambo, a Bantu people of South-West Africa, 80 _sq._
Pacific, first exploration of the, 173
Paestum, the temples at, 170
Paint-house, the, 55
_Pamali_, taboo, 27
Papuans of New Guinea, 131; of Issoudun, 147
Parents-in-law, ceremonial avoidance by man of his future, 81, 83
Parricide, Roman punishment of, 52; guilt of, 61
Pasemhers, a tribe of Sumatra, 69
Pasir, a district of Borneo, 51
Patagonians, their fear of the dead, 111 _sqq._
Peasantry of Europe, their intellectual savagery, 170
_Pemali_, taboo, 27
Pepper put in eyes of corpse to blind ghost, 133
Perham, J., 47
Persephone, 36
Peru, the Yncas of, 15 _sq._, 173
_Petara_, Dyak name for deity, 47
Pig’s blood used in ceremonies of purification, 116 _sq._
Pigs used in expiatory ceremonies, 44 _sqq._
Physical causation, false notions of, 100
---- infection supposed to be spread by unchaste persons, 109
---- relationship supposed to exist between adulterer and injured
husband, 104 _sq._
Plato on sanctity of landmarks, 37
Pollution, ceremonial, 93, 105; incurred by homicide, 115 _sqq._, 128
----, dangerous, supposed to be incurred by unchastity, 109
Polynesia, authority of chiefs in, 7 _sqq._; taboo in, 20 _sqq._
_Pomali_, taboo, 27
_Pontianak_, ghost of woman who died in childbed, 137 _n._
{184}
Precautions taken by homicides against the ghosts of their victims,
117 _sqq._, 123 _sqq._; against the ghosts of bad people, 132 _sq._;
against ghosts of women dying in pregnancy or childbed, 133 _sqq._;
taken by widows and widowers against the ghosts of their spouses, 142
_sqq._
Prehistoric ages, imperfections in the records of, 171 _sq._
Primæval man unknown, 163 _sq._
Primitive, relative sense in which the word is applied to existing
savages, 163 _sq._
Private property, superstition as a prop of, 20 _sqq._
Propagation of animals and plants supposed to be affected by the
relations of the human sexes, 99 _sqq._
Property, superstition as a support of private, 20 _sqq._; of the dead
destroyed, 111 _sq._, 135
_Psanyi_, 122
Punans, the, of Borneo, 50
Punishments, severe, for sexual offences, 63 _sqq._, 96 _sqq._
Punjaub, the, 133
Purification for unchastity by means of blood, 44 _sqq._; for
unchastity by means of water, 109; for homicide, 114, 115 _sqq._, 120
_sqq._, 123 _sqq._; and capital punishment, 151 _sq._
Queen Anne, 18
Queen Charlotte Islands, 107
Queen Draga of Servia, 97
Queensland, native tribes of, 72 _sqq._; their mutilation of the dead,
137
Rain, kings expected to give, 13 _sq._; failure or excess of, supposed
to be caused by sexual immorality, 44, 46, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56
Rajah Brooke, 12
Rajamahal in Bengal, 45
Ramanandroany, a Malagasy deity, 31
Rape, punishment of, 66
Red paint put on homicides, 118, 124, 127
Regalia, sanctity of, 11
Relations by marriage, ceremonial avoidance of, 75 _sqq._
Religion supplies the new theoretical basis of sexual morality, 101;
of one generation the superstition of the next, 170 _sq._
---- and magic, their relations, 100
Renan, Ernest, on the menace to civilization, 170
Reproduction of men, animals, and plants, analogy between the, 99
_sq._
Rhodesia, Northern, 66, 79, 103, 120
Rhys, Sir John, quoted, 54 _n._ 2, 62 _sq._
Rio de Janeiro, 96
Risley, Sir Herbert H., quoted, 138
Road from the grave barred against the ghost, 138 _sq._
Robert the Pious, 18
Roman custom as to incest, 61 _sq._
---- punishment of parricide, 52
Roscoe, Rev. J., quoted, 64 _sq._, 90 _sq._, 102 _sq._
Ruanda, a district of Central Africa, 96
Sacred chiefs, 7 _sqq._
---- fig-tree among the Akikuyu, 128 _sq._
---- fish, 36
Sacredness of chiefs in Polynesia, 7 _sqq._
Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, 173
St. Patrick, canon of, 17
Samoa, superstition as a preserver of property in, 24 _sqq._
Samoan taboos, 25 _sq._
Sarah and Abraham, 60 _sq._
Sarawak, Hill Dyaks of, 11 _sq._, 48
Savage, the, a human document, 172 _sq._; the passing of the, 174
_sq._
Savage horror of sexual irregularities, suggested reason for, 101
Savagery, civilization evolved out of, 162; importance of the study
of, 162 _sq._, 172 _sqq._; intellectual, of European peasantry, 170
Savages of to-day primitive only in a relative sense, 163 _sq._
Saxons, their punishment of sexual offences, 97
Scapegoat for ghosts, 141 _sq._
Scarecrows for ghosts, 139
Scepticism, religious, undermines foundations of society, 7
Science of man, 159 _sq._
----, the temple of, 161
Scrofula, touching for, 17 _sq._
Scythians drank the blood of friends and foes, 118
Sea-pike taboo, 25
Seclusion of homicides, 114 _sq._, 120, 121 _sq._, 124, 125 _sqq._
Semendo, a district of Sumatra, 68
Servius Tullius, King, 61
Sexual communism, era of, 164 _sq._
---- immorality supposed to be injurious to the culprits themselves
and to their relations, 102 _sqq._; superstitions as to, 110
---- morality enforced by superstition, 44 _sqq._; change in the
theoretical basis of, 101
---- offences punished severely, 63 _sqq._, 96 _sqq._; reason why
savages punish these offences severely, 99 _sqq._
“Shaking tubercule,” 32
Shans, the, of Burma, 119, 134
{185}
Sheep, expiatory sacrifice of, 92, 93
Shushwap Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 142
_sq._
Siam, 32
Sibuyaus, the, of Sarawak, 48
Sibylline Books, 173
Sickness caused by evil spirits or sorcerers, 141
“Sickness of relationship,” 76 _sq._
Sierra Leone, 42
Similarity of the human mind in all races, 172
Sister, incest with a, 51, 54, 59, 60 _n._ 1, 62, 67, 68, 105
Sisters and brothers, mutual avoidance of, 77
Slave Coast, the, 41
Slavery in England, 169
Slavs, punishment of sexual offences among the Southern, 97 _sq._
Slayers fear the ghosts of their victims, 113 _sqq._
_Sle_, pollution incurred by unchastity, 109
Smyrna, 36
Social anthropology, the scope of, 157 _sqq._
Society, concerned with conduct, not opinion, 155; ultimately
controlled by knowledge, 167; sapped by superstition, 170; its surface
in perpetual motion, 171
Sociology, 160
Sofala, the king of, 13, 14
Son-in-law, ceremonial avoidance of, 79 _sq._
Sophocles on Oedipus, 61
Sphinx, riddles of the, 102
State, duty of the, in regard to anthropology, 175 _sq._
Stinks to keep off ghosts, 139
Stoning as a punishment of sexual offences, 64, 97 _sq._
Sulka, the, of New Britain, 109
Sumatra, 46, 67, 68, 69, 82, 109
Sun, Yncas descended from the, 15
Supernatural powers attributed to chiefs, 6 _sqq._
Superstition, baneful effects of, 3; a plea for, 3 _sq._, 154 _sq._;
as a prop of government, 6 _sqq._; as a prop of private property, 20
_sqq._; as a prop of marriage, 44 _sqq._; as a prop to the security of
human life, 111 _sqq._; heavy toll paid to, 113; services which
superstition has rendered to humanity, 154 _sq._; at the bar, 155
_sq._; the creed of the laggards in the march of intellect, 168 _sq._;
a danger to society, 170; the religion of a past generation, 170 _sq._
Superstitions either public or private, 169; the crudest, survive
longest, 170 _sq._
Superstitious fear of contact with Maori chiefs, 9 _sq._
Surface of society in perpetual motion, 171
Survivals of savagery in civilization, 166
Swedes, the ancient, 16
Taboo as a support of chiefs, 7 _sqq._; as a prop of private property,
20 _sqq._; (_tambu_) in Melanesia, 26 _sq._
Tabooed, homicides, 121
Tahiti, sacredness of kings of, 10 _sq._
Tamanaques, the, of the Orinoco, 112
_Tambu_ (taboo) in Melanesia, 26 _sq._
_Tapu_ (taboo) among the Maoris, 20 _sqq._
Tattooing of homicides, 121
Taylor, Rev. Richard, 8
Ternate, 54
_Thahu_, ceremonial pollution, 93, 105, 115, 128
Theal, G. McCall, quoted, 91
Theoretical basis of sexual morality, 101
Thieves cursed, 34 _sqq._
Thompson Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 144
_sq._
Thomson, Basil, quoted, 7
Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 95 _sq._
Thonga tribe of South-East Africa, 57, 80, 92, 104; their purification
of homicides, 121 _sq._
Thorn bushes to keep off ghosts, 142 _sq._, 144, 145
Thunder taboo, 26
Tigers, plague of, a punishment for sexual offences, 45, 46
Timor, taboo in, 27
Togoland, 142
Tololaki, the, of Central Celebes, 53
Tomori, the, of Central Celebes, 52
Tonga, sacredness of chiefs in, 10; taboo in, 26
Tonquin, 33
Toradjas of Central Celebes, 12, 29, 30, 122; their fear of the ghosts
of the slain, 129
Torture to extract confession, 64 _sq._
Touched, chiefs and kings not to be, 9, 11
Touching for scrofula, 17 _sq._
Traitors disembowelled in England, 169
Travail pangs supposed to be aggravated by adultery, 104
Travancore, 132
Trembling thought to be caused by contact with certain relations, 77,
90
Troezen, purification of Orestes at, 115
Tsetsaut Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 143
Tubercule, the shaking, 32
Tunguses, their burial customs, 137, 138
Turner, Dr. George, quoted, 24 _sq._, 26
{186}
Tylor, Sir E. B., 159
Ulcer taboo, 25 _sq._
Unchastity, supposed physical infection of, 109
United States of America, their Bureau of Ethnology, 175
Universities, the function of the, 175
Unmarried persons, disastrous effects supposed to flow from sexual
intercourse between, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 63, 65, 96
Vancouver Island, 143
Victoria, aborigines of, 71 _sq._
---- Nyanza, Lake, 78
_Voyages to the South Seas_, 173
Wagogo, the, of German East Africa, 92, 106
Wakelbura tribe of Queensland, 72
Wallace, A. R., quoted, 27, 70
Wanigela River, 125
Wanika, the, of East Africa, 38
War, a sacred duty, 129; wives expected to be faithful during their
husbands’ absence at the, 106 _sq._
Warfare, mimic, conducted by women and children at home, 129
Washamba, the, of German East Africa, 106
Water ordeal, 107
Wawanga, the, of British East Africa, 123
Weeks, Rev. John H., 85 _n._ 1; quoted, 75 _sq._, 128
Welsh saying as to rain, 54 _n._ 2
West Indies, charms to protect property in the, 42 _sq._
Westermarck, Dr. Edward, 32, 56
White-shark taboo, 25
Widows and widowers, precautions taken by them against the ghosts of
their spouses, 142 _sqq._
Wife of wife’s brother, ceremonial avoidance of, 80
Wife’s mother, ceremonial avoidance of, 75 _sqq._, 86 _sq._, 90 _sq._
Witches burned in England, 169
Women dying in pregnancy or childbed, fear of their ghosts, 133 _sqq._
Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria, 74
Yabim, the, of German New Guinea, 127, 131
Yncas of Peru, superstitious veneration for the, 15 _sq._
Yucatan, Indians of, 83
Yuin tribe of New South Wales, 74
Zanzibar, 78
Zeus as guardian of landmarks, 37
Zulus, their ideas as to injurious effects of adultery, 107 _sq._
ENDNOTES
Chapter I Notes
[6.1] R. H. Codrington, D.D., _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), p. 46.