“O liebe flüchtige Seele
Dir ist so bang und weh!”
HEINE.
§ 1.—Royal and priestly taboos.
In the preceding chapter we saw that in early society the king or priest
is often thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an
incarnation of a deity; in consequence of which the course of nature is
supposed to be more or less under his control, and he is held responsible
for bad weather, failure of the crops, and similar calamities. Thus far it
appears to be assumed that the king’s power over nature, like that over
his subjects and slaves, is exerted through definite acts of will; and
therefore if drought, famine, pestilence, or storms arise, the people
attribute the misfortune to the negligence or guilt of their king, and
punish him accordingly with stripes and bonds, or, if he remains obdurate,
with deposition and death. Sometimes, however, the course of nature, while
regarded as dependent on the king, is supposed to be partly independent of
his will. His person is considered, if we may express it so, as the
dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of force radiate to all
quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of his—the turning of his head,
the lifting of his hand—instantaneously affects and may seriously disturb
some part of nature. He is the point of support on which hangs the balance
of the world; and the slightest irregularity on his part may overthrow the
delicate equipoise. The greatest care must, therefore, be taken both by
and of him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details, must be so
regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary, may disarrange or
upset the established order of nature. Of this class of monarchs the
Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of Japan, is a typical example. He
is an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe,
gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and spend a
month at his court. During that month, the name of which means “without
gods,” no one frequents the temples, for they are believed to be
deserted.(374)
The following description of the Mikado’s mode of life was written about
two hundred years ago:(375)—
“Even to this day the princes descended of this family, more particularly
those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons most holy in
themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in order to preserve these
advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects, they are obliged to
take an uncommon care of their sacred persons, and to do such things,
which, examined according to the customs of other nations, would be
thought ridiculous and impertinent. It will not be improper to give a few
instances of it. He thinks that it would be very prejudicial to his
dignity and holiness to touch the ground with his feet; for this reason,
when he intends to go anywhere, he must be carried thither on men’s
shoulders. Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred
person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his
head. There is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body, that
he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails.
However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night
when he is asleep; because, they say, that which is taken from his body at
that time hath been stolen from him, and that such a theft doth not
prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged to sit
on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his
head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands
or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this
means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his
empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other,
or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was
apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some great misfortune was near at
hand to desolate the country. But it having been afterwards discovered
that the imperial crown was the palladium which by its mobility could
preserve peace in the empire, it was thought expedient to deliver his
imperial person, consecrated only to idleness and pleasures, from this
burthensome duty, and therefore the crown is at present placed on the
throne for some hours every morning. His victuals must be dressed every
time in new pots, and served at table in new dishes: both are very clean
and neat, but made only of common clay; that without any considerable
expense they may be laid aside, or broken, after they have served once.
They are generally broke, for fear they should come into the hands of
laymen, for they believe religiously that if any layman should presume to
eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and inflame his
mouth and throat. The like ill effect is dreaded from the Dairi’s sacred
habits; for they believe that if a layman should wear them, without the
Emperor’s express leave or command, they would occasion swellings and
pains in all parts of his body.” To the same effect an earlier account of
the Mikado says: “It was considered as a shameful degradation for him even
to touch the ground with his foot. The sun and moon were not even
permitted to shine upon his head. None of the superfluities of the body
were ever taken from him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were
cut. Whatever he eat was dressed in new vessels.”(376)
Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found, at a lower level of
barbarism, on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape Padron,
in Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a wood. He may
not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may not even quit his
chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting, for if he lay down no wind
would arise and navigation would be stopped. He regulates storms, and in
general maintains a wholesome and equable state of the atmosphere.(377) In
the kingdom of Congo (West Africa) there was a supreme pontiff called
Chitomé or Chitombé, whom the negroes regarded as a god on earth and all
powerful in heaven. Hence before they would taste the new crops they
offered him the first-fruits, fearing that manifold misfortunes would
befall them if they broke this rule. When he left his residence to visit
other places within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe
strict continence the whole time he was out; for it was supposed that any
act of incontinence would prove fatal to him. And if he were to die a
natural death, they thought that the world would perish, and the earth,
which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would immediately be
annihilated.(378) Amongst the semi-barbarous nations of the New World, at
the date of the Spanish conquest, there were found hierarchies or
theocracies like those of Japan. Some of these we have already
noticed.(379) But the high pontiff of the Zapotecs in Southern Mexico
appears to have presented a still closer parallel to the Mikado. A
powerful rival to the king himself, this spiritual lord governed Yopaa,
one of the chief cities of the kingdom, with absolute dominion. It is
impossible, we are told, to over-rate the reverence in which he was held.
He was looked on as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold nor the
sun to shine upon. He profaned his sanctity if he even touched the ground
with his foot. The officers who bore his palanquin on their shoulders were
members of the highest families; he hardly deigned to look on anything
around him; and all who met him fell with their faces to the earth,
fearing that death would overtake them if they saw even his shadow. A rule
of continence was regularly imposed on the Zapotec priests, especially
upon the high pontiff; but “on certain days in each year, which were
generally celebrated with feasts and dances, it was customary for the high
priest to become drunk. While in this state, seeming to belong neither to
heaven nor to earth, one of the most beautiful of the virgins consecrated
to the service of the gods was brought to him.” If the child she bore him
was a son, he was brought up as a prince of the blood, and the eldest son
succeeded his father on the pontifical throne.(380) The supernatural
powers attributed to this pontiff are not specified, but probably they
resembled those of the Mikado and Chitomé.
Wherever, as in Japan and West Africa, it is supposed that the order of
nature, and even the existence of the world, is bound up with the life of
the king or priest, it is clear that he must be regarded by his subjects
as a source both of infinite blessing and of infinite danger. On the one
hand, the people have to thank him for the rain and sunshine which foster
the fruits of the earth, for the wind which brings ships to their coasts,
and even for the existence of the earth beneath their feet. But what he
gives he can refuse; and so close is the dependence of nature on his
person, so delicate the balance of the system of forces whereof he is the
centre, that the slightest irregularity on his part may set up a tremor
which shall shake the earth to its foundations. And if nature may be
disturbed by the slightest involuntary act of the king, it is easy to
conceive the convulsion which his death might occasion. The death of the
Chitomé, as we have seen, was thought to entail the destruction of the
world. Clearly, therefore, out of a regard for their own safety, which
might be imperilled by any rash act of the king, and still more by his
death, the people will exact of their king or priest a strict conformity
to those rules, the observance of which is necessary for his own
preservation, and consequently for the preservation of his people and the
world. The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people
exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we
are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for
his subjects; his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the
duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people’s
benefit. So soon as he fails to do so the care, the devotion, the
religious homage which they had hitherto lavished on him, cease and are
changed into hatred and contempt; he is dismissed ignominiously, and may
be thankful if he escapes with his life. Worshipped as a god by them one
day, he is killed by them as a criminal the next. But in this changed
behaviour of the people there is nothing capricious or inconsistent. On
the contrary, their conduct is entirely of a piece. If their king is their
god, he is or should be also their preserver; and if he will not preserve
them, he must make room for another who will. So long, however, as he
answers their expectations, there is no limit to the care which they take
of him, and which they compel him to take of himself. A king of this sort
lives hedged in by a ceremonious etiquette, a network of prohibitions and
observances, of which the intention is not to contribute to his dignity,
much less to his comfort, but to restrain him from conduct which, by
disturbing the harmony of nature, might involve himself, his people, and
the universe in one common catastrophe. Far from adding to his comfort,
these observances, by trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom
and often render the very life, which it is their object to preserve, a
burden and sorrow to him.
Of the supernaturally endowed kings of Loango it is said that the more
powerful a king is, the more taboos is he bound to observe; they regulate
all his actions, his walking and his standing, his eating and drinking,
his sleeping and waking.(381) To these restraints the heir to the throne
is subject from infancy; but as he advances in life the number of
abstinences and ceremonies which he must observe increases, “until at the
moment that he ascends the throne he is lost in the ocean of rites and
taboos.”(382) The kings of Egypt, as we have seen,(383) were worshipped as
gods, and the routine of their daily life was regulated in every detail by
precise and unvarying rules. “The life of the kings of Egypt,” says
Diodorus,(384) “was not like that of other monarchs who are irresponsible
and may do just what they choose; on the contrary, everything was fixed
for them by law, not only their official duties, but even the details of
their daily life.... The hours both of day and night were arranged at
which the king had to do, not what he pleased, but what was prescribed for
him.... For not only were the times appointed at which he should transact
public business or sit in judgment; but the very hours for his walking and
bathing and sleeping with his wife, and, in short, performing every act of
life, were all settled. Custom enjoined a simple diet; the only flesh he
might eat was veal and goose, and he might only drink a prescribed
quantity of wine.” Of the taboos imposed on priests, the rules of life
observed by the Flamen Dialis at Rome furnish a striking example. As the
worship of Virbius at Nemi was conducted, as we have seen,(385) by a
Flamen, who may possibly have been the King of the Wood himself, and whose
mode of life may have resembled that of the Roman Flamen, these rules have
a special interest for us. They were such as the following: The Flamen
Dialis might not ride or even touch a horse, nor see an army under arms,
nor wear a ring which was not broken, nor have a knot on any part of his
garments; no fire except a sacred fire might be taken out of his house; he
might not touch wheaten flour or leavened bread; he might not touch or
even name a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, and ivy; he might not walk under
a vine; the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could be
cut only by a free man and with a bronze knife, and his hair and nails
when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree; he might not touch a dead
body nor enter a place where one was burned; he might not see work being
done on holy days; he might not be uncovered in the open air; if a man in
bonds were taken into his house, he had to be unbound and the cords had to
be drawn up through a hole in the roof and so let down into the street.
His wife, the Flaminica, had to observe nearly the same rules, and others
of her own besides. She might not ascend more than three steps of the kind
of staircase called Greek; at a certain festival she might not comb her
hair; the leather of her shoes might not be made from a beast that had
died a natural death, but only from one that had been slain or sacrificed;
if she heard thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an expiatory
sacrifice.(386)
The burdensome observances attached to the royal or priestly office
produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the office,
which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it, they sank under
its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered recluses, from whose
nerveless fingers the reigns of government slipped into the firmer grasp
of men who were often content to wield the reality of sovereignty without
its name. In some countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a
total and permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the
old royal house retaining their purely religious functions, while the
civil government passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous
race.
To take examples. We saw(387) that in Cambodia it is often necessary to
force the kingships of Fire and Water upon the reluctant successors, and
that in Savage Island the monarchy actually came to an end because at last
no one could be induced to accept the dangerous distinction.(388) In some
parts of West Africa, when the king dies, a family council is secretly
held to determine his successor. He on whom the choice falls is suddenly
seized, bound, and thrown into the fetish-house, where he is kept in
durance till he consents to accept the crown. Sometimes the heir finds
means of evading the honour which it is sought to thrust upon him; a
ferocious chief has been known to go about constantly armed, resolute to
resist by force any attempt to set him on the throne.(389) The Mikados of
Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of transferring the
honours and burdens of supreme power to their infant children; and the
rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal sovereigns of the country, is
traced to the abdication of a certain Mikado in favour of his
three-year-old son. The sovereignty having been wrested by a usurper from
the infant prince, the cause of the Mikado was championed by Yoritomo, a
man of spirit and conduct, who overthrew the usurper and restored to the
Mikado the shadow, while he retained for himself the substance, of power.
He bequeathed to his descendants the dignity he had won, and thus became
the founder of the line of Tycoons. Down to the latter half of the
sixteenth century the Tycoons were active and efficient rulers; but the
same fate overtook them which had befallen the Mikados; entangled in the
same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere
puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a perpetual
round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was
managed by the council of state.(390) In Tonquin the monarchy ran a
similar course. Living like his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the
king was driven from the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who
from a fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king’s brother
Tring put down the usurper and restored the king, retaining, however, for
himself and his descendants the dignity of general of all the forces.
Thenceforward the kings or _dovas_, though vested with the title and pomp
of sovereignty, ceased to govern. While they lived secluded in their
palaces, all real political power was wielded by the hereditary generals
or _chovas_.(391) The custom regularly observed by the Tahitian kings of
abdicating on the birth of a son, who was immediately proclaimed sovereign
and received his father’s homage, may perhaps have originated, like the
similar custom occasionally practised by the Mikados, in a wish to shift
to other shoulders the irksome burden of royalty; for in Tahiti as
elsewhere the sovereign was subjected to a system of vexatious
restrictions.(392) In Mangaia, another Polynesian island, religious and
civil authority were lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being
discharged by a line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government
was entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose
investiture, however, had to be completed by the king. To the latter were
assigned the best lands, and he received daily offerings of the choicest
food.(393) American examples of the partition of authority between an
emperor and a pope have already been cited from the early history of
Mexico and Colombia.(394)
§ 2.—The nature of the soul.
But if the object of the taboos observed by a divine king or priest is to
preserve his life, the question arises, How is their observance supposed
to effect this end? To understand this we must know the nature of the
danger which threatens the king’s life, and which it is the intention of
the taboos to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What does early man
understand by death? To what causes does he attribute it? And how does he
think it may be guarded against?
As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the
phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives
and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal
inside which moves it. If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he
has a little man inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the
man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man
is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death
is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death
being the permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the permanent
absence of the soul, the way to guard against it is either to prevent the
soul from leaving the body, or, if it does depart, to secure that it shall
return. The precautions adopted by savages to secure one or other of these
ends take the form of prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules
intended to ensure either the continued presence or the return of the
soul. In short, they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general
statements will now be illustrated by examples.
Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, “I am not
one, as you think, but two.” Upon this they laughed. “You may laugh as
much as you like,” continued the missionary, “I tell you that I am two in
one; this great body that you see is one; within that there is another
little one which is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but
the little body flies away when the great one dies.” To this some of the
blacks replied, “Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body
within the breast.” On being asked where the little body went after death,
some said it went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and
some said they did not know.(395) The Hurons thought that the soul had a
head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little
model of the man himself.(396) The Eskimos believe that “the soul exhibits
the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more subtle and
ethereal nature.”(397) So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the
man, in other words, of the soul to the body, that, as there are fat
bodies and thin bodies, so there are fat souls and thin souls;(398) as
there are heavy bodies and light bodies, long bodies and short bodies, so
there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls and short souls. The
people of Nias (an island to the west of Sumatra) think that every man,
before he is born, is asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like,
and a soul of the desired weight or length is measured out to him. The
heaviest soul ever given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a
man’s life is proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die
young had short souls.(399) Sometimes, however, as we shall see, the human
soul is conceived not in human but in animal form.
The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the
body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they sometimes
fasten fish-hooks to a sick man’s nose, navel, and feet, so that if his
soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held fast.(400) One of the
“properties” of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow bone, in which he bottles
up departing souls, and so restores them to their owners.(401) The
Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose of a dying man, in order to
keep him in life, by preventing his soul from escaping.(402) When any one
yawns in their presence the Hindus always snap their thumbs, believing
that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open mouth.(403)
The Itonamas in South America seal up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying
person, in case his ghost should get out and carry off other people.(404)
In Southern Celebes, to prevent the escape of a woman’s soul at
childbirth, the nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of
the expectant mother.(405) And lest the soul of the babe should escape and
be lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoers of Celebes, when a birth is
about to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even
the keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also
they tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for
fear one of them might swallow the child’s soul. For a similar reason all
persons present in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep
their mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the
question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the child’s
soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath being exhaled
as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul would be expelled before
it could have time to settle down.(406)
Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages,(407) and it lingers
as a metaphor in poetry. But what is metaphor to a modern European poet
was sober earnest to his savage ancestor, and is still so to many people.
The Malays carry out the conception in question to its practical
conclusion. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by
rice, and so prevented from taking its perilous flight. Thus in Java when
a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a moment which
uncultured people seem to regard as especially dangerous), it is put in a
hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as if she were calling
hens.(408) Amongst the Battas of Sumatra, when a man returns from a
dangerous enterprise, grains of rice are placed on his head, and these
grains are called _padiruma tondi_, that is, “means to make the soul
(_tondi_) stay at home.” In Java also rice is placed on the head of
persons who have escaped a great danger or have returned home unexpectedly
after it had been supposed that they were lost.(409) In Celebes they think
that a bridegroom’s soul is apt to fly away at marriage, so coloured rice
is scattered over him to induce it to stay. And, in general, at festivals
in South Celebes rice is strewed on the head of the person in whose honour
the festival is held, with the object of detaining his soul, which at such
times is in especial danger of being lured away by envious demons.(410)
The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the very places of which he dreams. But this absence of
the soul has its dangers, for if from any cause it should be permanently
detained away from the body, the person, deprived of his soul, must
die.(411) Many causes may detain the sleeper’s soul. Thus, his soul may
meet the soul of another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea
negro wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has
been thrashed by another soul in sleep.(412) Or it may meet the soul of a
person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru Islands
the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has taken
place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in
the house and they fear to meet it in a dream.(413) Again, the soul may be
prevented by physical force from returning. The Santals tell how a man
fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard,
left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner
of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul could not return to the
body and the man died. While his friends were preparing to burn the body
some one uncovered the pitcher to get water. The lizard thus escaped and
returned to the body, which immediately revived; so the man rose up and
asked his friends why they were weeping. They told him they thought he was
dead and were about to burn his body. He said he had been down a well to
get water but had found it hard to get out and had just returned. So they
saw it all.(414) A similar story is reported from Transylvania as follows.
In the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach last century it is said that
a woman had engaged two men to work in her vineyard. After noon they all
lay down to rest as usual. An hour later the men got up and tried to waken
the woman, but could not. She lay motionless with her mouth wide open.
They came back at sunset and still she lay like a corpse. Just at that
moment a big fly came buzzing past, which one of the men caught and shut
up in his leathern pouch. Then they tried again to waken the woman but
could not. Afterwards they let out the fly; it flew straight into the
woman’s mouth and she awoke. On seeing this the men had no further doubt
that she was a witch.(415)
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because
his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man
wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely
necessary to waken a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the
soul time to return.(416) In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder to
change the appearance of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic
colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul
returns, it will not be able to recognise its body and the person will
die.(417) The Servians believe that the soul of a sleeping witch often
leaves her body in the form of a butterfly. If during its absence her body
be turned round, so that her feet are placed where her head was before,
the butterfly soul will not find its way back into her body through the
mouth, and the witch will die.(418)
But in order that a man’s soul should quit his body, it is not necessary
that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours, and then
sickness or (if the absence is prolonged) death will be the result. Thus
the Mongols sometimes explain sickness by supposing that the patient’s
soul is absent, and either does not care to return to its body or cannot
find the way back. To secure the return of the soul it is therefore
necessary on the one hand to make its body as attractive as possible, and
on the other hand to show it the way home. To make the body attractive all
the sick man’s best clothes and most valued possessions are placed beside
him; he is washed, incensed, and made as comfortable as possible; and all
his friends march thrice round the hut calling out the sick man’s name and
coaxing his soul to return. To help the soul to find its way back a
coloured cord is stretched from the patient’s head to the door of the hut.
The priest in his robes reads a list of the horrors of hell and the
dangers incurred by souls which wilfully absent themselves from their
bodies. Then turning to the assembled friends and the patient he asks, “Is
it come?” All answer Yes, and bowing to the returning soul throw seed over
the sick man. The cord which guided the soul back is then rolled up and
placed round the patient’s neck, who must wear it for seven days without
taking it off. No one may frighten or hurt him, lest his soul, not yet
familiar with its body, should again take flight.(419) In an Indian story
a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a Brahman, and a hunchback
conveys his soul into the deserted body of the king. The hunchback is now
king and the king is a Brahman. However, the hunchback is induced to show
his skill by transferring his soul to the dead body of a parrot, and the
king seizes the opportunity to regain possession of his own body.(420) In
another Indian story a Brahman reanimates the dead body of a king by
conveying his own soul into it. Meantime the Brahman’s body has been
burnt, and his soul is obliged to remain in the body of the king.(421)
The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be extracted
from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or sorcerers. Hence,
when a funeral is passing the house, the Karens of Burma tie their
children with a special kind of string to a particular part of the house,
in case the souls of the children should leave their bodies and go into
the corpse which is passing. The children are kept tied in this way until
the corpse is out of sight.(422) And after the corpse has been laid in the
grave, but before the earth has been filled in, the mourners and friends
range themselves round the grave, each with a bamboo split lengthwise in
one hand and a little stick in the other; each man thrusts his bamboo into
the grave, and drawing the stick along the groove of the bamboo points out
to his soul that in this way it may easily climb up out of the grave.
While the earth is being filled in, the bamboos are kept out of the way,
lest the souls should be in them, and so should be inadvertently buried
with the earth as it is being thrown into the grave; and when the people
leave the spot they carry away the bamboos, begging their souls to come
with them.(423) Further, on returning from the grave each Karen provides
himself with three little hooks made of branches of trees, and calling his
spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he returns, he makes a motion
as if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook into the ground. This is done
to prevent the soul of the living from staying behind with the soul of the
dead.(424) When a mother dies leaving a young baby, the Burmese think that
the “butterfly” or soul of the baby follows that of the mother, and that
if it is not recovered the child must die. So a wise woman is called in to
get back the baby’s soul. She places a mirror near the corpse, and on the
mirror a piece of feathery cotton down. Holding a cloth in her open hands
at the foot of the mirror, she with wild words entreats the mother not to
take with her the “butterfly” or soul of her child, but to send it back.
As the gossamer down slips from the face of the mirror she catches it in
the cloth and tenderly places it on the baby’s breast. The same ceremony
is sometimes observed when one of two children that have played together
dies, and is thought to be luring away the soul of its playmate to the
spirit-land. It is sometimes performed also for a bereaved husband or
wife.(425) In the Island of Keisar (East Indies) it is thought imprudent
to go near a grave at night, lest the ghosts should catch and keep the
soul of the passer-by.(426) The Key Islanders believe that the souls of
their forefathers, angry at not receiving food, make people sick by
detaining their souls. So they lay offerings of food on the grave and beg
their ancestors to allow the soul of the sick to return or to drive it
home speedily if it should be lingering by the way.(427)
In Bolang Mongondo, a district in the west of Celebes, all sickness is
ascribed to the ancestral spirits who have carried off the patient’s soul.
The object therefore is to bring back the patient’s soul and restore it to
the sufferer. An eye-witness has thus described the attempted cure of a
sick boy. The priestesses, who acted as physicians, made a doll of cloth
and fastened it to the point of a spear, which an old woman held upright.
Round this doll the priestesses danced, uttering charms, and chirruping as
when one calls a dog. Then the old woman lowered the point of the spear a
little, so that the priestesses could reach the doll. By this time the
soul of the sick boy was supposed to be in the doll, having been brought
into it by the incantations. So the priestesses approached it cautiously
on tiptoe and caught the soul in the many-coloured cloths which they had
been waving in the air. Then they laid the soul on the boy’s head, that
is, they wrapped his head in the cloth in which the soul was supposed to
be, and stood still for some moments with great gravity, holding their
hands on the patient’s head. Suddenly there was a jerk, the priestesses
whispered and shook their heads, and the cloth was taken off—the soul had
escaped. The priestesses gave chase to it, running round and round the
house, clucking and gesticulating as if they were driving hens into a
poultry-yard. At last they recaptured the soul at the foot of the stair
and restored it to its owner as before.(428) Much in the same way an
Australian medicine-man will sometimes bring the lost soul of a sick man
into a puppet and restore it to the patient by pressing the puppet to his
breast.(429) In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead
seem to have been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the
living. For when a man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a large
troop of men and women to the graveyard. Here the men played on flutes and
the women whistled softly to lure the soul home. After this had gone on
for some time they formed in procession and moved homewards, the flutes
playing and the women whistling all the way, leading back the wandering
soul and driving it gently along with open palms. On entering the
patient’s dwelling they commanded the soul in a loud voice to enter his
body.(430) In Madagascar, when a sick man had lost his soul, his friends
went to the family tomb, and making a hole in it, begged the soul of the
patient’s father to give them a soul for his son, who had none. So saying
they clapped a bonnet on the hole, and folding up the soul in the bonnet,
brought it to the patient, who put the bonnet on his head, and thus
received a new soul or got back his old one.(431)
Often the abduction of a man’s soul is set down to demons. The Annamites
believe that when a man meets a demon and speaks to him, the demon inhales
the man’s breath and soul.(432) When a Dyak is about to leave a forest
through which he has been walking alone, he never forgets to ask the
demons to give him back his soul, for it may be that some forest-devil has
carried it off. For the abduction of a soul may take place without its
owner being aware of his loss, and it may happen either while he is awake
or asleep.(433) In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that
some devil has carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where
he (the devil) dwells. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil’s abode,
the friends of the patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit, fish, raw
eggs, a hen, a chicken, a silken robe, gold, armlets, etc. Having set out
the food in order they pray, saying: “We come to offer to you, O devil,
this offering of food, clothes, gold, etc.; take it and release the soul
of the patient for whom we pray. Let it return to his body and he who now
is sick shall be made whole.” Then they eat a little and let the hen loose
as a ransom for the soul of the patient; also they put down the raw eggs;
but the silken robe, the gold, and the armlets they take home with them.
As soon as they are come to the house they place a flat bowl containing
the offerings which have been brought back at the sick man’s head, and say
to him: “Now is your soul released, and you shall fare well and live to
gray hairs on the earth.”(434) A more modern account from the same region
describes how the friend of the patient, after depositing his offerings on
the spot where the missing soul is supposed to be, calls out thrice the
name of the sick person, adding, “Come with me, come with me.” Then he
returns, making a motion with a cloth as if he had caught the soul in it.
He must not look to right or left or speak a word to any one he meets, but
must go straight to the patient’s house. At the door he stands, and
calling out the sick person’s name, asks whether he is returned. Being
answered from within that he is returned, he enters and lays the cloth in
which he has caught the soul on the patient’s throat, saying, “Now you are
returned to the house.” Sometimes a substitute is provided; a doll,
dressed up in gay clothing and tinsel, is offered to the demon in exchange
for the patient’s soul with these words, “Give us back the ugly one which
you have taken away and receive this pretty one instead.”(435) Similarly
the Mongols make up a horse of birch-bark and a doll, and invite the demon
to take the doll instead of the patient and to ride away on the
horse.(436)
Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered on a new
house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoers of Celebes the priest
performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the
inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through
a list of the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the
whole night through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an
egg and some rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to
be gathered in the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the
head of the master of the house says, “Here you have your soul—go (soul)
to-morrow away again.” He then does the same, saying the same words, to
the housewife and all the other members of the family.(437) Amongst the
same Alfoers one way of recovering a sick man’s soul is to let down a bowl
by a belt out of a window and fish for the soul till it is caught in the
bowl and hauled up.(438) Among the same people, when a priest is bringing
back a sick man’s soul which he has caught in a cloth, he is preceded by a
girl holding the large leaf of a certain palm over his head as an umbrella
to keep him and the soul from getting wet, in case it should rain; and he
is followed by a man brandishing a sword to deter other souls from any
attempt at rescuing the captured soul.(439)
The Samoans tell how two young wizards, passing a house where a chief lay
very sick, saw a company of gods from the mountain sitting in the doorway.
They were handing from one to another the soul of the dying chief. It was
wrapped in a leaf, and had been passed from the gods inside the house to
those sitting in the doorway. One of the gods handed the soul to one of
the wizards, taking him for a god in the dark, for it was night. Then all
the gods rose up and went away; but the wizard kept the chief’s soul. In
the morning some women went with a present of fine mats to fetch a famous
physician. The wizards were sitting on the shore as the women passed, and
they said to the women, “Give us the mats and we will heal him.” So they
went to the chief’s house. He was very ill, his jaw hung down, and his end
seemed near. But the wizards undid the leaf and let the soul into him
again, and forthwith he brightened up and lived.(440)
The Battas of Sumatra believe that the soul of a living man may
transmigrate into the body of an animal. Hence, for example, the doctor is
sometimes desired to extract the patient’s soul from the body of a fowl,
in which it has been hidden away by an evil spirit.(441)
Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In Melanesia a
woman knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death heard a rustling
in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment when a noise of
weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown. She caught the
fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying out that she
had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above the mouth of
the corpse, it did not revive.(442) The Salish or Flathead Indians of
Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time from his body
without causing death and without the man being aware of his loss. It is
necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found and restored
to the man or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his soul is
revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the
sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss
at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and
all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless
men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards
daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be
totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof, through which the
medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape
of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A
fire is next kindled, by the light of which the medicine-man sorts out the
souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead people, of which there are
usually several; for if he were to give the soul of a dead person to a
living man, the man would die instantly. Next he picks out the souls of
all the persons present, and making them all to sit down before him, he
takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of bone, wood, or
shell, and placing it on the owner’s head, pats it with many prayers and
contortions till it descends into the heart and so resumes its proper
place.(443) In Amboina the sorcerer, to recover a soul detained by demons,
plucks a branch from a tree, and waving it to and fro as if to catch
something, calls out the sick man’s name. Returning he strikes the patient
over the head and body with the branch, into which the lost soul is
supposed to have passed, and from which it returns to the patient.(444) In
the Babar Islands offerings for evil spirits are laid at the root of a
great tree (_wokiorai_), from which a leaf is plucked and pressed on the
patient’s forehead and breast; the lost soul, which is in the leaf, is
thus restored to its owner.(445) In some other islands of the same seas,
when a man returns ill and speechless from the forest, it is inferred that
the evil spirits which dwell in the great trees have caught and kept his
soul. Offerings of food are therefore left under a tree and the soul is
brought home in a piece of wax.(446) Amongst the Dyaks of Sarawak the
priest conjures the lost soul into a cup, where it is seen by the
uninitiated as a lock of hair, but by the initiated as a miniature human
being. This is supposed to be thrust by the priest into a hole in the top
of the patient’s head.(447) In Nias the sick man’s soul is restored to him
in the shape of a firefly, visible only to the sorcerer, who catches it in
a cloth and places it on the forehead of the patient.(448)
Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their
wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by
sorcerers. In Fiji if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a
scarf with which “to catch away the soul of the rogue.” At the sight, or
even at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean
breast. For if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his
soul was caught in it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to
the end of a chief’s canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would
pine and die.(449) The sorcerers of Danger Island used to set snares for
souls. The snares were made of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet
long, with loops on either side of different sizes, to suit the different
sizes of souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there
were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had a
grudge, they set up these soul-snares near his house and watched for the
flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or an insect it was caught
in the snare the man would infallibly die.(450) Among the Sereres of
Senegambia, when a man wishes to revenge himself on his enemy he goes to
the _Fitaure_ (chief and priest in one), and prevails on him by presents
to conjure the soul of his enemy into a large jar of red earthenware,
which is then deposited under a consecrated tree. The man whose soul is
shut up in the jar soon dies.(451) Some of the Congo negroes think that
enchanters can get possession of human souls, and enclosing them in tusks
of ivory, sell them to the white man, who makes them work for him in his
country under the sea. It is believed that very many of the coast
labourers are men thus obtained; so when these people go to trade they
often look anxiously about for their dead relations. The man whose soul is
thus sold into slavery will die “in due course, if not at the time.”(452)
In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of living people, shut
them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By squeezing a
captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where people had
been secretly buried.(453) Amongst the Canadian Indians, when a wizard
wished to kill a man, he sent out his familiar spirits, who brought him
the victim’s soul in the shape of a stone or the like. The wizard struck
the soul with a sword or an axe till it bled profusely, and as it bled the
man to whom it belonged languished and died.(454) In Amboina if a doctor
is convinced that a patient’s soul has been carried away by a demon beyond
recovery, he seeks to supply its place with a soul abstracted from another
man. For this purpose he goes by night to a house and asks, “Who’s there?”
If an inmate is incautious enough to answer, the doctor takes up from
before the door a clod of earth, into which the soul of the person who
replied is believed to have passed. This clod the doctor lays under the
sick man’s pillow, and performs certain ceremonies by which the stolen
soul is conveyed into the patient’s body. Then as he goes home the doctor
fires two shots to frighten the soul from returning to its proper
owner.(455) A Karen wizard will catch the wandering soul of a sleeper and
transfer it to the body of a dead man. The latter, therefore, comes to
life as the former dies. But the friends of the sleeper in turn engage a
wizard to steal the soul of another sleeper, who dies as the first sleeper
comes to life. In this way an indefinite succession of deaths and
resurrections is supposed to take place.(456)
The Indians of the Nass River, British Columbia, think that a doctor may
swallow his patient’s soul by mistake. A doctor who is believed to have
done so is made by the other doctors to stand over the patient, while one
of them thrusts his fingers down the doctor’s throat, another kneads him
in the stomach with his knuckles, and a third slaps him on the back. If
the soul is not in him after all, and if the same process has been
repeated upon all the doctors without success, it is concluded that the
soul must be in the head-doctor’s box. A party of doctors, therefore,
waits upon him at his house and requests him to produce his box. When he
has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take him and hold
him up by the heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this position
they wash his head, and “any water remaining from the ablution is taken
and poured upon the sick man’s head.”(457)
Other examples of the recall and recovery of souls will be found referred
to beneath.(458)
But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which
beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul,
or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily
a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed,
he will feel the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is
detached from him entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In
the island of Wetar there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing
his shadow with a pike or hacking it with a sword.(459) After Sankara had
destroyed the Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul,
where he had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his
supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up, the
Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground,
struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his neck.(460) In
the Babar Islands the demons get power over a man’s soul by holding fast
his shadow, or by striking and wounding it.(461) There are stones in
Melanesia on which, if a man’s shadow falls, the demon of the stone can
draw out his soul.(462) In Amboina and Uliase, two islands near the
equator, and where, therefore, there is little or no shadow cast at noon,
it is a rule not to go out of the house at mid-day, because it is supposed
that by doing so a man may lose the shadow of his soul.(463) The Mangaians
tell of a mighty warrior, Tukaitawa, whose strength waxed and waned with
the length of his shadow. In the morning, when his shadow fell longest,
his strength was greatest; but as the shadow shortened towards noon his
strength ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it reached its lowest point;
then, as the shadow stretched out in the afternoon, his strength returned.
A certain hero discovered the secret of Tukaitawa’s strength and slew him
at noon.(464) It is possible that even in lands outside the tropics the
fact of the diminished shadow at noon may have contributed, even if it did
not give rise, to the superstitious dread with which that hour has been
viewed by various peoples, as by the Greeks, ancient and modern, and by
the Roumanians of Transylvania.(465) In this fact, too, we may perhaps
detect the reason why noon was chosen by the Greeks as the hour for
sacrificing to the shadowless dead.(466) The ancients believed that in
Arabia if a hyaena trod on a man’s shadow it deprived him of the power of
speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a roof in the moonlight,
cast a shadow on the ground and a hyaena trod on it, the dog would fall
down as if dragged with a rope.(467) Clearly in these cases the shadow, if
not equivalent to the soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the
man or the animal, so that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person
or animal as if it were done to his body. Whoever entered the sanctuary of
Zeus on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia was believed to lose his shadow and to
die within the year.(468) Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the
shadow to the life or soul come out more clearly than in some customs
practised to this day in South-Eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the
foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a
cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation stone,
under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice
is to give strength and stability to the building. But sometimes, instead
of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation stone,
secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries the
measure under the foundation stone; or he lays the foundation stone upon
the man’s shadow. It is believed that the man will die within the
year.(469) The Bulgarians still observe a similar custom. If they cannot
get a human shadow they measure the shadow of the first animal that comes
that way.(470) The Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow
is thus immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a
building which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, “Beware
lest they take thy shadow!” Not long ago there were still shadow-traders
whose business it was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for
securing their walls.(471) In these cases the measure of the shadow is
looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury
the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it, must die. Thus the
custom is a substitute for the old custom of immuring a living person in
the walls, or crushing him under the foundation stone of a new building,
in order to give strength and durability to the structure.
As some peoples believe a man’s soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the
same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror.
Thus “the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in
any mirror) as their souls.”(472) Some of the Fijians thought that man has
two souls, a light one and a dark one; the dark one goes to Hades, the
light one is his reflection in water or a mirror.(473) When the Motumotu
of New Guinea first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass they thought
that their reflections were their souls.(474) The reflection-soul, being
external to the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the
shadow-soul. As the shadow may be stabbed, so may the reflection. Hence an
Aztec mode of keeping sorcerers from the house was to leave a vessel of
water with a knife in it behind the door. When a sorcerer entered he was
so much alarmed at seeing his reflection in the water transfixed by a
knife that he turned and fled.(475) The Zulus will not look into a dark
pool because they think there is a beast in it which will take away their
reflections, so that they die.(476) The Basutos say that crocodiles have
the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection under
water.(477) In Saddle Island (Melanesia) there is a pool “into which if
any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold upon his life by
means of his reflection on the water.”(478)
We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and ancient
Greece not to look at one’s reflection in water, and why the Greeks
regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so
reflected.(479) They feared that the water-spirits would drag the person’s
reflection (soul) under water, leaving him soulless to die. This was
probably the origin of the classical story of the beautiful Narcissus, who
pined and died in consequence of seeing his reflection in the water. The
explanation that he died for love of his own fair image was probably
devised later, after the old meaning of the story was forgotten. The same
ancient belief lingers, in a faded form, in the English superstition that
whoever sees a water-fairy must pine and die.
“Alas, the moon should ever beam
To show what man should never see!—
I saw a maiden on a stream,
And fair was she!
“I staid to watch, a little space,
Her parted lips if she would sing;
The waters closed above her face
With many a ring.
“I know my life will fade away,
I know that I must vainly pine,
For I am made of mortal clay,
But she’s divine!”
Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors
or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It
is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his
reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed,
which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The
custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a
house after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a
dream, may meet the ghost and be carried off by it.(480) In Oldenburg it
is thought that if a person sees his image in a mirror after a death he
will die himself. So all the mirrors in the house are covered up with
white cloth.(481) In some parts of Germany after a death not only the
mirrors but everything that shines or glitters (windows, clocks, etc.) is
covered up,(482) doubtless because they might reflect a person’s image.
The same custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the wall after a
death prevails in England, Scotland, and Madagascar.(483) The Suni
Mohammedans of Bombay cover with a cloth the mirror in the room of a dying
man and do not remove it until the corpse is carried out for burial. They
also cover the looking-glasses in their bedrooms before retiring to rest
at night.(484) The reason why sick people should not see themselves in a
mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore covered up,(485) is
also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take flight so
easily, it is particularly dangerous to project the soul out of the body
by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely
parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people
to sleep;(486) for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and
there is always a risk that it may not return. “In the opinion of the
Raskolniks a mirror is an accursed thing, invented by the devil,”(487)
perhaps on account of the mirror’s supposed power of drawing out the soul
in the reflection and so facilitating its capture.
As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often
believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this
belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the
portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed,
whoever possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence
over the original of it. Thus the Canelos Indians of South America think
that their soul is carried away in their picture. Two of them having been
photographed were so alarmed that they came back next day on purpose to
ask if it were really true that their souls had been taken away.(488) When
Mr. Joseph Thomson tried to photograph some of the Wa-teita in Eastern
Africa, they imagined that he was a magician trying to get possession of
their souls, and that if he got their likenesses they themselves would be
entirely at his mercy.(489) An Indian, whose portrait the Prince of Wied
wished to get, refused to let himself be drawn, because he believed it
would cause his death.(490) The Mandans also thought that they would soon
die if their portrait was in the hands of another; they wished at least to
have the artist’s picture as a kind of antidote or guarantee.(491) The
same belief still lingers in various parts of Europe. Some old women in
the Greek island of Carpathus were very angry a few years ago at having
their likenesses drawn, thinking that in consequence they would pine and
die.(492) Some people in Russia object to having their silhouettes taken,
fearing that if this is done they will die before the year is out.(493)
There are persons in the West of Scotland “who refuse to have their
likeness taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of
several of their friends who never had a day’s health after being
photographed.”(494)
§ 3.—Royal and priestly taboos (continued).
So much for the primitive conceptions of the soul and the dangers to which
it is exposed. These conceptions are not limited to one people or country;
with variations of detail they are found all over the world, and survive,
as we have seen, in modern Europe. Beliefs so deep-seated and so
widespread must necessarily have contributed to shape the mould in which
the early kingship was cast. For if every individual was at such pains to
save his own soul from the perils which threatened it from so many sides,
how much more carefully must _he_ have been guarded upon whose life hung
the welfare and even the existence of the whole people, and whom therefore
it was the common interest of all to preserve? Therefore we should expect
to find the king’s life protected by a system of precautions or safeguards
still more numerous and minute than those which in primitive society every
man adopts for the safety of his own soul. Now in point of fact the life
of the early kings is regulated, as we have seen and shall see more fully
presently, by a very exact code of rules. May we not then conjecture that
these rules are the very safeguards which on _à priori_ grounds we expect
to find adopted for the protection of the king’s life? An examination of
the rules themselves confirms this conjecture. For from this it appears
that some of the rules observed by the kings are identical with those
observed by private persons out of regard for the safety of their souls;
and even of those which seem peculiar to the king, many, if not all, are
most readily explained on the hypothesis that they are nothing but
safeguards or lifeguards of the king. I will now enumerate some of these
royal rules or taboos, offering on each of them such comments and
explanations as may serve to set the original intention of the rule in its
proper light.
As the object of the royal taboos is to isolate the king from all sources
of danger, their general effect is to compel him to live in a state of
seclusion, more or less complete, according to the number and stringency
of the taboos he observes. Now of all sources of danger none are more
dreaded by the savage than magic and witchcraft, and he suspects all
strangers of practising these black arts. To guard against the baneful
influence exerted voluntarily or involuntarily by strangers is therefore
an elementary dictate of savage prudence. Hence before strangers are
allowed to enter a district, or at least before they are permitted to
mingle freely with the people of the district, certain ceremonies are
often performed by the natives of the country for the purpose of disarming
the strangers of their magical powers, of counteracting the baneful
influence which is believed to emanate from them, or of disinfecting, so
to speak, the tainted atmosphere by which they are supposed to be
surrounded. Thus in the island of Nanumea (South Pacific) strangers from
ships or from other islands were not allowed to communicate with the
people until they all, or a few as representatives of the rest, had been
taken to each of the four temples in the island, and prayers offered that
the god would avert any disease or treachery which these strangers might
have brought with them. Meat offerings were also laid upon the altars,
accompanied by songs and dances in honour of the god. While these
ceremonies were going on, all the people except the priests and their
attendants kept out of sight.(495) On returning from an attempted ascent
of the great African mountain Kilimanjaro, which is believed by the
neighbouring tribes to be tenanted by dangerous demons, Mr. New and his
party, as soon as they reached the border of the inhabited country, were
disenchanted by the inhabitants, being sprinkled with “a professionally
prepared liquor, supposed to possess the potency of neutralising evil
influences, and removing the spell of wicked spirits.”(496) In the
interior of Yoruba (West Africa) the sentinels at the gates of towns often
oblige European travellers to wait till nightfall before they admit them,
the fear being that if the strangers were admitted by day the devils would
enter behind them.(497) Amongst the Ot Danoms of Borneo it is the custom
that strangers entering the territory should pay to the natives a certain
sum, which is spent in the sacrifice of animals (buffaloes or pigs) to the
spirits of the land and water, in order to reconcile them to the presence
of the strangers, and to induce them not to withdraw their favour from the
people of the land, but to bless the rice-harvest, etc.(498) The men of a
certain district in Borneo, fearing to look upon a European traveller lest
he should make them ill, warned their wives and children not to go near
him. These who could not restrain their curiosity killed fowls to appease
the evil spirits and smeared themselves with the blood.(499) In Laos
before a stranger can be accorded hospitality the master of the house must
offer sacrifice to the ancestral spirits; otherwise the spirits would be
offended and would send disease on the inmates.(500) In the Mentawej
Islands when a stranger enters a house where there are children, the
father or other member of the family takes the ornament which the children
wear in their hair and hands it to the stranger, who holds it in his hands
for a while and then gives it back to him. This is thought to protect the
children from the evil effect which the sight of a stranger might have
upon them.(501) At Shepherd’s Isle Captain Moresby had to be disenchanted
before he was allowed to land his boat’s crew. When he leaped ashore a
devil-man seized his right hand and waved a bunch of palm leaves over the
captain’s head. Then “he placed the leaves in my left hand, putting a
small green twig into his mouth, still holding me fast, and then, as if
with great effort, drew the twig from his mouth—this was extracting the
evil spirit—after which he blew violently, as if to speed it away. I now
held a twig between my teeth, and he went through the same process.” Then
the two raced round a couple of sticks fixed in the ground and bent to an
angle at the top, which had leaves tied to it. After some more ceremonies
the devil-man concluded by leaping to the level of Captain Moresby’s
shoulders (his hands resting on the captain’s shoulders) several times,
“as if to show that he had conquered the devil, and was now trampling him
into the earth.”(502) North American Indians “have an idea that strangers,
particularly white strangers, are ofttimes accompanied by evil spirits. Of
these they have great dread, as creating and delighting in mischief. One
of the duties of the medicine chief is to exorcise these spirits. I have
sometimes ridden into or through a camp where I was unknown or unexpected,
to be confronted by a tall, half-naked savage, standing in the middle of
the circle of lodges, and yelling in a sing-song, nasal tone, a string of
unintelligible words.”(503) When Crevaux was travelling in South America
he entered a village of the Apalai Indians. A few moments after his
arrival some of the Indians brought him a number of large black ants, of a
species whose bite is painful, fastened on palm leaves. Then all the
people of the village, without distinction of age or sex, presented
themselves to him, and he had to sting them all with the ants on their
faces, thighs, etc. Sometimes when he applied the ants too tenderly they
called out “More! more!” and were not satisfied till their skin was
thickly studded with tiny swellings like what might have been produced by
whipping them with nettles.(504) The object of this ceremony is made plain
by the custom observed in Amboina and Uliase of sprinkling sick people
with pungent spices, such as ginger and cloves, chewed fine, in order by
the prickling sensation to drive away the demon of disease which may be
clinging to their persons.(505) With a similar intention some of the
natives of Borneo and Celebes sprinkle rice upon the head or body of a
person supposed to be infested by dangerous spirits; a fowl is then
brought, which, by picking up the rice from the person’s head or body,
removes along with it the spirit or ghost which is clinging like a burr to
his skin. This is done, for example, to persons who have attended a
funeral, and who may therefore be supposed to be infested by the ghost of
the deceased.(506) Similarly Basutos, who have carried a corpse to the
grave, have their hands scratched with a knife from the tip of the thumb
to the tip of the forefinger, and magic stuff is rubbed into the
wound,(507) for the purpose, no doubt, of removing the ghost which may be
adhering to their skin. The people of Nias carefully scrub and scour the
weapons and clothes which they buy, in order to efface all connection
between the things and the persons from whom they bought them.(508) It is
probable that the same dread of strangers, rather than any desire to do
them honour, is the motive of certain ceremonies which are sometimes
observed at their reception, but of which the intention is not directly
stated. In Afghanistan and in some parts of Persia the traveller, before
he enters a village, is frequently received with a sacrifice of animal
life or food, or of fire and incense. The recent Afghan Boundary Mission,
in passing by villages in Afghanistan, was often met with fire and
incense.(509) Sometimes a tray of lighted embers is thrown under the hoofs
of the traveller’s horse, with the words, “You are welcome.”(510) On
entering a village in Central Africa Emin Pasha was received with the
sacrifice of two goats; their blood was sprinkled on the path and the
chief stepped over the blood to greet Emin.(511) Amongst the Eskimos of
Cumberland Inlet, when a stranger arrives at an encampment, the sorcerer
goes out to meet him. The stranger folds his arms and inclines his head to
one side, so as to expose his cheek, upon which the sorcerer deals a
terrible blow, sometimes felling him to the ground. Next the sorcerer in
his turn presents his cheek and receives a buffet from the stranger. Then
they kiss each other, the ceremony is over, and the stranger is hospitably
received by all.(512) Sometimes the dread of strangers and their magic is
too great to allow of their reception on any terms. Thus when Speke
arrived at a certain village the natives shut their doors against him,
“because they had never before seen a white man nor the tin boxes that the
men were carrying: ‘Who knows,’ they said, ‘but that these very boxes are
the plundering Watuta transformed and come to kill us? You cannot be
admitted.’ No persuasion could avail with them, and the party had to
proceed to the next village.”(513)
The fear thus entertained of alien visitors is often mutual. Entering a
strange land, the savage feels that he is treading enchanted ground, and
he takes steps to guard against the demons that haunt it and the magical
arts of its inhabitants. Thus on going to a strange land the Maoris
performed certain ceremonies to make it _noa_ (common), lest it might have
been previously _tapu_ (sacred).(514) When Baron Miklucho-Maclay was
approaching a village on the Maclay Coast of New Guinea, one of the
natives who accompanied him broke a branch from a tree and going aside
whispered to it for a while; then going up to each member of the party,
one after another, he spat something upon his back and gave him some blows
with the branch. Lastly, he went into the forest and buried the branch
under withered leaves in the thickest part of the jungle. This ceremony
was believed to protect the party against all treachery and danger in the
village they were approaching.(515) The idea probably was that the
malignant influences were drawn off from the persons into the branch and
buried with it in the depths of the forest. In Australia, when a strange
tribe has been invited into a district and is approaching the encampment
of the tribe which owns the land, “the strangers carry lighted bark or
burning sticks in their hands, for the purpose, they say, of clearing and
purifying the air.”(516) So when two Greek armies were advancing to the
onset, sacred men used to march in front of each, bearing lighted torches,
which they flung into the space between the hosts and then retired
unmolested.(517)
Again, it is thought that a man who has been on a journey may have
contracted some magic evil from the strangers with whom he has been
brought into contact. Hence on returning home, before he is readmitted to
the society of his tribe and friends, he has to undergo certain
purificatory ceremonies. Thus the Bechuanas “cleanse or purify themselves
after journeys by shaving their heads, etc., lest they should have
contracted from strangers some evil by witchcraft or sorcery.”(518) In
some parts of Western Africa when a man returns home after a long absence,
before he is allowed to visit his wife, he must wash his person with a
particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his
forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman
may have cast on him in his absence, and which might be communicated
through him to the women of his village.(519) Two Hindoo ambassadors, who
had been sent to England by a native prince and had returned to India,
were considered to have so polluted themselves by contact with strangers
that nothing but being born again could restore them to purity. “For the
purpose of regeneration it is directed to make an image of pure gold of
the female power of nature, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. In
this statue the person to be regenerated is enclosed, and dragged through
the usual channel. As a statue of pure gold and of proper dimensions would
be too expensive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred _Yoni_,
through which the person to be regenerated is to pass.” Such an image of
pure gold was made at the prince’s command, and his ambassadors were born
again by being dragged through it.(520) When Damaras return home after a
long absence, they are given a small portion of the fat of particular
animals which is supposed to possess certain virtues.(521) In some of the
Moluccas, when a brother or young blood-relation returns from a long
journey, a young girl awaits him at the door with a _caladi_ leaf in her
hand and water in the leaf. She throws the water over his face and bids
him welcome.(522) The natives of Savage Island (South Pacific) invariably
killed, not only all strangers in distress who were drifted to their
shores, but also any of their own people who had gone away in a ship and
returned home. This was done out of dread of disease. Long after they
began to venture out to ships they would not immediately use the things
they obtained from them, but hung them up in quarantine for weeks in the
bush.(523)