[18] von Kittlitz, Reise nach dem russischen Amerika, &c. ii. 103 sq.
[19] Low, Sarawak, p. 266.
Among various peoples certain foods are forbidden to priests or magicians. The priests of the ancient Egyptians were not allowed to eat fish,[20] nor to meddle with the esculent or potable substances which were produced out of Egypt;[21] and, according to Plutarch, they so greatly disliked the nature of excrementitious things that they not only rejected most kinds of pulse, but also the flesh of sheep and swine, because it produced much superfluity of nutriment.[22] The lamas of Mongolia will touch no meat of goats, horses, or camels.[23] Among the Semang of the Malay Peninsula the medicine-men will not eat goat or buffalo flesh and but rarely that of fowl.[24] The dairymen of the Todas may drink milk from certain buffaloes only, and are altogether forbidden to eat chillies.[25] These and similar restraints laid upon priests or wizards are probably connected with the idea that holiness is a delicate quality which calls for special precautions.[26] Schomburgk states that the conjurers of the British Guiana Indians partake but seldom of the native hog, because they consider the eating of it injurious to the efficacy of their skill.[27] And the Ulád Bu ʿAzîz in Morocco believe that if a scribe or a saint eats wolf’s flesh the charms he writes will have no effect, and the saliva of the saint will lose its curative power.
[20] Herodotus, ii. 37. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 7. Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, iv. 7.
[21] Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 7.
[22] Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 5.
[23] Prejevalsky, Mongolia, i. 56.
[24] Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, ii. 226.
[25] Rivers, Todas, p. 102 sq. For some other instances see Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, p. 161 sq.
[26] Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 391.