[120] In the Arunta tribe, Central Australia, no menstruous woman is allowed to gather the Irriakura bulbs, which form a staple article of diet for both men and women, the idea being that any infringement of the restriction would result in the failure of the supply of the bulb (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 615).
Moreover, unclean individuals are not only a danger to others, but are themselves in danger. As Sir J. G. Frazer has shown, they are supposed to be in a delicate condition, which imposes upon them various precautions;[121] and one of these may be restrictions in their diet. Among the Thlinkets and some peoples in British Columbia the relatives of the deceased not only fast till the body is buried, but have their faces blackened, cover their heads with ragged mats, and must speak but little, confining themselves to answering questions, as it is believed that they would else become chatterboxes.[122] According to early ideas, mourners are in a state very similar to that of girls at puberty, who also, among various peoples, are obliged to fast or abstain from certain kinds of food on account of their uncleanness.[123] Among the Stlatlumh, for instance, when a girl reaches puberty, she fasts for the first four days and abstains from fresh meats of any kind throughout the whole period of her seclusion. “There was a two-fold object in this abstention. First, the girl, it was thought, would be harmed by the fresh meat in her peculiar condition; and second, the game animals would take offence if she partook of their meat in these circumstances,” and would not permit her father to kill them.[124]
[121] Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 343, &c.
[122] Boas, loc. cit. p. 41.
[123] Boas, loc. cit. p. 40 sqq. (various tribes in British Columbia). Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxiv. 33 (Siciatl). Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 93 sq. (Ahts). Bourke, ‘Medicine-Men of the Apache,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 501. Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles, ii. 371. Schomburgk, ‘Natives of Guiana,’ in Jour. Ethn. Soc. London, i. 269 sq. von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika’s, i. 644 (Macusis). Seligmann, in Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 200 sqq. (Western Islanders). Man, ‘Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 94. See Frazer, op. cit. iii. 205 sqq.
[124] Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 136.
It should finally be noticed that, though the custom of fasting after a death in the main has a superstitious origin, there may at the same time be a physiological motive for it.[125] Even the rudest savage feels afflicted at the death of a friend, and grief is accompanied by a loss of appetite. This natural disinclination to partake of food may, combined with superstitious fear, have given rise to prohibitory rules, nay, may even in the first instance have suggested the idea that there is danger in taking food. The mourning observances so commonly coincide with the natural expressions of sorrow, that we are almost bound to assume the existence of some connection between them, even though in their developed forms the superstitious motive be the most prominent.
[125] Cf. Mallery, ‘Manners and Meals,’ in American Anthropologist, i. 202; Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 213; Schurtz, Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 587.
An important survival of the mourning fast is the Lent fast. It originally lasted for forty hours only, that is, the time when Christ lay in the grave.[126] Irenaeus speaks of the fast of forty hours before Easter,[127] and Tertullian, when a Montanist disputing against the Catholics, says that the only legitimate days for Christian fasting were those in which the Bridegroom was taken away.[128] Subsequently, however, the forty hours were extended to forty days, in imitation of the forty days’ fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ.[129]
[126] Cf. St. Matthew, ix. 15; St. Mark, ii. 20; St. Luke, v. 35.