§ 1. The Meaning of Taboo.
Taboos of holiness agree with taboos of pollution, because in the savage mind the ideas of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated.
Thus in primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them, nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.[701]
To the illustrations of these general principles which have been already given I shall now add some more, drawing my examples, first, from the class of tabooed things, and, second, from the class of tabooed words; for in the opinion of the savage both things and words may, like persons, be charged or electrified, either temporarily or permanently, with the mysterious virtue of taboo, and may therefore require to be banished for a longer or shorter time from the familiar usage of common life. And the examples will be chosen with special reference to those sacred chiefs, kings and priests, who, more than anybody else, live fenced about by taboo as by a wall. Tabooed things will be illustrated in the present chapter, and tabooed words in the next.
§ 2. Iron tabooed.
Kings may not be touched. The use of iron forbidden to kings and priests. Use of iron forbidden at circumcision, childbirth, and so forth. Use of iron forbidden at certain times and places among the Esquimaux. Use of iron forbidden on certain occasions among the Highlanders of Scotland. Iron not used in building sacred edifices.
In the first place we may observe that the awful sanctity of kings naturally leads to a prohibition to [pg 226] touch their sacred persons. Thus it was unlawful to lay hands on the person of a Spartan king;[702] no one might touch the body of the king or queen of Tahiti;[703] it is forbidden to touch the person of the king of Siam under pain of death;[704] and no one may touch the king of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured monarch to his palace.[705] Formerly no one might touch the king of Corea; and if he deigned to touch a subject, the spot touched became sacred, and the person thus honoured had to wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above all, no iron might touch the king's body. In 1800 King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.[706] Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;[707] and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig must be offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.[708] As a general rule iron might not be brought into Greek sanctuaries.[709] In Crete sacrifices [pg 227] were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because the legend ran that Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.[710] The Archon of Plataea might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataea, he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull.[711] To this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz, in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a lad.[712] Among the Ovambo of south-west Africa custom requires that lads should be circumcised with a sharp flint; if none is to hand, the operation may be performed with iron, but the iron must afterwards be buried.[713] The Antandroy and Tanala of Madagascar cut the navel-strings of their children with sharp wood or with a thread, but never with an iron knife.[714] In Uap, one of the Caroline Islands, wood of the hibiscus tree, which was used to make the fire-drill, must be cut with shell knives or shell [pg 228] axes, never with iron or steel.[715] Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, and so on have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies.[716] After the Pawnees had ceased to use stone arrow-heads for ordinary purposes, they still employed them to slay the sacrifices, whether human captives or buffalo and deer.[717] We have seen that among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait the use of iron implements is forbidden for four days after the slaughter of a white whale, and that the use of an iron axe at a place where salmon are being dressed is believed by these people to be a fatal imprudence.[718] They hold a festival in the assembly-house of the village, while the bladders of the slain beasts are hanging there, and during its celebration no wood may be cut with an iron axe. If it is necessary to split firewood, this may be done with wedges of bone.[719] At Kushunuk, near Cape Vancouver, it happened that Mr. Nelson and his party entered an assembly-house of these Esquimaux while the festival of the bladders was in progress. “When our camping outfit was brought in from the sledges, two men took drums, and as the clothing and goods of the traders who were with me were brought in, the drums were beaten softly and a song was sung in a low, humming tone, but when our guns and some steel traps were brought in, with other articles of iron, the drums were beaten loudly and the songs raised in proportion. This was done that the shades of the animals present in the bladders might not be frightened.”[720] The Esquimaux on the western coast of Hudson Bay may not work on iron during the season for hunting musk-oxen, which falls in March. And no such work may be done by them until the seals have their pups.[721] Negroes of the Gold Coast remove all iron or steel from their person when they [pg 229] consult their fetish.[722] The men who made the need-fire in Scotland had to divest themselves of all metal.[723] There was hardly any belief, we are told, that had a stronger hold on the mind of a Scottish Highlander than that on no account whatever should iron be put in the ground on Good Friday. Hence no grave was dug and no field ploughed on that day. It has been suggested that the belief was based on that rooted aversion to iron which fairies are known to feel. These touchy beings live underground, and might resent having the roof pulled from over their heads on the hallowed day.[724] Again, in the Highlands of Scotland the shoulder-blades of sheep are employed in divination, being consulted as to future marriages, births, deaths, and funerals; but the forecasts thus made will not be accurate unless the flesh has been removed from the bones without the use of any iron.[725] In making the clavie (a kind of Yule-tide fire-wheel) at [pg 230] Burghead, no hammer may be used; the hammering must be done with a stone.[726] Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the Temple at Jerusalem or in making an altar.[727] The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair without the use of iron or bronze.[728] It was expressly provided by law that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools.[729] The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.[730] The late Rajah Vijyanagram, a member of the Viceroy's Council, and described as one of the most enlightened and estimable of Hindoo princes, would not allow iron to be used in the construction of buildings within his territory, believing that its use would inevitably be followed by small-pox and other epidemics.[731]
Everything new excites the awe and fear of the savage.
This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike.[732] For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. “It is a curious superstition,” says a pioneer in Borneo, “this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything—whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky—that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot weather we have experienced of late.”[733] Some years ago a harmless naturalist was collecting plants among the high forest-clad mountains on the borders of China and Tibet. From the summit of a pass he gazed with delight down a long valley which, stretching away as far as eye could reach to the south, resembled a sea of bloom, for everywhere the forest was ablaze with the [pg 231] gorgeous hues of the rhododendron and azalea in flower. In this earthly paradise the votary of science hastened to install himself beside a lake. But hardly had he done so when, alas! the weather changed. Though the season was early June, the cold became intense, snow fell heavily, and the bloom of the rhododendrons was cut off. The inhabitants of a neighbouring village at once set down the unusual severity of the weather to the presence of a stranger in the forest; and a round-robin, signed by them unanimously, was forwarded to the nearest mandarin, setting forth that the snow which had blocked the road, and the hail which was blasting their crops, were alike caused by the intruder, and that all sorts of disturbances would follow if he were allowed to remain. In these circumstances the naturalist, who had intended to spend most of the summer among the mountains, was forced to decamp. “Collecting in this country,” he adds pathetically, “is not an easy matter.”[734] The unusually heavy rains which happened to follow the English survey of the Nicobar Islands in the winter of 1886-1887 were imputed by the alarmed natives to the wrath of the spirits at the theodolites, dumpy-levellers, and other strange instruments which had been set up in so many of their favourite haunts; and some of them proposed to soothe the anger of the spirits by sacrificing a pig.[735] When the German Hans Stade was a captive in a cannibal tribe of Brazilian Indians, it happened that, shortly before a prisoner was to be eaten, a great wind arose and blew away part of the roofs of the huts. The savages were angry with Stade, and said he had made the wind to come by looking into his thunder-skins, by which they meant a book he had been reading, in order to save the prisoner, who was a friend of his, from their stomachs. So the pious German prayed to God, and God mercifully heard his prayer; for next morning the weather was beautifully fine, and his friend was butchered, carved, and eaten in the most perfect comfort.[736] According to the [pg 232] Orotchis of eastern Siberia, misfortunes have multiplied on them with the coming of Europeans; “they even go so far as to lay the appearance of new phenomena like thunder at the door of the Russians.”[737] In the seventeenth century a succession of bad seasons excited a revolt among the Esthonian peasantry, who traced the origin of the evil to a water-mill, which put a stream to some inconvenience by checking its flow.[738] The first introduction of iron ploughshares into Poland having been followed by a succession of bad harvests, the farmers attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and discarded them for the old wooden ones.[739] To this day the primitive Baduwis of Java, who live chiefly by husbandry, will use no iron tools in tilling their fields.[740]