[55] Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika, i. 303, 321.
[56] Low, op. cit. p. 267.
[57] Huc, Travels in Tartary, i. 281. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 484.
The meat of certain animals may also be regarded with disgust on account of their filthy habits or the nasty food on which they live. In the Warramunga tribe, in Central Australia, there is a general restriction applying to eagle-hawks, and the reason assigned for it is that this bird feeds on the bodies of dead natives.[58] It seems that the abstinence from swine’s flesh, at least in part, belongs to the same group of facts. Various tribes in South Africa hold it in abomination.[59] In some districts of Madagascar, according to Drury, the eating of pork was accounted a very contemptible thing.[60] It is, or was, abstained from by the Jakuts of Siberia, the Votyaks of the Government of Vologda,[61] and the Lapps.[62] The disgust for pork has likewise been met with in many American tribes. The Koniagas will eat almost any digestible substance except pork.[63] The Navahoes of New Mexico abominate it “as if they were the devoutest of Hebrews”;[64] it is not forbidden by their religion, but “they say they will not eat the flesh of the hog simply because the animal is filthy in its habits, because it is the scavenger of the town.”[65] In his description of the Indians of the South-Eastern States Adair writes:—“They reckon all those animals to be unclean that are either carnivorous, or live on nasty food, as hogs, wolves, panthers, foxes, cats, mice, rats…. When swine were first brought among them, they deemed it such a horrid abomination in any of their people to eat that filthy and impure food, that they excluded the criminal from all religious communion in their circular town-house…. They still affix vicious and contemptible ideas to the eating of swine’s flesh; insomuch that Shúkàpa, ‘swine eater,’ is the most opprobrious epithet that they can use to brand us with; they commonly subjoin Akang-gàpa, ‘eater of dunghill fowls.’ Both together signify ‘filthy, helpless animals.’”[66] So also those Indians in British Guiana who have kept aloof from intercourse with the colonists reject pork with the greatest loathing. Schomburgk tells us that an old Indian permitted his children to accompany him on a journey only on the condition that they were never to eat any viands prepared by his cook, for fear lest pork should have been used in their preparation. But this objection does not extend to the native hog, which, though generally abstained from by wizards, is eaten by the laity indiscriminately, with the exception of women who are pregnant or who have just given birth to a child.[67] This suggests that the aversion to the domestic pig partly springs from the fact that it is a foreign animal. Indeed, the Guiana Indians refuse to eat the flesh of all animals that are not indigenous to their country, but were introduced from abroad, such as oxen, sheep, and fowls, apparently on the principle “that any strange and abnormal object is especially likely to be possessed of a harmful spirit.”[68] The Kafirs, also, abstain from the domestic swine, though they eat the wild hog.[69] Some writers maintain that pork has been prohibited on the ground that it is prejudicial to health in hot countries;[70] but, as we have seen, this prohibition is found among various northern peoples as well, and it seems besides that the unwholesomeness of pork in good condition has been rather assumed than proved. Sir J. G. Frazer, again, believes that the ancient Egyptians, Semites, and some of the Greeks abstained from this food not because the pig was looked upon simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but because it was considered to be endowed with high supernatural powers.[71] In Greece the pig was used in purificatory ceremonies.[72] Lucian says that the worshippers of the Syrian goddess abstained from eating pigs, some because they held them in abomination, others because they thought them holy.[73] The heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine’s flesh once a year.[74] According to Greek writers, the Egyptians abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal, and to drink its milk was believed to cause leprosy and itchy eruptions;[75] but once a year they sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris and ate of the flesh of the victims, though at any other time they would not so much as taste pork.[76]
[58] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612.
[59] Fritsch, Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika, p. 339. Kropf, op. cit. p. 102 (Kafirs).
[60] Drury, Madagascar, p. 143.
[61] Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, i. 363.
[62] Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 501.
[63] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 75.