[131] Campbell, Second Journey in the Interior of South Africa, ii. 205.
[132] Bent, Cyclades, p. 438.
[133] Vishńu Puráńa, p. 209.
[134] Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 23.
[135] Laws of Manu, iv. 113 sq.
[136] Childers, Dictionary of the Pali Language, p. 535. Kern, Der Buddhismus, ii. 258.
[137] Beecham, Ashantee, p. 185 sq. Cf. Bosman, op. cit. p. 131 (Gold Coast natives).
[138] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 304.
[139] Jarves, History of the Hawaiian Islands, pp. 40, 28. The word tapua’i means “to abstain from all work, games, &c.” (Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Dictionary, p. 472).
The peoples of Semitic stock or with Semitic culture also have their tabooed days. In Morocco work, or certain kinds of work, are avoided on holy days or in holy periods, as being unsuccessful or, in some cases, even dangerous to him who performs it; there is a saying that “work at a feast are like the stab of a dagger.” Nobody likes to start on a journey on a Friday before the midday prayer has been said, and it is considered bad to commence any work on that day.[140] I was also told that clothes will not remain clean if they are washed on a Saturday. Among the modern Egyptians Saturday is held to be the most unfortunate of days, and particularly unfavourable for shaving, cutting the nails, and starting on a journey.[141] At Kheybar, in Arabia, again, Sunday is considered an unlucky day for beginning any kind of work.[142] There can be little doubt that the Jewish Sabbath originated in the belief that it was inauspicious or dangerous to work on the seventh day, and that the reason for this belief was the mystic connection which in the opinion of the ancient Hebrews, as of so many other peoples, existed between human activity and the changes in the moon.[143] It has been sufficiently demonstrated that the Sabbath originally depended upon the new moon, and this carries with it the assumption that the Hebrews must at one time have observed a Sabbath at intervals of seven days corresponding with the moon’s phases.[144] In the Old Testament the new moon and Sabbath are repeatedly mentioned side by side;[145] thus the oppressors of the poor are represented as saying, “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?”[146] Among modern Jews, at the feast of the New Moon, which is held every month on the first or on the first and second days of the month, the women are obliged to suspend all servile work, though the men are not required to interrupt their secular employments.[147] That the superstitious fear of doing work on the seventh day developed into a religious prohibition, is only another instance of a tendency which we have noticed often before—the tendency of magic forces to be transformed into divine volitions.[148] Like the ancient Hebrews, the Assyrians and Babylonians looked upon the seventh day as an “evil day”; and though they do not seem generally to have abstained from work on that day, there were various royal taboos connected with it. The King was not to show himself in his chariot, not to hold court, not to bring sacrifices, not to change his clothes, not to eat a good dinner, and not even to curse his enemies.[149]