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TORONTO PSYCHE'S TASK A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED TO WHICH IS ADDED THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AN INAUGURAL LECTURE BY •J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1913 COPYRIGHT f-e-f^ A '\0 S\%Cn Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably ; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds, which were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixt. Milton, Areopagitica. II ne faut pas croire cependant qu'un mauvais principe vicie radicalement une institution, ni meme qu'il y fasse tout le mal qu'il porte dans son sein. Rien ne fausse plus Fhistoire que la logique : quand I'esprit humain s'est arrete sur une idee, il en tire toutes les consequences possibles, lui fait produire tout ce qu'en efifet elle pourrait produire, et puis se la represente dans Fhistoire avec tout ce cortege. II n'en arrive point ainsi ; les ^v^nements ne sont pas aussi prompts dairs leur deductions que I'esprit humain. II y a dans toutes choses un melange de bien et de mal si profond, si invincible que, quelque part que vous penetriez, quand vous descendrez dans les derniers elements de la societe ou de I'ame, vous y trouverez ces deux ordres de fails coexistant, se developpant I'un a cote de I'autre et se combattant, mais sans s'exterminer. La nature humaine ne va jamais jusqu'aux derni^res limites, ni du mal ni du bien ; elle passe sans cesse de I'un a I'autre, se redressant au moment ou elle semble le plus pres de la chute, faiblissant au moment ou elle semble marcher le plus droit. GuizoT, Histoire de la civilisation dans V Europe, Cinquieme Lefon. C^ ;m_ TO ALL WHO ARE ENGAGED IN psyche's task OF SORTING OUT THE SEEDS OF GOOD FROM THE SEEDS OF EVIL X DEDICATE THIS DISCOURSE PREFACE The substance of the following discourse was la:tely read at an evening meeting of the Royal Institution in London, and most of it was afterwards delivered in the form of lectures to my class at Liverpool. It is now published in the hope that it may call attention to a neglected side of superstition and stimulate enquiry into the early history of those great institutions which still form the frame- work of modern society. If it should turn out that these institutions have sometimes been built on rotten foundations, it would be rash to conclude that they must all come down. Man is a very curious animal, and the more we know of his habits the more curious does he appear. He may be the most rational of the beasts, but certainly he is the most absurd. Even the saturnine wit of Swift, unaided by a knowledge of savages, fell far short of the reality in his attempt to set human folly in a strong light. Yet the odd thing is that in spite, or perhaps by virtue, of his absurdities man moves steadily upwards ; the more we learn of his past history the more groundless does the old theory of his degeneracy prove to be. From false premises he often arrives at sound conclusions : from a chimerical theory he deduces a salutary practice. This discourse will have served a useful purpose if it illustrates a few viii PREFACE of the ways in which folly mysteriously deviates into wisdom, and good comes out of evil. It is a mere sketch of a vast subject. Whether I shall ever fill in these bald out- lines with finer strokes and deeper shadows must be left to the future to determine. The materials for such a picture exist in abundance ; and if the colours are dark, they are yet illuminated, as I have tried in this essay to point out, by a ray of consolation and hope. J. G. FRAZER. Cambridge, February 1909. NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this edition Psyche's Task has been enlarged by fresh illustrative examples and by the discussion of a curious point of savage etiquette, but the substance and the form of the discourse remain unchanged. I have added The Scope of Social Anthropology, an inaugural lecture intended to mark out roughly the boundaries of the general study of which Psyche's Task aims at setting forth some particular results. There is therefore a certain appropriateness in presenting the two discourses together to the reader. J. G. F. Cambridge, bth June 1913. CONTENTS PAGR Preface vii PSYCHE'S TASK I. Introduction The dark and the bright side of Superstition : a plea for the accused : four propositions to be proved by the defence .... 3-5 II. Government Superstition has been a prop of Government by inculcating a deep veneration for governors : evidence of this veneration collected from Melanesia, Polynesia, Africa, the Malay region, and America : evidence of similar veneration among Aryan peoples from India to Scotland .......... 6-19 III. Private Property Superstition has been a prop of Private Property by inculcating a deep fear of its violation : evidence of this fear collected from Polynesia, Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America ........ 20-43 IV. Marriage Superstition has been a prop of Marriage by inculcating a deep fear of disregarding the traditionary rules of sexual morality : evidence of this fear collected from South - Eastern Asia, the Malay Archipelago, Africa, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Irish : extreme severity with which breaches of the sexual code have been punished in India, Babylon, CONTENTS PAGE Palestine, Africa, the East Indies, Australia, America, and Europe : the avoidance of the wife's mother and of a man's own mother, sisters, daughters, and female cousins, based on the fear of incest : the origin of the fear of incest unknown : belief that adultery and fornication inflict physical injury not only on the culprits but on their innocent relations : evidence of the belief collected from Africa, America, Sumatra, and New Britain .......... 44-110 .V. Respect for Human Life Superstition has been a prop for the Security of Human Life by inculcating a deep fear of the ghosts of the murdered dead : evidence of the fear collected from ancient Greece, modern Africa, America, India, New Guinea, Celebes, the Bismarck Archi- pelago, and Fiji : deep fear of ghosts in general : evidence collected from America, Africa, India, Burma, the Indian Archipelago, Australia, New Guinea, and China: influence of the fear in restraining men from murder ....... Ill— 153 VI. Conclusion Summing up for the defence : by serving as a prop for government, private property, marriage, and human life. Superstition has rendered a great service to humanity : Superstition at the bar : sentence of death ......... 154-15^^ THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY Anthropology, or the Science of Man, a new study ; Social Anthropology restricted to the rudimentary phases of human society : not concerned with the practical application of its results : all forms of human society either savage or evolved out of savagery : hence Social Anthropology deals primarily with savagery and secondarily with those survivals of savagery in civilization which are commonly known as folklore : importance of the study of savagery for an understanding of the evolution of the human mind : existing savages primitive only in a relative sense by comparison with civilized peoples : in reality the savages of the present day probably stand at a high level of culture compared with their remote predecessors : for example, the present systems of marriage and consanguinity among savages appear to have been preceded by a period, not necessarily primitive, of sexual communism : survivals of savagery in civilization due to the natural and ineradicable inequality of men : mankind CONTENTS xi PAGE ultimately led by an intellectual aristocracy : superstition the creed- of the laggards in the march of intellect : the wide pre- valence of superstition under the surface of society a standing menace to civilization : the lowest forms of superstition the most tenacious of life : function of the Comparative Method in re- constructing the early history of human thought and institutions : its legitimacy based on the ascertained similarity of the human mind in all races : the need of studying savages only of late years understood : urgent importance of the study in consequence of the rapid disappearance of savagery : the duty of our generation to preserve a record of it for posterity : the duty of the Universi- ties and of the State ........ 157-176 INDEX 177-186 PSYCHE'S TASK ^ I INTRODUCTION We are apt to think of superstition as an unmitigajt^ci The dark evil, false in itself and pernicious in its consequences. - That ^"*'=°f ' ^ _ ^ super- it has done much harm in the world, cannot be denied. It stition. has_ 3crificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures, em- broiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents and children, putting swords, and worse than swords between them : it has filled gaols and madhouses with its innocent or deluded victims : it has broken many hearts, embittered the whole of many a life, and not content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination has conjured up to appal and torture the sur- vivors. It has done all this and rnore^ Yet the case of The superstition, like that of Mr. Pickwick after the revelations ^i^f'j,^'^ of poor Mr. Winkle in the witness-box, can perhaps afford super- to be placed in a rather better light ; and without posing as ^""°"- the Devil's Advocate or appearing before you in a blue flame and sulphureous fumes, I do profess to make out what the charitable might call a plausible plea for a very dubious client. For I propose to prove, or at least make probable, by examples that among certain races and at certain stages of evolution some social institutions which we all, or most of us, believe to be beneficial have partially rested on a basis of superstition. The institutions to which I refer are purely secular or civil. Of religious or ecclesiastical institutions I shall say nothing. It might perhaps be possible to shew that even religion has not wholly escaped the taint or 3 INTRODUCTION Four pro- positions to be proved. Prelim- inary remarks. dispensed with the support of superstition ; but I prefer for to-night to confine myself to those civil institutions which people commonly imagine to be bottomed on nothing but hard common sense and the nature of things. While the institutions with which I shall deal have all survived into civilized society and can no doubt be defended by solid and weighty arguments, it is practically certain that among savages, and even among peoples who have risen above the level of savagery, these very same institutions have derived much of their strength from beliefs which nowadays we should condemn unreservedly as superstitious and absurd. The institutions in regard to which I shall attempt to prove this are four, namely, government, private property, marriage, and the respect for human life. And what I have to say may be summed up in four propositions as follows : — I. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil order. II. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. III. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the married and the unmarried. IV. Among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. Before proceeding to deal with these four propositions separately, I wish to make two remarks, which I beg you will bear in mind. First, in what I have to say I shall confine myself to certain races of men and to certain ages of history, because neither my time nor my knowledge permits me to speak of all races of men and all ages of history. How far the limited conclusions which I shall draw for some races and for some ages are applicable to others must be left to future enquiries to determine. That is my first remark. My second is this. If it can be proved that in certain races and at certain times the institutions t INTRODUCTION 5 in question have been based partly on superstition, it by no means follows that even among these races they have never been based on anything else. On the contrary, as all the institutions which I shall consider have proved themselves stable and permanent, there is a strong presumption that they rest mainly on something much more solid than superstition. No institution founded wholly on superstition, that is on falsehood, can be permanent. If it does not answer to some real human need, if its foundations are not laid broad and deep in the nature of things, it must perish, and the sooner the better. That is my second remark. II GOVERNMENT Supersti- tion as a prop of govern- ment. Super- stitious respect for chiefs in Melanesia. With these two cautions I address myself to my first proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil order. Among many peoples the task of government has been greatly facilitated by a superstition that the governors belong to a superior order of beings and possess certain supernatural or magical powers to which the governed can make no claim and can offer no resistance. Thus Dr. Codrington tells us that among the Melanesians " the power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the belief in their supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with which they had intercourse. As this belief has failed, in the Banks' Islands for example some time ago, the position of a chief has tended to become obscure ; and as this belief is now being generally undermined a new kind of chief must needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin." ^ According to a native Melanesian account, the authority of chiefs rests entirely on the belief that they hold communica- tion with mighty ghosts and possess that supernatural power or mana, as it is called, whereby they are able to bring the influence of the ghosts to bear on human life. If a chief imposed a fine, it was paid because the people firmly believed that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any considerable number of his 1 R. H. Codrington, D.D., The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), 6 p. 46. " GOVERNMENT 7 subjects began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, his power to levy fines was shaken.^ It is thus that in Melanesia religious scepticism tends to undermine the foundations of civil society. Similarly Mr. Basil Thomson tells us that " the key to Super- the Melanesian system of government is Ancestor-worship, respect for Just as every act in a Fijian's life was controlled by his fear chiefs in of Unseen Powers, so was his conception of human authority '^'' based upon religion." The dead chief was supposed still to watch jealously over his people and to punish them with dearth, storms, and floods, if they failed to bring their offerings to his tomb and to propitiate his spirit. And the person of his descendant, the living chief, was sacred ; it was hedged in by a magic circle of taboo and might not even be touched without incurring the wrath of the Unseen. " The first blow at the power of the chiefs was struck unconsciously by the missionaries. Neither they nor the chiefs themselves realized how closely the government of the Fijians was bound up with their religion. No sooner had a missionary gained a foothold in a chief village than the tabu was doomed, and on the tabu depended half the people's rever- ence for rank. The tabu died hard, as such institutions should do. The first-fruits were still presented to the chief, but they were no longer carried from him to the temple, since their excuse — as an offering to persuade the ancestors to grant abundant increase — had passed away. No longer supported by the priests, the Sacred Chief fell upon evil days " ; for in Fiji, as in other places, the priest and the chief, when they were not one and the same person, had played into each other's hands, both knowing that neither could stand firm without the aid of the other.^ In Polynesia the state of things was similar. There, Super- too, the power of chiefs depended largely on a belief in re3p°"tfor their supernatural powers, in their relation to ancestral chiefs in spirits, and in the magical virtue of taboo, which pervaded „enerany their persons and interposed between them and common folk and in New an invisible but formidable barrier, to pass which was death, panicu- In New Zealand the Maori chiefs were deemed to be living '^riy. 1 R. H. Codrington, of. cit. p. 52. Study of the Decay of Custom {London, 2 Basil Thomson, The Fijians, a 1908), pp. 57-59, 64, 158. 8 GOVERNMENT n atuas or gods. Thus the Rev. Richard Taylor, who was for more than thirty years a missionary in New Zealand, tells us that in speaking a Maori chief " assumed a tone not natural to him, as a kind of court language ; he kept him- self distinct from his inferiors, eating separately ; his person was sacred, he had the power of holding converse with the gods, in fact laid claim to being one himself, making the tapu a powerful adjunct to obtain control over his people and their goods. Every means were used to acquire this dignity ; a large person was thought to be of the highest importance ; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural sustenance ; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable- looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, and early became remarkable by its good appearance. Nor was this feeling confined to the body ; the chief was an atua, but there were powerful and powerless gods ; each naturally sought to make himself one of the former ; the plan therefore adopted, was to incorporate the spirits of others with their own ; thus, when a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that organ ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew, the greater did his divinity become. . . . Another great sign of a chief was oratory — a good orator was compared to the korimako, the sweetest singing bird in New Zealand ; to enable the young chief to become one, he was fed upon that bird, so that he might the better acquire its qualities, and the successful orator was termed a kori- mako." ^ Again, another writer informs us that the opinions of Maori chiefs "were held in more estimation than those of others, simply because they were believed to give utterance to the thoughts of deified men. No dazzling pageantry hedged them round, but their persons were sacred. . . . Many of them believed themselves inspired ; 1 Rev. Richard Taylor, Te Ika A pp. 352 sq. ; as to the atuas or gods, Maui, or New Zealand andits Inhabit- see e'i5. pp. iTj\ sqj. ants, Secoud Edition (London, 1870), II GOVERNMENT 9 thus Te Heu Heu, the great Taupo chief and priest, shortly before he was swallowed up by a landslip, said to a European missionary : ' Think not that I am a man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from the heavens ; my ancestors are all there ; they are gods, and I shall return to them.'"^ So sacred was the person of a Maori chief that it was not lawful to touch him, even to save his life. A chief has been seen at the point of suffoca- tion and in great agony with a fish bone sticking in his throat, and yet not one of his people, who were lamenting around him, dared to touch or even approach him, for it would have been as much as their own life was worth to do so. A missionary, who was passing, came to the rescue and saved the chief's life by extracting the bone. As soon as the rescued man recovered the power of speech, which he did not do for half an hour, the first use he made of it was to demand that the surgical instruments with which the bone had been extracted should be given to him as com- pensation for the injury done him by drawing his sacred blood and touching his sacred head.^ Not only the person of a Maori chief but everything that Super- had come into contact with it was sacred and would kill, so fg!j^°Qf the Maoris thought, any sacrilegious person who dared to contact ■ meddle with it. Cases have been known of Maoris dying of ^-gfj ^°" sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chief's dinner or handled something that belonged to him. For example, a woman, having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o'clock she was dead.' Similarly a chief's tinder-box has proved fatal to several men ; for having found it and lighted their pipes with it 1 A. S. Thomson, M.D., The Story ^ W. Brown, New Zealand and its of New Zealand (London, 1859), i. Aborigines (London, 1845), p. 76. 95 sq. Compare Old New Zealand, by a 2 Kev.'V^.YsXe, An Account of New Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), pp. Zealand {'LonAon, 1835), pp. 104 sq., ^6 sq. note. 10 GOVERNMENT ii they actually expired of terror on learning to whom it belonged.^ Hence a considerate chief would throw away where it could not be found any garment or mat for which he had no further use, lest one of his subjects should find it and be struck dead by the shock of its inherent divinity. For the same reason he would never blow a fire with his mouth ; for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the fire, and the fire would pass it on to the meat that might be cooked on it, and the meat would carry it into the stomach of the eater, and he would die.^ Thus the divinity which hedged a Maori chief was a de- vouring flame which shrivelled up and consumed whatever it touched. No wonder that such men were implicitly obeyed. Super- In the rest of Polynesia the state of things was similar. respect for ^°'' example, the natives of Tonga in like manner believed chiefs and that if any one fed himself with his own hands after touching Tonga''and the sacred person of a superior chief, he would swell up and Tahiti. die ; the sanctity of the chief, like a virulent poison, infected the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated through them to the food, proved fatal to the eater, unless he dis- infected himself by touching the chief's feet in a particular way.' When a king of Tahiti entered on office he was girded with a sacred girdle of red feathers, which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with the gods.* Henceforth " every thing in the least degree connected with the king or queen — the cloth they wore, the houses in which they dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men by whom they were borne when they journeyed by land, became sacred — and even the sounds in the language, compos- ing their names, could no longer be appropriated to ordinary significations. Hence, the original names of most of the objects with which they were familiar, have from time to time undergone considerable alterations. The ground on which they even accidentally trod, became sacred ; and the dwelling under which they might enter, must for ever after be vacated 1 Rev. R. Taylor, op. cit. p. 164. (London, 1818), i. 141 sq. note, 434, 2 Rev. R. Taylor, op. cit. pp. 164, note, ii. 82 sq., 222 sq. 165. * W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, ^ W. Mariner, Account of the Natives Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition iii. 108. " GOVERNMENT ii by its proprietors, and could be appropriated only to the use of these sacred personages. No individual was allowed to touch the body of the king or queen ; and every one who should stand over them, or pass the hand over their heads, would be liable to pay for the sacrilegious act with the forfeiture of his life. It was on account of this supposed sacredness of person that they could never enter any dwellings, excepting those that were specially dedicated to their use, and prohibited to all others ; nor might they tread on the ground in any part of the island but their own hereditary districts." ^ In like manner the Cazembes, in the interior of Angola, Super- regarded their king as so holy that no one could touch him fear°of without being killed by the magical power which emanated contact from his sacred person ; however, any one who had accident- i^'Afri'cf^ ally or necessarily come into personal contact with his and the Majesty could escape death by touching the king's hands region. in a special manner.^ Similar beliefs are current in the Malay region, where the theory of the king as the Divine Man is said to be held perhaps as strongly as in any other part of the world. " Not only is the king's person con- sidered sacred, but the sanctity of his body is believed to communicate itself to his regalia, and to slay those who break the royal taboos. Thus it is iirmly believed that any one who seriously offends the royal person, who touches (even for a moment) or who imitates (even with the king's permission) the chief objects of the regalia, or who wrong- fully makes use of any of the insignia or privileges of royalty, will be kena daulat, i.e. struck dead, by a quasi- electric discharge of that Divine Power which the Malays suppose to reside in the king's person, and which is called daulat or Royal Sanctity." ^ Further, the Malays firmly Marvellous believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the ^Hributed works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the to rajahs bearing of fruit-trees.* Some of the Hill Dyaks of Sarawak andOyaks. 1 W. Ellis, op. cit. iii. \oi sq. ; ']. sq. ; F. T. Valdez, Six Years of a Wihon, Mtsstona?y Voyage to the South- Traveller's Life in Western Africa em Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), pp. (London, 1861), ii. 251 sq. 329 sq. ^ W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic '^ Zeitschrift filr allgemeine Erd- (London, 1900), pp. 23 sq. kunde (Berlin), vi. (1856) pp. 398 * W. W. Skeat, op. cit. p. 36. 12 GOVERNMENT Super- stitious veneration for the rajah of Loowoo. Magical powers attributed to kings in Africa. The king of Loango. used to bring their seed-rice to Rajah Brooke to be fertilized by him ; and once when the rice-crops of a tribe were thin, the chief remarked that it could not be otherwise, since they had not been visited by the Rajah.^ Among the Toradjas of Central Celebes "the power of the rajah of Loowoo rested for the most part on superstition and on tradition. The ancestors had served the rajah in their day, and should the descendants fail to do so they would have to fear the wrath of the ancestors. Often Toradjas said to us, ' The rajah of Loowoo is our god.' They saw in him the complete embodiment of the old institutions. It used to be said that he had white blood, and the mysterious power that went forth from him was thought to be so great that a common Toradja could not see him without suffering from a swollen belly and dying." ^ Similarly in Africa kings are commonly supposed to be endowed with a magical power of making the rain to fall and the crops to grow : drought and famine are set down to the weakness or ill-will of the king, and accordingly he is punished, deposed, or put to death.^ To take two or three instances out of many, a writer of the eighteenth century speaks as follows of the kingdom of Loango in West Africa : " The government with these people is purely despotic. They say their lives and goods belong to the king; that he may dispose of and deprive them of them when he pleases, without form of process, and without their having anything to complain of. In his presence they pay marks of respect which resemble adoration. The individuals of the lower classes are persuaded that his power is not confined to the earth, and that he has credit enough to make rain fall from heaven : hence they fail not, when a continuance of drought makes them fearful about the harvest, to represent to him that if he does not take care to water the lands of his kingdom, they will die of hunger, and will find it impossible to make him the usual presents. The king, to satisfy the people, without however compromising himself with heaven. 1 Hugh Low, Sarawak (London, 1848), pp. 259 sq. 2 N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De Bare^ e-spreliende Toradja' s van Midden - Celebes, i. (Batavia, 191 2) pp. 130 sg. 2 For evidence see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 342 sqq., 392 sqq. " GOVERNMENT 13 devolves the affair on one of his ministers, to whom he gives orders to cause to fall without delay upon the plains as much rain as is wanted to fertilize them. When the minister sees a cloud which he presumes must shed rain, he shews himself in public, as if to exercise the orders of his prince. The women and children troop around him, crying with all their might. Give us rain, give us rain : and he promises them some."^ The king of Loango, says another old writer, " is honoured among them as though he were a God : and is called Sambee and Pango, which mean God. They believe he can let them have rain when he likes ; and once a year, in December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them, on this occasion they make him presents, and none come empty - handed." On a day appointed, when the chiefs with their troops had assembled in warlike array, the drums used to beat and the horns to sound, and the king shot arrows into the air, which was believed to bring down the rain.^ On the other side of Africa a similar state of things is reported by the old Portuguese historian Dos Santos. He says : " The king of all these The king lands of the interior and of the river of Sofala is a woolly- ° °^^ haired Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and has no knowledge of God ; on the contrary, he esteems himself the god of all his lands, and is so looked upon and reverenced by his subjects." " When they suffer necessity or scarcity they have recourse to the king, firmly believing that he can give them all that they desire or have need of, and can obtain anything from his dead predecessors, with whom they believe that he holds converse. For this reason they ask the king to give them rain when it is required, and other favourable weather for their harvest, and in coming to ask for any of these things they bring him valuable presents, which the king accepts, bidding them return to their homes and he will be careful to grant their petitions. They are such barbarians that though they see how often the king 1 Proyart's " History of Loango, scription de VAfrique (Amsterdam, Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in 1686), pp. 335 sq. Africa," in John Pinkerton's Voyages ^ "The Strange Adventures of and Travels (London, 1808-1814), Andrew Battel," in J. Pinkerton's xvi. 577. Compare O. Dapper, De- Voyages and Travels, xvi. 330. 14 GOVERNMENT n does not give them what they ask for, they are not unde- ceived, but make him still greater offerings, and many days are spent in these comings and goings, until the weather turns to rain, and the Kaffirs are satisfied, believing that the king did not grant their request until he had been well bribed and importuned, as he himself affirms, in order to maintain them in their error." ^ Nevertheless " it was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their front teeth by which they were disfigured, or any other deformity or affliction. To put an end to such defects they killed themselves, saying that the king should be free from any blemish." However, in the time of Dos Santos the king of Sofala, in defiance of all precedent, persisted in living and reigning after he had lost a front tooth ; and he even went so far as to tax his royal predecessors with folly lor having made away with them- selves for such trifles as a decayed tooth or a little grey hair, declaring his firm resolution to live as long as he possibly could for the benefit of his loyal subjects.^ At the present The chief day the principal medicine-man of the Nandi, a tribe in man'of ^ British East Africa, is also supreme chief of the whole people. the Nandi. He is a diviner, and foretells the future : he makes women and cattle fruitful ; and in time of drought he obtains rain either directly or through the intervention of the rainmakers. The Nandi believe implicitly in these marvellous powers of their chief. His person is usually regarded as absolutely sacred. Nobody may approach him with weapons in his hand or speak in his presence unless he is first addressed ; and it is deemed most important that nobody should touch the chief's head, otherwise his powers of divination and so forth would depart from him.^ This widespread African conception of the divinity of kings culminated long ago in ancient Egypt, where the kings were treated as gods both in life and in death, temples being dedicated to their worship ' J. Dos Santos, " Eastern Ethiopia," ^ j_ Dqj Santos, op. cit. pp. 194 sq. chapters v. and ix., in G. McCall ^ A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their Theal's Records of South - Eastern Language and Folk-lore (Oxford, 1 909), Africa, vii, (1901) pp. 190 sq., 199. pp. 49 sq. " GOVERNMENT 15 and priests appointed to conduct it.^ And when tlie harvests failed, the ancient Egyptians, like the modern negroes, laid the blame of the failure on the reigning monarch.^ A halo of superstitious veneration also surrounded the Super- Yncas or governing class in ancient Peru. Thus the old veneration historian Garcilasso de la Vega, himself the son of an Ynca of the princess, tells us that " it does not appear that any Ynca of for™he^"^ the blood royal has ever been punished, at least publicly, Yncas. and the Indians deny that such a thing has ever taken place. They say that the Ynca never committed any fault that required correction ; because the teaching of their parents, and the common opinion that they were children of the Sun, born to teach and to do good to the rest of mankind, kept them under such control, that they were rather an example than a scandal to the commonwealth. The Indians also said that the Yncas were free from the temptations which usually lead to crime, such as passion for women, envy and covetousness, or the thirst for vengeance ; because if they desired beautiful women, it was lawful for them to have as many as they liked ; and any pretty girl they might take a fancy to, not only was never denied to them, but was given up by her father with expressions of extreme thankfulness that an Ynca should have condescended to take her as his servant. The same thing might be said of their property ; for, as they never could feel the want of anything, they had no reason to covet the goods of others ; while as governors they had command over all the property of the Sun and of the Ynca ; and those who were in charge, were bound to give them all that they required, as children of the Sun, and brethren of the Ynca. They likewise had no temptation to kill or wound any one either for revenge, or in passion ; for no one ever offended them. On the contrary, they received adoration only second to that offered to the royal person ; and if any one, how high soever his rank, had enraged any Ynca, it would have been looked upon as sacrilege, and very severely punished. But it may be affirmed that an Indian 1 C. p. Tiele, History of the The Magic Art and the Evolution of Egyptian Religion (London, 1882), Kings, \. i,\% sq. pp. 103 sq. For fuller details see A. Moret, Du caradire religieux de ''■ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. J. la royauti! pharaonique (Paris, 1902); 14. i6 GOVERNMENT Super- stitious veneration for kings in ancient India. Super- stitious veneration for kings in ancient Europe. was never punished for offending against the person, honour, or property of any Ynca, because no such offence was ever committed, as they held the Yncas to be like gods." 1 Nor have such superstitions been confined to savages and other peoples of alien race in remote parts of the world. They seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. Thus in the ancient Indian law-book called the Laws of Manu, we read : " Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre ; and, like the sun, he burns eyes and hearts ; nor can anybody on earth even gaze on him. Through his (super- natural) power he is Fire and Wind, he Sun and Moon, he the Lord of justice (Yama), he Kubera, he Varuna, he great Indra. Even an infant king must not be despised (from an idea) that he is a (mere) mortal ; for he is a great deity in human form." ^ And in the same law-book the effects of a good king's reign are thus described : " In that (country) where the king avoids taking the property of (mortal) sinners, men are born in (due) time (and are) long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped (offspring) is born." ^ Similarly in Homeric Greece, kings and chiefs were described as sacred or divine ; their houses, too, were divine, and their chariots sacred ; * and it was thought that the reign of a good king caused the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and the sea to yield fish.^ When the crops failed, the Burgundians used to blame their kings and depose them." Similarly the Swedes always ascribed the abund- ance or scantiness of the harvest to the goodness or badness of their kings, and in time of dearth they have been known ^ The Laws of Manu, ix. 246 sq., translated by G. Buhler, p. 385. ■• Homer, Odyssey, ii. 409, iv. 43, 691, vii. 167, viii. 2, xviii. 405; Iliad, ii. 335, xvii. 464, etc. s Homer, Odyssey, xix. 109-114. 8 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5. 14. ' Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, translated by C. R. Markham (London, 1869-1871), i. 154 sq. 2 The Laws of Manu, vii. 5-8, translated by G. Biihler (Oxford, 1886), p. 2 1 7 {Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXV. ). II GOVERNMENT 17 to sacrifice them to the gods for the sake of procuring good crops.^ In ancient Ireland it was also believed that when kings observed the customs of their ancestors the seasons were mild, the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, and the fruit-trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce. A canon ascribed to St. -Patrick enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of a just king " fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." ^ Superstitions Survivals of the kind which were thus current among the Celts of °'^"'^,. is supersti- Ireland centuries ago appear to have survived among the tion in Celts of Scotland down to Dr. Johnson's time ; for when he ™"'^"'^- travelled in Skye it was still held that the return of the chief of the Macleods to Dunvegan, after any considerable absence, produced a plentiful catch of herring ; ^ and at a still later time, when the potato crop failed, the clan Macleod desired that a certain fairy banner in the possession of their chief might be unfurled,* apparently in the belief that the magical banner had only to be displayed to produce a fine crop of potatoes. Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which Touching lingered about our English kings was the notion that they king's could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accord- Evil. ingly known as the King's Evil ; ^ and on the analogy of the Polynesian superstitions which I have cited, we may perhaps conjecture that the skin disease of scrofula was originally supposed to be caused as well as cured by the king's touch. Certain it is that in Tonga some forms of scrofula, as well as indurations of the liver, to which the natives were very subject, were thought to be caused by touching a chief and 1 Snorro Sturleson, The Heims- 1825, vol. vi. ). kringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of * J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of Norway, translated by S. Laing (Lon- the Highlands and Islands of Scotland don, 1844), saga i. chapters 18 and 47, (Glasgow, 1900), p. 5. vol. i. pp. 230, 256. ^ W. G. Black, Folk - Medicine 2 P W lovce Social History of (London, 1883), pp. 140 sqq. See Ancient Ireland (London, 1903), i ^f^^"^^^ The Magic Art and the Evolu- 56 sq.; J. O'Donovan, The Book of t^onofAtngs^^(>isqq; and especi- D- t^ iT\ i-i- o -> o . ally Raymond Crawfurd, The King s Rights (Dublin, 1847), p. 8, note. r- ■, iri r 3 , I- ^ ■ * ^ . t//) 1 ) ^^^i (Oxford, 191 1), which contams ' S. Johnson, yi)Kr»e)/ to the Western a full history of the superstition from Islands, pp. 65 sq. (The Works of the eleventh century onwards, authen- Samtiel Johnson, LL.D., London, ticated by documentary evidence. C 1 8 GOVERNMENT n to be healed, on homcEopathic principles, in the very same fashion.^ Similarly in Loango palsy is called the king's disease, because the negroes imagine it to be heaven's own punishment for treason meditated against the king.^ The belief in the king's power to heal by touch is known to have been held both in France and England from the eleventh century onward. The first French king to touch the sick appears to have been Robert the Pious, the first English king Edward the Confessor.^ In England the belief that the king could heal scrofula by his touch survived into the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson was touched in his childhood for scrofula by Queen Anne.* It is curious that so typical a representative of robust common sense as Dr. Johnson should in his childhood and old age have thus been brought into contact with these ancient superstitions about royalty both in England and Scotland. In France the superstition lingered a good deal longer, for whereas Queen Anne was the last reigning monarch in England to touch for scrofula, both Louis XV. and Louis XVI. at their coronation touched thousands of patients, and as late as 1824 Charles X. at his coronation went through the same solemn farce. It is said that the sceptical wits of Louis XVI.'s time investigated all the cases of the persons on whom the king had laid hands at his coronation, with the result that out of two thousand four hundred who were touched only five were made whole.^ Conciu- The foregoing evidence, summary as it is, may suffice to prove that many peoples have regarded their rulers, whether chiefs or kings, with superstitious awe as beings of a higher order and endowed with mightier powers than common folk. Imbued with such a profound veneration for their governors and with such an exaggerated concep- tion of their power, they cannot but have yielded them a prompter and more implicit obedience than if they had ' W. Mariner, An Account of the ' Raymond Crawfurd, The Kin^s Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Evil, pp. 1 1 sqq. , 1 8 sqq. Edition (London, 1818), i. 434, note. * J. Boswell, Life of Samuel John- 2 Proyart's "History of Loango, son, Ninth Edition (London, 1822), i. Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in 18 sq. Africa," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and ^ Raymond Crawfurd, The King's Travels, xvi. 573. Evil, pp. 144 sqq., 159 sqq. sion, u GOVERNMENT 19 known them to be men of common mould just like them- selves. If that is so, I may claim to have proved my first proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for govern- ment, especially monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil order. Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY Super- stition as a prop of private property. Taboo in Polynesia. Taboo among the Maoris of New Zealand. I PASS now to my second proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for private property, and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. Nowhere, perhaps, does this appear more plainly than in Polynesia, where the system of taboo reached its highest development ; for the effect of tabooing a thing was, in the opinion of the natives, to endow it with a super- natural or magical energy which rendered it practically unapproachable by any but the owner. Thus taboo became a powerful instrument for strengthening the ties, perhaps our socialist friends would say riveting the chains, of private property. Indeed, some good authorities who were person- ally acquainted with the working of taboo in Polynesia, have held that the system was originally devised for no other purpose. For example, an Irishman who lived as a Maori with the Maoris for years, and knew them intimately, writes as follows : " The original object of the ordinary tapu seems to have been the preservation of property. Of this nature in a great degree was the ordinary personal tapu. This form of the tapu was permanent, and consisted in a certain sacred character which attached to the person of a chief and never left him. It was his birthright, a part in fact of him- self, of which he could not be divested, and which was well understood and recognized at all times as a matter of course. The fighting men and petty chiefs, and every one indeed who could by any means claim the title of rangatira — which in the sense I now use it means gentleman — were all in Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY 21 some degree more or less possessed of this mysterious quality. It extended or was communicated to all their moveable property, especially to their clothes, weapons, ornaments, and tools, and to everything in fact which they touched. This prevented their chattels from being stolen or mislaid, or spoiled by children, or used or handled in any way by others. And as in the old times, as I have before stated, every kind of property of this kind was precious in consequence of the great labour and time necessarily, for want of iron tools, expended in the manu- facture, this form of the tapu was of great real service. An infringement of it subjected the offender to various dreadful imaginary punishments, of which deadly sickness was one." The culprit was also liable to what may be called a civil action, which consisted in being robbed and beaten ; but the writer whom I have just quoted tells us that the worst part of the punishment for breaking taboo was the imaginary part, since even when the offence had been committed un- wittingly the offender has been known to die of fright on learning what he had done.^ Similarly, another writer, speaking of the Maoris, observes that " violators of the tapu were punished by the gods and also by men. The former sent sickness and death ; the latter inflicted death, loss of property, and expulsion from society. It was a dread of the gods, more than of men, which upheld the tapu. Human eyes might be deceived, but the eyes of the gods could never be deceived." ^ " The chiefs, as might be expected, are fully aware of the advantages of the tapu, finding that it confers on them, to a certain extent, the power of making laws, and the superstition on which the tapu is founded will ensure the observance of them. Were they to transgress the tapu, they believe that the attua (God) would kill them, and so universal is this belief that it is, or rather was, a very rare occurrence to find any one daring enough to commit the 1 Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha " The breaking of the tapu, if the Maori (London, 1884), pp. 94-97, crime does not become known, is, they compare id. p. S3. believe, punished by the atua, who 2 A. S. Thomson, The Story of inflicts disease upon the criminal ; if New Zealand (London, 1859), i. 103. discovered, it is punished by him whom Compare E. Dieffenbach, Travels in it regards, and often becomes the cause New Zealand {London, 1843), ii. 105 : of war." 22 PRIVATE PROPERTY m sacrilege. To have preserved this influence so completely among a people naturally so shrewd and intelligent, great care must, no doubt, have been taken not to apply it unless in the usual and recognised manner. To have done other- wise would have led to its being frequently transgressed ; and consequently to the loss of its influence. Before the natives came into contact with the Europeans the tapu seems to have acted with the most complete success ; as the belief was general, that any disregard of it would infallibly subject the offender to the anger of the atiua, and death would be the consequence. Independently, however, of the support which the tapu derives from the superstitious fears of these people, it has, like most other laws, an appeal to physical force in case of necessity. A delinquent, if discovered, would be stripped of everything he possessed ; and if a slave, would in all probability be put to death — many instances of which have actually occurred. So powerful is this superstitious feeling, that slaves will not venture to eat of the same food as their master ; or even to cook at the same fire ; believing that the attua would kill them if they did so. Everything about, or belonging to, a chief is accounted sacred by the slaves. Fond as they are ot tobacco, it would be perfectly secure though left exposed on the roof of a chief's house ; no one would venture to touch it. To try them, a friend of mine gave a fig of tobacco to a slave ; who, after having used it, was informed that it had been on the roof of the chief's house. The poor fellow, in the greatest consternation, went immediately to the chief telling him what had happened, and beseeching him to take off the tapu from the tobacco to prevent the evil consequences." ^ Taboo as a Hencc it has been truly said that " this form of tapu was of'^pro™'^ a great preserver of property. The most valuable articles perty. might, in ordinary circumstances, be left to its protection, in the absence of the owners, for any length of time." ^ If any one wished to preserve his crop, his house, his garments, or anything else, he had only to taboo the property, and it was safe. To shew that the thing was tabooed, he put a mark ' W. Brown, New Zealand and its ^ Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Aborigines (London, 1845). pp. 12 sq. Maori (London, 1884), p. 97. Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY 23 to it. Thus, if he wished to use a particular tree in the forest to make a canoe, he tied a wisp of grass to the trunk ; if he desired to appropriate a patch of buhush in a swamp, he st-uck up a pole in it with a bunch of grass at the top ; if he left his house with all its valuables, to take care of itself, he secured the door with a bit of flax, and the place straightway became inviolable, nobody would meddle with it.^ Hence although the restrictions imposed by taboo were often vexatious and absurd, and the whole system has some- times been denounced by Europeans as a degrading super- stition, yet observers who looked a little deeper have rightly perceived that its enactments, enforced mainly by imaginary but still powerful sanctions, were often beneficial. " The New Zealanders," says one writer, "could not have been governed without some code of laws analogous to the tapu. Warriors submitted to the supposed decrees of the gods who would have spurned with contempt the orders of men, and it was better the people should be ruled by superstition than by brute force." ^ Again, an experienced missionary, who knew the Maoris well, writes that "the tapu in many in- stances was beneficial ; considering the state of society, absence of law, and fierce character of the people, it formed no bad substitute for a dictatorial form of government, and made the nearest approach to an organized state of society." ^ In other parts of Polynesia the system of taboo with its Taboo in attendant advantages and disadvantages, its uses and abuses, ''Jfesaj"^ was practically the same, and everywhere, as in New islands Zealand, it tightened for good or evil the ties of private property. This indeed was perhaps the most obvious effect of the institution. In the Marquesas Islands, it is, said, taboo was invested with a divine character as the expres- sion of the will of the gods revealed to the priests ; as such it set bounds to injurious excesses, prevented depreda- tions, and united the people. Especially it converted the tabooed or privileged classes into landed proprietors ; the land belonged to them alone and to their heirs ; common 1 Rev. R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, 2 a. S. Thomson, The Story of New or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, Zealand {hondon, 1859), i. 105. Second Edition (London, 1870), pp. 167, 171. ' Rev. R. Taylor, o/. cit. pp. 172 sgi. 24 PRIVATE PROPERTY in folk lived by industry and by fishing. Taboo was the bulwark of the landowners ; it was that alone which elevated them by a sort of divine right into a position of affluence and luxury above the vulgar ; it was that alone which ensured their safety and protected them from the encroach- ments of their poor and envious neighbours. " Without doubt," say the writers from whom I borrow these observa- tions, " the first mission of taboo was to establish property, the base of all society." ^ Super- In Samoa also superstition played a great part in fe'a"°rsa fostering a respect for private property. That it did so, we preserver have the testimony of a missionary. Dr. George Turner, who in Samoa!^ Hvcd for many years among the Samoans and has given us a very valuable account of their customs. He says : " I hasten to notice the second thing which I have already remarked was an auxiliary towards the maintenance of peace and order in Samoa, viz. superstitious fear. If the chief and heads of families, in their court of inquiry into any case of stealing, or other concealed matter, had a diffi- culty in finding out the culprit, they would make all involved swear that they were innocent. In swearing before the chiefs the suspected parties laid a handful of grass on the stone, or whatever it was, which was supposed to be the representative of the village god, and laying their hand on it, would say, ' In the presence of our chiefs now assembled, I lay my hand on the stone. If I stole the thing may I speedily die.' This was a common mode of swearing. The meaning of the grass was a silent additional imprecation that his family might all die, and that grass might grow over their habitation. If all swore, and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs then wound up the affair by committing the case to the village god, and solemnly invok- ing him to mark out for speedy destruction the guilty 1 Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Des- This last writer, who was a missionary graz, lies Marquises ou Nouk-hha to the Marquesas, observes that while (Paris, 1843), PP- 258-260. For taboo was both a political and a re- details of the taboo system in the ligious institution, he preferred to class Marquesas Islands, see G. H. von it under the head of religion because it Langsdorff, Keise iitn die Welt (Franc- rested on the authority of the gods fort, 1812), i. 114-119; Le P. Mat- and formed the highest sanction of the thias G * * * Lettres sur les Isles whole religious system. Marquises (Paris, 1843), pp. 47 sqq. 11" PRIVATE PROPERTY 25 mischief-maker. But, instead of appealing to the chiefs, and calling for an oath, many were contented with their own individual schemes and imprecations to frighten thieves and prevent stealing. When a man went to his plantation and saw that some cocoa-nuts, or a bunch of bananas, had been stolen, he would stand and shout at the top of his voice two or three times, ' May fire blast the eyes of the person who has stolen my bananas ! May fire burn down his eyes and the eyes of his god too ! ' This rang throughout the adjacent plantations, and made the thief tremble. They dreaded such uttered imprecations. . . . But there was another and more extensive class of curses, which were also feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic taboo, or iapui (Japooe), as they call it. Of this there was a great variety." ^ Among the Samoan taboos which were employed for Samoan the protection of property were the following : — i. The sea- ^^^°°^- pike taboo. To prevent his bread-fruits from being stolen a man would plait some coco-nut leaflets in the form of a sea- pike and hang one or more such effigies from the trees which he wished to protect. Any ordinary thief would be afraid to touch a tree thus guarded, for he believed that if he stole the fruit a sea-pike would mortally wound him the next time he went to sea. 2. The white-shark taboo. A man would plait a coco-nut leaf in the shape of a shark and hang it on a tree. This was equivalent to an imprecation that the thief might be devoured by a shark the next time he went to fish. 3. The cross-stick taboo. This was a stick hung horizontally on the tree. It expressed a wish that whoever stole fruit from the tree might be afflicted with a sore running right across his body till he died. 4. The ulcer taboo. This was made by burying some pieces of clam-shell in the ground and setting up at the spot several reeds tied together at the top in a bunch like the head of a man. By this the owner signified his wish that the thief might be laid low with ulcerous sores all over his body. If the thief happened thereafter to be troubled with swellings or sores, he confessed his fault and sent a present to the ' G. Turner, 5a/«oa (London, 1884), pp. 183-184. 26 PRIVATE PROPERTY Taboo in Tonga. Taboo in Melanesia. owner of the land, who in return sent to the culprit a herb both as a medicine and as a pledge of forgiveness. 5. The thunder taboo. A man would plait coco-nut leaflets in the form of a small square mat and suspend it from a tree, adding some white streamers of native cloth. A thief believed that for trespassing on such a tree he or his children might be struck by lightning, or perhaps that lightning might strike and blast his own trees. " From these few illustrations," says Dr. Turner in conclusion, " it will be observed that Samoa formed no exception to the remarkably widespread system of superstitious taboo ; and the extent to which it preserved honesty and order among a heathen people will be readily imagined." ■* In Tonga a man guilty of theft or of any other crime was said to have broken the taboo, and as such persons were supposed to be particularly liable to be bitten by sharks, all on whom suspicion fell were compelled to go into water frequented by sharks ; if they were bitten or devoured, they were guilty ; if they escaped, they were innocent.^ In Melanesia also a system of taboo (tambu, tapu) exists ; it is described as " a prohibition with a curse expressed or implied," and derives its sanction from a belief that the chief or other person who imposes a taboo has the support of a powerful ghost or spirit {tindalo). If a common man took it upon himself to taboo anything, people would watch to see whether a transgressor of the taboo fell sick ; if he did, it was a proof that the man who imposed the taboo was backed by a powerful ghost, and his reputation would rise accordingly. Each ghost affected a particular sort of leaf, which was his taboo mark.^ In New Britain plantations, coco -nut trees, and other possessions are protected against thieves by marks of taboo attached to them, and it is thought that whoever violates the taboo will be visited by sickness or other misfortune. The nature of the sickness or misfortune varies with that of the mark or magical object which embodies the mystic virtue of the taboo. One plant used for this purpose will cause the • G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 185-188. Edition (London, 1818), ii. 221. 2 W. Mariner, An Account of the ^ R. H. Codrington, D.D., The Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Afc/a»««a»j(Oxford, 1891), pp. 215 j^. "I PRIVATE PROPERTY 27 thief's head to ache ; another will make his thighs swell ; another will break, his legs ; and so forth. Even the murmuring of a spell over a fence is believed to ensure that whoever steals sticks from the fence will have a swollen head.^ In Fiji the institution of taboo was the secret of power and the strength of despotic rule. It was wondrously diffused, affecting things great and small. Here it might be seen tending a brood of chickens and there directing the energies of a kingdom. The custom was much in favour with the chiefs, who adjusted it so that it sat lightly on them and heavily on others. By it they gained influence, supplied their wants, and commanded at will their inferiors. In imposing a taboo a chief need only be checked by a regard for ancient precedent. Inferior persons endeavoured by the help of the system to put their yam-beds and plantain-plots within a sacred pale.^ A system of taboo based on superstition prevails all over Taboo in the islands of the Malay Archipelago, where the common ^^^.^^'^^ term for taboo is pamali, pomali, or pemali, though in some peiago. places other words, such as poso, potu, or boboso are in use to express the same idea.^ In this great region also the super- stition associated with taboo is a powerful instrument to enforce the rights of private property. Thus, in the island of Timor " a prevalent custom is the pomali, exactly equiva- lent to the 'taboo' of the Pacific islanders, and equally respected. It is used on the commonest occasions, and a few palm leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of the pomali will preserve its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring guns, or a savage dog, would do with us." * In Amboyna the word for taboo is pamali. A man who wishes to protect his fruit- trees or other possessions against theft may do it in various ways. For example, he may make a white cross on a pot ' R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck- de vergelijkende Volkenkunde van Archipel ^X-^'^V^'^'^' 1887), p. 144 ; id., Nederlandsch Indie (Leyden, 1893), Dreissig Jahre in der Siidsee (Stutt- pp. 596-603 ; G. W. W. C. Baron van gart, 1907), pp. 193 jy. HoiveW, A7iibon en meer bepaaldelij'k de ^ Thomas Williams, Fiji and the Oeliasers (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 148- 152. Fyians, Second Edition (London, ^' K. V..\Nz\\^ct, The Malay Archi- 1860), 1. 234. peiago. Sixth Edition (London, 1877), ^ G. A. Wilken, Handleiding voor p. 196. 28 PRIVATE PROPERTY ni and hang the pot on the fruit-tree ; then the thief who steals fruit from that tree will be a leper. Or he may place the effigy of a mouse under the tree ; then the thief will have marks on his nose and ears as if a mouse had gnawed them. Or he may plait dry sago leaves into two round discs and tie them to the tree ; then the thief's body will swell up and burst.^ In Ceram the methods of protecting property from thieves are similar. For example, a man places a pig's jaw in the branches of his fruit-tree ; after that any person who dares to steal the fruit from the tree will be rent in pieces by a wild boar. The image of a crocodile with a thread of red cotton tied round its neck will be equally efficacious ; the thief will be devoured by a crocodile, A wooden ^^^y of a snake will make the cul- prit to be stung by a serpent. A figure of a cat with a red band round its neck will cause all who approach the tree with evil intentions to suffer from excruciating pains in their stomachs, as if a cat were clawing their insides.^ An image of a swallow will cause the thief to suffer as if a swallow were pecking his eyes out : a piece of thorny wood and a red spongy stone will inflict piercing pangs on him and make his whole body to be red and pitted with minute holes : a burnt-out brand will cause his house to burst into flames, without any apparent reason ; and so on.^ Similarly in the Ceram Laut Islands a man protects his coco-nut trees or sago palms by placing charmed objects at the foot of them. For example, he puts the &^%Y of ^ ^^h under his coco-nut tree and says, " Grandfather fish, cause the person who steals my coco-nuts to be sick and vomit." The culprit accordingly is seized with pains in his stomach and can only be relieved of them by the owner of the coco-nuts, who spits betel-nut juice on the ailing part and blows into the sufferer's ear, saying, " Grandfather fish, return to the sea. You have there room enough and great rocks of coral where you can ' J. G. F. Riedel, De shiik- en bruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en bijgeloovigheden der bevolking van de Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 61 sq. eilanden Saparoea, Havoekoe, Noessa „ ^ _ _ _. , , .^ Laut, en van een gedeelte van de zuid- 2 J. G. F. Riedel, op. at. pp. 114 kust van Ceram, in vroegeren en ^1- lateren tijd," Tijdschrift voor Netr- 3 Van Schmidt, " Aanteekeningen lands Indie, v. Tweede deel (Batavia, nopens de zeden, gewoonten en ge- 1843), PP- 499-502. ni PRIVATE PROPERTY 29 swim about." Or again he may make a miniature coffin and place it on the ground under the tree ; then the thief will suffer from shortness of breath and a feeling of suffoca- tion, as if he were actually shut up in a coffin. And many other devices there are whereby in these islands the owner of fruit-trees protects the fruit from the depredations of his unscrupulous neighbours. In every case he deposits at the foot of the tree or fastens to the trunk a charmed object, which he regards as endowed with supernatural powers, and he invokes its aid to guard his possessions.^ The Bare'e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes protect Charms for their fruit-trees, especially their sirih plants and their coco- tion^™ ^"^ nut palms against thieves by amulets or charms of various fruit-'rees sorts which they attach to the trees. The charms consist of cdebes. the leaves of certain plants or parts of an animal tied up in leaves. Before the owner fastens one of these amulets to the tree, he says, " O charm (oorod), if any man will take of these fruits, make him sick." And the people in general believe that sickness will overtake the thief who disregards the taboo and steals the fruit. The kind of sickness or other mishap which will visit the sinner varies with the nature of the charm. The qualities of the object which is fastened to the tree are supposed to enter into the culprit's body and to affect him accordingly. For example, if the charm consists of a particular sharp-edged grass, then the thief will feel sharp pains in his body ; if it is part of a white ant heap, he will be afflicted with leprosy ; if it is a certain weed of which the fruit drops off easily, his teeth will fall out ; if it is a plant whose leaves cause itching, his body will itch all over ; if it is the dracaena terminalis, he will be killed in war ; and so on. There is a great variety of these amulets for the protection of fruit-trees ; every man has his own in which he puts his trust. Yet while the Toradjas believe that sickness or other misfortune follows automatically the breach of such taboos, nevertheless they allege that they know how to evade the force and vigilance of the charm and to eat of the forbidden fruit with impunity. One of the expedients adopted for that purpose is as follows. You take a handful of earth and throw it at the tree ; then with ' J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 167 sq. 30 PRIVATE PROPERTY in your chopping-knife you chip a splinter from the trunk, and addressing the protective charm you say, " Make the earth sick first, and then the chopping-knife, and then me." After that you have practically nothing to fear from the amulet, and you can steal the fruit and eat it at your ease. But that is not all. Some artful thieves are able not merely to counteract the charm and render it powerless against them- selves ; they can even reverse its action and direct it against the owner of the tree himself. Indeed, so well-recognized is this power that many a prudent Toradja refuses to protect his trees with amulets at all, lest in doing so he should be simply putting in the hands of his enemies a weapon to be used by them for his own destruction. One of the ways in which a cunning robber will thus defeat the ends of justice is this. He goes boldly up to the fruit-tree which he intends to rob, removes the charm from it, and hangs it up somewhere else. Then he lays a plank on the ground with one end of it touching the trunk of the fruit- tree ; on this plank he walks up to the tree and calmly appropriates the fruit. The charm, of course, in the mean- time is helpless, since it is not on the tree. When he has stripped the fruit, the rascal restores the charm to its proper place and removes the plank. Again, the guardian charm is helpless ; it cannot pursue the thief, since he has carried away the plank, leaving no possible exit from the tree. Thus the faithful guardian is, as it were, imprisoned in the castle which he has been set to guard ; he frets and fumes at his confinement, and in his blind rage will fall foul of the owner of the tree himself when next he comes to inspect his property. This is, perhaps, the simplest and easiest mode of hoisting a fruit-farmer with his petard. There are, how- ever, other ways of doing it. One of them is to get up into the tree and hang by your feet from a branch with your head down, and, while thus suspended in the air, to chew the root of a stinging nettle. This causes the owner of the tree either to be eaten up by a crocodile or to perish in war. A very popular charm among the Mountain Toradjas of Central Celebes is to take the head or paw of an iguana and hang it on the fruit-tree which is to be protected. The head bites the thief's head, and the paw grabs him by the in PRIVATE PROPERTY 31 leg, SO that he feels excruciating pains in these portions of his frame. But if you hang up the whole carcase, the thief is a dead man.^ In Madagascar there is an elaborate system of taboo Taboo known z.s fady} It has been carefully studied in a learned j^adi-'" monograph by Professor A. van Gennep,^ who argues that gascar. originally all property was based on religion, and that marks of property were marks of taboo.* However, so far as the evidence permits us to judge, it does not appear that the system has been used by the Malagasy for the protection of property to the same extent as by the Polynesians, the Melanesians, and the Indonesians. But we hear of Malagasy charms placed in the fields to afflict with leprosy and other maladies any persons who should dare to steal from them.° And we are told that some examples of fady or taboo " seem to imply a curious basis for the moral code in regard to the rights of property among the last generation of Malagasy. It does not appear to have been fady to steal in general, but certain articles were specified, to steal which there were various penalties attached. Thus, to steal an egg caused the thief to become leprous ; to steal landy (native silk) caused blindness or some other infirmity. And to steal iron was also visited by some bodily affliction." ^ In order to recover stolen property the Malagasy had recourse to a deity called Ramanandroany. The owner would take a remnant of the thing that had been purloined, and going with it to the idol would say, " As to whoever stole our pro- perty, O Ramanandroany, kill him by day, destroy him by night, and strangle him ; let there be none amongst men like him ; let him not be able to increase in I'iches, not even a farthing, but let him pick up his livelihood as a hen pecks rice-grains ; let his eyes be blinded, and his knees swollen, ' N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De ^ A. van Gennep, op. cit. pp. 183 Bare e-sprekendeToradjd' s van Midden- sqq. Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) pp. 399-401. ^ A. van Gennep, Tabou et Toti- 2 H. F. Standing, " Malagasy/arf)'," misme cl. Madagascar, p. 184. The The Antananarivo Annual and Mada- writer has devoted a chapter (xi. pp. gascar Magazine, yo\. ii. (Antananarivo, 183-193) to taboos of property. 1896) pp. 252-265 (Reprint of the " H. F. Standing, "Malagasy y^z^/c," second Four Numbers). Antananarivo Annual and Mada- 2 A. van Gennep, Tabou et Toti- gascar Magazine, vol. ii. (Antananarivo, misme h Madagascar (Paris, 1904). 1896) p. 256. PRIVATE PROPERTY Property protected by super- stitious fears else- where. O Ramanandroany." It was supposed that these curses fell on the thief.^ Similar modes of enforcing the rights of private property by the aid of superstitious fears have been adopted in many other parts of the world. The subject has been copiously illustrated by Dr. Edward Westermarck in his very learned work on the origin and development of the moral ideas.^ Here I will cite only a few cases out of many. The Kouis of Laos, on the borders of Siam, protect their plantations against thieves in a very simple way. They place a " shaking tubercule " {prateal anchoi) on the land which is to be guarded ; and if any thief should thereafter dare to lay hands on the crop, he is immediately seized by a shaking fit like that of a drenched dog and cannot budge from the spot. They say that a fisherman at Sangkeah employed this charm with the best results. He used always to find his bow-net empty till one day he had the happy thought of protecting it by a " shaking tubercule." It acted like magic. The thief went down as usual into the river and brought up the net full of fish. But hardly had he stepped on the bank when he began to shiver and shake, with the dripping net and its writhing silvery contents glued to his breast. Two days afterwards, the proprietor, making his rounds, discovered the thief on the same spot, shivering and chattering away as hard as" ' W. Ellis, History of Madagascar (London, preface dated 1838), i. 414. ^ E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, ii. (Lon- don, 1908) pp. 59-69. In an article on taboo published many years ago (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edi- tion, xxiii. (1888) pp. 15 sqq.) I briefly pointed out the part which the system of taboo has played in the evolution of law and morality. I may be allowed to quote a passage from the article : ' ' The original character of the taboo must be looked for not in its civil but in its religious element. It was not the creation of a legislator, but the gradual outgrowth of animistic beliefs, to which the ambition and avarice of chiefs and priests afterwards gave an artificial extension. But in serving the cause of avarice and ambition it sub- served the progress of civilization, by fostering conceptions of the rights of property and the sanctity of the mar- riage tie, — conceptions which in tiine grew strong enough to stand by them- selves and to fling away the crutch of superstition which in earlier days had been their sole support. For we shall scarcely err in believing that even in advanced societies the moral sentiments, in so far as they are merely sentiments and are not based on an induction from experience, derive much of their force from an original system of taboo. Thus on the taboo were grafted the golden fruits of law and morality, while the parent stem dwindled slowly into the sour crabs and empty husks of popular superstition on which the swine of modern society are still content to feed." in PRIVATE PROPERTY 33 ever, but of course the fish in the net were dead and rotten.^ Among the Kawars, a primitive hill tribe of the Central Provinces in India, " the sword, the gun, the axe, the spear have each a special deity, and in fact in the Bangawan, the tract where the wilder Kawars dwell, it is believed that every article of household furniture is the residence of a spirit, and that if any one steals or injures it without the owner's leave the spirit will bring some misfortune on him in revenge. Theft is said to be unknown among them, partly on this account and partly perhaps because no one has much property worth stealing." ^ In Ceylon, when a person wishes to protect his fruit-trees from thieves, he hangs up certain grotesque figures round the orchard and dedicates it to the devils. After that no native will dare to touch the fruit ; even the owner himself will not venture to use it till the charm has been removed by a priest, who naturally receives some of the fruit for his trouble.^ The Indians of Cumana in South America surrounded their plantations with a single cotton thread, and this was safeguard enough ; for it was believed that any trespasser would soon die. The Juris of Brazil adopt the same simple means of stopping gaps in their fences.* The Annamites in the interior of Tonquin believe that Property in the ghosts of young girls who have been buried in a corner protected of the dwelling act as a vigilant police ; if thieves have by ghosts made their way into the house and are preparing to ^" depart with their booty, they hear the voice of a ghost enumerating the things on which they have laid hands, and in a panic they drop them and take to flight.* But if in spite of all an Annamite should chance to be robbed, he can easily recover the stolen property as follows. With a clod of earth taken from the kitchen floor, a pinch of vermilion, the white of an egg, and a little alcohol he makes a ball, which stands for the head of the thief This he puts in the fire on ' E. Aymonier, Notes siir le Laos of Ceylon (London, 1803), p. 198. ^'fe'ff ^>.^.wi; Ethnosrapkic ' C. F Ph. v. Martius Z«. Ethno- Survey, vii.. Draft Articles on 1< crest ° K . „, ' „- Tribes, Third Series (Allahabad, 191 1), (^"psic, ia67), p. ab. p. 45. ^ P. Giran, Magie et Religion Anna- ' R. Percival, Account of the Island mites (Pans, 1912), p. 186. D cursed in Nias, 34 PRIVATE PROPERTY "i the hearth, and having lit some incense sticks he pronounces the following incantation : " On such a day of such a month of such a year So-and-so was robbed of various things. The name of the thief is unknown. I pray the guardian-spirit of the kitchen to hold the rascal's head in the fire that it may burn." After that, if the thief does not restore the stolen property, he will be a dead man within a month.^ Thieves Similarly in Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, when a thief cannot be found he is cursed, and to give weight to the curse a dog is burned alive. While the animal is expiring in torments, the man who has been robbed ex- presses his wish that the thief may likewise die in agony ; and they say that thieves who have been often cursed do Thieves die Screaming.^ Curses are also employed for the same among the purpose with excellent effect by the Sea Dyaks of Borneo. SeaDyaks On this point a missionary bears the following testimony. " With an experience of nearly twenty years in Borneo, during which I came into contact with thousands of the people, I have known of only two instances of theft among the Dyaks. One was a theft of rice. The woman who lost the rice most solemnly and publicly cursed the thief, who- ever it might be. The next night the rice was secretly left at her door. The other was a theft of money. In this case, too, the thief was cursed. The greater part of the money was afterwards found returned to the box from which it had been abstracted. Both these incidents show the great dread the Dyak has of a curse. Even an undeserved curse is considered a terrible thing, and, according to Dyak law, to curse a person for no reason at all is a fineable offence. " A Dyak curse is a terrible thing to listen to. I have only once heard a Dyak curse, and I am sure I do not want to do so again. I was travelling in the Saribas district, and at that time many of the Dyaks there had gone in for coffee- planting ; indeed, several of them had started coffee planta- tions on a small scale. A woman told me that some one had over and over again stolen the ripe coffee-berries from her plantation. Not only were the ripe berries stolen, but the thief had carelessly picked many of the young berries and ' P. Giran, op. cii., pp. 190 sq. und die Mission daselbst (Barmen, 2 H. .Sundermann, Die Insel Nias 1905), p. 34. in PRIVATE PROPERTY 35 thrown them on the ground, and many of the branches of the plants had been broken off. In the evening, when I was seated in the public part of the house with many Dyak men and women round me, we happened to talk about coffee- planting. The woman was present, and told us of her experiences, and how her coffee had been stolen by some thief, who, she thought, must be one of the inmates of the house. Then she solemnly cursed the thief She began in a calm voice, but worked herself up into a frenzy. We all listened horror-struck, and no one interrupted her. She began by saying what had happened, and how these thefts had gone on for some time. She had said nothing before, hoping that the thief would mend his ways ; but the matter had gone on long enough, and she was going to curse the thief, as nothing, she felt sure, would make him give up his evil ways. She called on all the spirits of the waters and the hills and the air to listen to her words and to aid her. She began quietly, but became more excited as she went on. She said something of this kind : " ' If the thief be a man, may he be unfortunate in all he Curses on a undertakes ! May he suffer from a disease that does not ""^^ kill him, but makes him helpless^always in pain — and a burden to others. May his wife be unfaithful to him, and his children become as lazy and dishonest as he is himself. If he go out on the war-path, may he be killed, and his head smoked over the enemy's fire. If he be boating, may his boat be swamped and may he be drowned. If he be out fishing, may an alligator kill him suddenly, and may his relatives never find his body. If he be cutting down a tree in the jungle, may the tree fall on him and crush him to death. May the gods curse his farm so that he may have no crops, and have nothing to eat, and when he begs for food, may he be refused, and die of starvation. " ' If the thief be a woman, may she be childless, or if Curses on a she happen to be with child let her be disappointed, and let ^'iS^° her child be still-born, or, better still, let her die in childbirth. May her husband be untrue to her, and despise her and ill- treat her. May her children all desert her if she live to grow old. May she suffer from such diseases as are peculiar to women, and may her eyesight grow dim as the years go 36 PRIVATE PROPERTY Thieves cursed in ancient Greece. on, and may there be no one to help her or lead her about when she is blind.' " I have only given the substance of what she said ; but I shall never forget the silence and the awed faces of those who heard her. I left the house early next morning, so I do not know what was the result of her curse — whether the thief confessed or not." ^ The ancient Greeks seem to have made a very liberal use of curses as a cheap and effective mode of protecting property, which dispenses the injured party from resorting to the tedious, expensive, and too often fruitless formalities of the law. These curses they inscribed on tablets of lead and other materials and deposited either in the place which was to be protected from depredation or in the temple of the god to whose tender mercies the criminal was committed. For example, in a sacred precinct dedicated to Demeter, Perse- phone, Pluto and other deities of a stern and inflexible temper at Cnidus, a number of leaden tablets were found inscribed with curses which consigned the malefactors of various sorts to the vengeance of the two Infernal Goddesses, Demeter and her daughter. " May he or she never find Persephone propitious ! " is the constantly repeated burden of these prayers ; and in some of them the sinner is not only excommunicated in this world but condemned to eternal torments in the world hereafter. Often the persons who launched these curses were ladies. One irate dame consigns to perdition the thief who had stolen her bracelet or the defaulter who had failed to send back her under- clothes.^ Another curse, engraved on a marble slab found at Smyrna, purports that if any man should steal one of the sacred vessels of a certain goddess or injure her sacred fish, he may die a painful death, devoured by the fishes.' Sometimes, apparently, these Greek impre- Edwin H. Gomes, Seventeen Years Grecques (Brussels, 1900), p. 624, No. 728. The goddess was probably the Syrian Atargatis or Derceto, to whom fish were sacred (Xenophon, Anabasis, i. 4. 9). For more examples of these ancient Greek curses, see Ch. Michel, op. cit., pp. 877-880, Nos. 1318- 1329. Compare W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 337 sqq. among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (Lon- don, 191 1 ), pp. 64-66. ^ (Sir) Charles Thomas Newton, Essays on Art and Archaeology (Lon- don, 1880), pp. 193 sq. 3 G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscrip- tionum Graecarum'^ (Leipsic, 1898- 1901), vol. ii. pp. 284 sq.. No. 584; Ch. Michel, Recueil d' Inscriptions Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY 37 cations were as effective in reclaiming sinners as Dyak curses are to this day. Thus we read of a curious dedication to a lunar deity of Asia Minor, by name Men Aziottenos, which declares how one Artemidorus, having been reviled by a couple of rude fellows, cursed them in a votive tablet, and how one of the culprits, having been punished by the god, made a propitiatory offering and mended his wicked ways.^ To prevent people from encroaching on their neighbours' Land- land by removing the boundary stones, the Greeks com- "J-otected mitted landmarks to the special protection of the great god by gods Zeus ; ^ and Plato dwells with unction on the double punish- ^"'^ ™rses. ment, divine and human, to which the sinner exposed him- self who dared to tamper with these sacred stones.^ The Romans went even further, for they created a god for the sole purpose of looking after landmarks, and he must have had his hands very full if he executed all the curses which were levelled not only at every man who shifted his neigh- bour's boundary stone, but even at the oxen which he employed to plough up his neighbour's land.* The Hebrew code of Deuteronomy pronounced a solemn curse on such as removed their neighbour's landmarks ; ^ and Babylonian kings exhausted their imagination in pouring out a flood of imprecations against the abandoned wretch who thus set at naught the rights of property in land.® King Nebuchad- nezzar in particular, before he was turned out to grass, appears to have distinguished himself by the richness and variety of his execrations, if we may judge by a specimen of them which has survived. A brief extract from this masterpiece may serve to illustrate the king's style of minatory eloquence. Referring to the bold bad man, " be it shepherd or governor, or agent or regent, levy master or magistrate," whosoever he might be, who " for all days to 1 (Sir) C. T. Newton, Essays on the Roman god of boundaries, and his Art and Archaeology, p. 195. annual festival the Terminalia, see L. 2 Demosthenes, De Halonneso, 40. Preller, Romische Mythologie^ (Berlin, 1881-1883), i. 254 i'??. ; G. Wissowa, 3 Plato, Zam, via. 9, pp. 842 J?. Religion und Kultus der Romer^ * Festus, s.v. "Termino," p. 368, (Munich, 1912), pp. 136 j-?. ed. C. O. Milller (Leipsic, 1839) ; ^ Deuteronomy, xxviii. 17. Varro, De lingua latina, v. 74 ; ^ C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Dionysius Halicamasensis, Antiquitates Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters Romanae, ii. 74. As to Terminus, (Edinburgh, 1904), p. 191. 38 PRIVATE PROPERTY ni come, for the future of human habitations," should dare to tamper with the land which his Majesty had just marked out, " Ninib, lord of boundaries and boundary-stones, tear out his boundary stone. Gula, great lady, put lingering illness into his body, that dark and light red blood he may pour out like water. Ishtar, lady of countries, whose fury is a flood, reveal difficulties to him, that he escape not from misfortune. Nusku, mighty lord, powerful burner, the god, my creator, be his evil demon and may he burn his root. Whoever removes this stone, in the dust hides it, burns it with fire, casts it into water, shuts it up in an enclosure, causes a fool, a deaf man, an idiot to take it, places it in an invisible place, may the" great gods, who upon this stone are mentioned by their names, curse him with an evil curse, tear out his foundation and destroy his seed." ^ Super- In Africa also superstition is a powerful ally of the rights an'ai" ^of °^ private property. Thus the Balonda place beehives on the rights high trees in the forest and protect them against thieves by prmerty'^in tying a charm or " piece of medicine " round the tree-trunks. Africa. This provcs a sufficient protection. " The natives," says Livingstone, " seldom rob each other, for all believe that certain medicines can inflict disease and death ; and though they consider that these are only known to a few, they act on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. The gloom of these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings of the people. In other quarters, where they are not subjected to this influence, I have heard the chiefs issue proclamations to the effect, that real witchcraft medicines had been placed at certain gardens from which produce had been stolen ; the thieves having risked the power of the ordinary charms previously placed there." ^ The The Wanika of East Africa " believe in the power and of East efficacy of charms and amulets, and they wear them in great Africa. variety ; legs, arms, neck, waist, hair, and every part of the body are laden with them, either for the cure or prevention of disease ; for the expulsion or repulsion of evil spirits ; and to keep at bay snakes, wild animals, and every other evil. 1 R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Paral- ^ David Livingstone, Missionary lels to the Old Testament (Oxford, Travels and Researches in South Africa preface dated 191 1), pp. 390-392. (London, 1857), p. 285. Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY 39 They hang painted calabashes from the baobab at their hut doors to keep away thieves ; shells, dolls, eggs scratched over with Arabic characters by the Wana Chuoni (sons of the book) of the coast, are placed about their plantations and in their fruit-trees, and they believe that death would overtake a thief who should disregard them. A charm bound to the leg of a fowl is ample protection for the village. There is no doubt that, superstitious as the people are, they dread running great risks for the sake of small gains, and so these charms answer their purpose." * Among the Boloki of the The Boioki Upper Congo, when a woman finds that the cassava roots, ^ ^^^ which she keeps soaking in a water-hole, are being stolen, she takes a piece of gum copal, and fixing it in the cleft of a split stick she puts it on the side of the hole, while at the same time she calls down a curse on the thief. If the thief is a man, he will henceforth have no luck in fishing ; if she is a woman, she will have no more success in farming.^ The Ekoi of Southern Nigeria protect their farms against thieves by bundles of palm leaves to which they give the name of okpata. Should any one steal from a farm thus protected, he will fall sick and will not recover unless he gives a certain dance, to which the name of okpata is also applied.^ In the mountains of Marrah, a district of Darfur, houses. Guardian goods, and cattle are protected against thieves by certain ^^^"'^^^^j fierce and dangerous guardian-spirits called damzogs, which of property can be bought like watch dogs. Under the guardianship of '° such a spiritual protector the sheep and cows are left free to wander at will ; for if any one were rash enough to attempt to steal or kill one of the beasts, his hand with the knife in it would remain sticking fast to the animal's throat till the owner came and caught the rascal. An Arab merchant, travelling in Darfur, received from a friend the following account of the way to procure one of these useful guardians. " At the time when I first began to trade, my friend, I often heard that damzogs could be bought and sold, and that to procure one I must apply to the owner of a damzog, and 1 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, CaKKziJaA- (London, 1913), pp. 310 j^. and labours in Eastern Africa (London, 1873), p. 106. ^ P. Amaury Talbot, In the Shadow 2 John H. Weeks, Among Congo of the Bush (London, 1912), p. 296. 40 PRIVATE PROPERTY iii discuss the price with him. When the bargain is concluded, it is necessary to give a large gourd of milk to the seller, who takes it to his house, where are his damzogs. On entering he salutes them, and goes and hangs up his vase to a hook, saying, — ' One of my friends — such a one — very rich, is in fear of robbers, and asks me to supply him with a guardian. Will one of you go and live in his house ? There is plenty of milk there, for it is a house of blessing, and the proof thereof is, that I bring you this kara of milk.' The damzogs at first refuse to comply with the invitation. ' No, no,' say they, ' not one of us will go.' The master of the hut conjures them to comply with his desires, saying, ' Oh ! let the one that is willing descend into the kara! He then retires a little, and presently one of the damzogs is heard to flop into the milk, upon which he hastens and claps upon the vase a cover made of date-leaves. Thus stopped up he unhooks the kara, and hands it over to the buyer, who takes it away and hangs it on the wall of his hut, and confides it to the care of a slave or of a wife, who every morning comes and takes it, emptying out the milk, washing it and re- plenishing it, and hanging it up again. From that time forward the house is safe from theft or loss." The merchant's informant, the Shereef Ahmed Bedawee, had himself purchased one of these guardian spirits, who proved most vigilant and efficient in. the discharge of his duties ; indeed his zeal was excessive, for he not only killed several slaves who tried to rob his master, but did summary execution on the Shereef s own son, when the undutiful young man essayed to pilfer from his father's shop. This was too much for the Shereef; he invited a party of friends to assist him in expelling the inflexible guardian. They came armed with guns and a supply of ammunition, and by raking the shop with repeated volleys of musketry they at last succeeded in putting the spirit to flight.^ The curses Amongst the Nandi of British East Africa nobody dares of smiths ^^ g^g^j anything from a smith ; for if he did, the smith potters. would heat his furnace, and as he blew the bellows to make 1 Travels of an Arab Merchant Bayle St. John (London, 1854), pp, \Mohammed Ibn-Omar El Tounsy] in 69-73. Soudan, abridged from the French by Ill PRIVATE PROPERTY 41 the flames roar he would curse the thief so that he would die. And in like manner among these people, with whom the potters are women, nobody dares to filch anything from a potter ; for next time she heated her wares the potter would curse him, saying, " Burst like a pot, and may thy house become red," and the thief so cursed would die.^ In Charms to Loango, when a man is about to absent himself from home pr°pe"y for a considerable time he protects his hut by placing a in west charm or fetish before it, consisting perhaps of a branch "'^^' with some bits of broken pots or trash of that sort ; and we are told that even the most determined robber would not dare to cross a threshold defended by these mysterious signs.^ On the coast of Guinea fetishes are sometimes inaugurated for the purpose of detecting and punishing certain kinds of theft ; and not only the culprit himself, but any person who knows of his crime and fails to give in- formation is liable to be punished by the fetish. When such a fetish is instituted, the whole community is warned of it, so that he who transgresses thereafter does so at his peril. For example, a fetish was set up to prevent sheep-stealing and the people received warning in the usual way. Shortly afterwards a slave, who had not heard of the law, stole a sheep and offered to divide it with a friend. The friend had often before shared with him in similar enterprises, but the fear of the fetish was now too strong for him ; he informed on the thief, who was brought to justice and died soon after of a lingering and painful disease. Nobody in the country ever doubted but that the fetish had killed him.^ Among the Ewe-speaking tribes of the Slave Coast in West Africa houses and household property are guarded by amulets (vo-sesao), which derive their virtue from being consecrated or belonging to the gods. The crops, also, in solitary glades of the forest are left under the protection of such amulets, generally fastened to long sticks in some conspicuous position ; and so guarded they are quite safe from pillage. By the side of the paths, too, may be seen food and palm- ' A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their Africa," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Language and Folk-lore (OxioxA, l<)ogi). Travels (London, 1808- 1814), xvi. PP- 36, 37- _ 595- 2 Proyart's " History of Loango, ^ Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, Western Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in Africa (London, 1856), pp. 275 sq. 42 PRIVATE PROPERTY in wine lying exposed for sale with nothing but a charm to protect them ; a few cowries placed on each article indicate its price. Yet no native would dare to take the food or the wine without depositing its price ; for he dreads the unknown evil which the god who owns the charm would bring upon him for thieving.-' In Sierra Leone charms, called greegrees, are often placed in plantations to deter people from stealing, and it is said that " a few old rags placed upon an orange tree will generally, though not always, secure the fruit as effectually as if guarded by the dragons of the Hesperides. When any person falls sick, if, at the distance of several months, he recollects having stolen fruit, etc., or having taken it softly as they term it, he immediately supposes wangka has caught him, and to get cured he must go or send to the person whose property he had taken, and make to him whatever recompense he demands." ^ Charms to Superstitions of the same sort have been transported property in ^^ '^^ negroes to the West Indies, where the name for the West magic is obi and the magician is called the obeah man. There also, we are told, the stoutest-hearted negroes " tremble at the very sight of the ragged bundle, the bottle or the egg-shells, which are stuck in the thatch or hung over the door of a hut, or upon the branch of a plantain tree, to deter marauders. . . . When a negro is robbed of a fowl or a hog, he applies directly to the Obeah-vazxi or woman ; it is then made known among his fellow blacks, that obi is set for the thief; and as soon as the latter hears the dreadful news, his terrified imagination begins to work, no resource is left but in the superior skill of some more eminent Obeah-m.2Ln of the neighbourhood, who may counteract the magical operations of the other ; but if no one can be found of higher rank and ability ; or if, after gaining such an ally, he should still fancy himself affected, he presently falls into a decline, under the incessant horror of impending calamities. The slightest painful sensation in the head, the bowels, or 1 A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Africa (London, 1894), p. 118. Peoples of the Slave Coast of West ^ Thomas Winterbottom, An Ac- Africa (London, 1890), pp. 91 sq. count of the Native Africans in the Compare id., The Yoruba- speaking Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone Peoples of the Slave Coast of West (London, 1803), pp. 261 sq. Ill PRIVA TE PROPERTY 43 any other part, any casual loss or hurt, confirms his apprehensions, and he believes himself the devoted victim of an invisible and irresistible agency. Sleep, appetite and cheerfulness forsake him ; his strength decays, his disturbed imagination is haunted without respite, his features wear the settled gloom of despondency : dirt, or any other unwhole- some substance, becomes his only food, he contracts a morbid habit of body, and gradually sinks into the grave." ^ Superstition has killed him. Similar evidence might doubtless be multiplied, but the Conciu- foregoing cases suffice to shew that among many peoples and ^'°°" in many parts of the world superstitious fear has operated as a powerful motive to deter men from stealing. If that is so, then my second proposition may be regarded as proved, namely, that among certain races and at certain times super- stition has strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. 1 Bryan Edwards, History, Civil Indies, Fifth Edition (London, 18 19), and Commercial, of the British West ii. 107- 1 1 1. IV MARRIAGE Super- stition as a prop of sexual morality. Adultery or fornication supposed by the Karens to blight the crops. Pig's blood used to expiate the crime. I PASS now to my third proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage, and has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the married and the unmarried. That this is true will appear, I think, from the following instances. Among the Karens of Burma " adultery, or fornication, is supposed to have a powerful influence to injure the crops. Hence, if there have been bad crops in a village for a year or two, and the rains fail, the cause is attributed to secret sins of this character, and they say the God of heaven and earth is angry with them on this account ; and all the villagers unite in making an offering to appease him." And when a case of adultery or fornication has come to light, " the elders decide that the transgressors must buy a hog, and kill it. Then the woman takes one foot of the hog, and the man takes another, and they scrape out furrows in the ground with each foot, which they fill with the blood of the hog. They next scratch the ground with their hands and pray : ' God of heaven and earth, God of the mountains and hills, I have destroyed the productiveness of the country. Do not be angry with me, do not hate me ; but have mercy on me, and compassionate me. Now I repair the mountains, now I heal the hills, and the streams and the lands. May there be no failure of crops, may there be no unsuccessful labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let them be dissipated to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy fruitful, thy rice abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. 44 IV MARRIAGE \ 45 If we cultivate but little, still grant that we may obtain a little.' After each has prayed thus, they return to the house and say they have repaired the earth." ^ Thus, according to the Karens adultery and fornication are not simply moral offences which concern no one but the culprits and their families : they physically affect the course of nature by blighting the earth and destroying its fertility ; hence they are public crimes which threaten the very exist- ence of the whole community by cutting off its food supplies at the root. But the physical injury which these offences do to the soil can be physically repaired by saturating it with pig's blood. Some of the tribes of Assam similarly trace a connexion Disastrous between the crops and the behaviour of the human sexes ; ascribed to for they believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered, sexual the slightest incontinence would ruin all.^ Again, the As^m" inhabitants of the hills near Rajamahal in Bengal imagine Bengal, that adultery, undetected and unexpiated, causes the inhabit- Annam. ants of the village to be visited by a plague or destroyed by tigers or other ravenous beasts. To prevent these evils an adulteress generally makes a clean breast. Her paramour has then to furnish a hog, and he and she are sprinkled with its blood, which is supposed to wash away their sin and avert the divine wrath. When a village suffers from plague or the ravages of wild beasts, the people religiously believe that the calamity is a punishment for secret immorality, and they resort to a curious form of divination to discover the culprits, in order that the crime may be duly expiated.^ The Khasis of Assam are divided into a number of clans which are exogamous, that is to say, no man may marry a woman of his own clan. Should a man be found to cohabit with a /V woman of his own clan, it is treated as incest and is believed to cause great disasters ; the people will be struck by light ning or killed by tigers, the women will die in child-bed, and 1 Rev. F. Mason, D.D., "On Dwell- 2 x. C. Hodson, "The Genna ings, Works of Art, Laws, etc., of the amongst the Tribes of Assam," _/<;«?•««/ Y^zxex&" Journal of the Asiatic Society of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. of Bengal, New Series, xxxvii. (i858) {1906) p. 94. part ii. No. 3, pp. 147 J?. Compare ^ Lieutenant Thomas Shaw, "On A. K. McMahon, The Karens of the the Inhabitants of the Hills near Raja- Golden Chersonese (London, 1876), mahall," Asiatic Researches, Fourth pp. 334 sq. Edition, iv. (1807) pp. 60-62. 46 MARRIAGE Similar views held by the Battas of Sumatra. SO forth. The guilty couple are taken by their clansmen to a priest and obliged to sacrifice a pig and a goat ; after that they are made outcasts, for their offence is inexpiable.^ The Orang Glai, a savage tribe in the mountains of Annam, similarly suppose that illicit love is punished by tigers, which devour the sinners. If a girl is found with child, her family offers a feast of pigs, fowls, and wine to appease the offended spirits.^ The Battas of Sumatra in like manner think that if an unmarried woman is with child, she must be given in marriage at once, even to a man of lower rank ; for other- wise the people will be infested with tigers, and the crops in the fields will not be abundant. They also believe that the adultery of married women causes a plague of tigers, crocodiles, or other wild beasts. The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast the whole harvest, if the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities that affect the whole people are almost always .traced by them to incest, by which is to be understood any marriage that conflicts with their customs.^ The natives of Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, imagine that heavy rains are caused by the tears of a god weeping at the commission of adultery or fornication. The punishment for these crimes is death. The two delinquents, man and woman, are buried in a narrow grave with only their heads projecting above ground ; then their throats are stabbed with a spear or cut with a knife, and the grave is filled up. Sometimes, it is said, they are buried alive. However, the judges are not always incorruptible and the injured family not always inaccessible to the allurement of gain ; and pecuniary compensation is sometimes accepted as a sufficient salve for wounded honour. But if the wronged man is a chief, the culprits must surely die. As a consequence, perhaps, of this severity, the crimes 1 Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 94, 123. 2 E. Aymonier, "Notessurl'Annam," Excursions et Reconnaissances, x. No. 24 (Saigon, 1885), pp. 308 sq. ^ J. B. Neumann, "Het Pane en Bila- Stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra," Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aaar- drijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, dl. iii., afdeeling, meer uitge- breide artikelen, No. 3 (Amsterdam, 1886), pp. 514 sq.; M. Joustra, "Het leven, de zeden en gewoonten der Bataks," Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 411. IV MARRIAGE 47 of adultery and fornication are said to be far less frequent in Nias than in Europe.-' Similar views prevail among many tribes in Borneo, similar Thus in regard to the Sea Dyaks we are told by Archdeacon ™ong ^^^ Perham that " immorality among the unmarried is supposed tribes of to bring a plague of rain upon the earth, as a punishment inflicted by Petara. It must be atoned for with sacriiice and Excessive fine. In a function which is sometimes held to procure fine thought by weather, the excessive rain is represented as the result of the the Dyaks immorality of two young people. Petara is invoked, the caused by offenders are banished from their home, and the bad weather sexual is said to cease. Every district traversed by an adulterer is believed to be accursed of the gods until the proper sacrifice has been offered." ^ When rain pours down day after day and the crops are rotting in the fields, these Dyaks come to the conclusion that some people have been secretly indulging in lusts of the flesh ; so the elders lay their heads together and adjudicate on all cases of incest and bigamy, and purify Blood of the earth with the blood of pigs, which appears to these fo^expiafe savages, as sheep's blood appeared to the ancient Hebrews, incest and to possess the valuable property of atoning for moral guilt. """^ ^^ "■''■ Not long ago the offenders, whose lewdness had thus brought the whole country into danger, would have been punished with death or at least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his -A - first cousin unless he first performs a special ceremony called bergaput to avert evil consequences from the land. The couple repair to the water-side, fill a small pitcher with their personal ornaments, and sink it in the river ; or instead of a jar they fling a chopper and a plate into the water. A pig ' H. Sundermann, Die Insel Nias Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,'iio. und die Mission daselbst (Barmen, 8, December 1881, p. 150; H. Ling 1905), pp. 34 sq., 37, 84. Compare Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and A. Fehr, Der Niasser im Lehen und BritishNorthBomeoCLonAon, i?>^6),i. Sterben (Barmen, 1901), pp. 34-36; 180. /'«/ara: is the general Dyak name Th. C. Rappard, " Het eiland Nias en for deity. The common idea is that zi]ne he^omts," Bijdragen tot de Taal- there are many petaras, indeed that Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- every man has his own. The word is landsch-Indie, Ixii. (1909) pp. 594, said to be derived from Sanscrit and 596. The death penalty for these to be etymologically identical with offences has been abolished by the Avatar, the Dyaks regularly substitut- Dutch Government, so far as it can ing/ or b for v. See Rev. J. Perham, make its arm felt in the island. op. cit. pp. 133 sqq.; H. Ling Roth's 2 Rev. J. Perham, "Petara, or Sea Natives of Sarawak and British North Dyak Gods," Journal of the Straits Borneo, i. 168 sqq. 48 MARRIAGE iv is then sacrificed on the bank, and its carcase, drained of blood, is thrown in after the jar. Next the pair are pushed into the water by their friends and ordered to bathe together. Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with pig's blood, and the couple perambulate the country and the villages round about, sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are free to marry. This is done, we are told, for the sake of the whole country, in order that the rice may not be blasted by the marriage of cousins.^ Again, we are informed that the Sibuyaus, a Dyak tribe of Sarawak, are very careful of the honour of their daughters, because they imagine that if an unmarried girl is found to be with child it is offensive to the higher powers, who, instead of always chastising the culprits, punish the tribe by visiting its members with misfortunes. Hence when such a crime is detected they fine the lovers and sacrifice a pig to appease the angry powers and to avert the sickness or other calamities that might follow. Further, they inflict fines on the families of the couple for any severe accident or death by drowning that may have happened at any time within a month before the religious atonement was made ; for they regard the families of the culprits as re- sponsible for these mishaps. The fines imposed for serious or fatal accidents are heavy ; for simple wounds they are lighter. With the fear of these fines before their eyes parents keep a watchful eye on the conduct of their daughters. Among the Dyaks of the Batang Lupar river the chastity of the unmarried girls is not so strictly guarded ; but in respectable families, when a daughter proves frail, they sacrifice a pig and sprinkle its blood on the doors to wash away the sin.^ The Hill Dyaks of Borneo abhor incest and do not allow the marriage even of cousins. In 1846 the Baddat Dyaks complained to Mr. Hugh Low that one of their chiefs had disturbed the peace and prosperity of the village by marrying his own granddaughter. Since that disastrous event, they said, no bright day had blessed their territory ; rain and darkness alone prevailed, and unless the plague-spot were 1 H. Ling Roth, "Low's Natives (1893) p. 24. oi 'Borneo," Journal of the Anthropo- 2 Spenser St. John, Life in the logical Institute, T.YA. (1892) pp, 113 Forests of the Far East, %^zon&'S.A\ Sir Harry Johnston, op. cit. ii. However, the child of an unmarried 746 -f?. slave woman is brought up ; the father ^ A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, pays for its nurture. 1909). P- 76. ^ H. S. Stannus, "Notes on some 3 Werner Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Tribes of British Central Africa," Sludien (Schaffhausen, 1864), p. 243. Journal of the Royal Anthropological * W, Munzinger, op. cit. p. 322. Institute, xl. (1910) p. 290. IV MARRIAGE 67 when a husband detected his wife in the act of adultery, he killed both her and her partner in guilt. For such execution he might not be indicted for murder or man- slaughter. He would merely return the blood-stained spear to the woman's father, who by his words in the marriage ceremony, " You shall spear the man who lusts after your wife," was estopped from taking vengeance for the death of his daughter. If the husband spared the erring couple and the wife was again taken in adultery, the villagers themselves decreed the punishment. The unfaithful wife and her lover were dragged outside the village and impaled on sharp stakes amid the taunts and jeers of the bystanders, who only desisted from their mockery when death had stilled the writhing agony of the sufferers.^ " The Hottentots," says an old writer, " allow not marriages between first or second cousins. They have a traditionary law, which ordains, that both man and woman, so near to each other in blood, who shall be convicted of joining together either in marriage or fornication, shall be cudgel'd to death. This law, they say, has prevail'd through all the generations of 'em ; and that they execute it at once, upon a conviction, without any regard to wealth, power or affinity." ^ We have seen that in the East Indies sexual crimes, incest and particularly incest, adultery, and fornication, are often viewed 3g"g'jg[^ with grave displeasure because they are believed to draw punished in down the wrath of the higher powers on the whole com- jn^ie^^ munity. Hence it is natural that such offences should be treated as high treason and the offenders punished with death. A common punishment is drowning. For example, when incest between a parent and a child or between a brother and a sister has been detected among the Kubus, a primitive aboriginal tribe of Sumatra, the culprits are en- closed in a large fish-trap, made ot rattan or bamboo, and sunk in a deep pool of the river. However, they are not pinioned ; nay, they are even furnished with a tin knife, and 1 CuUen Gouldsbury and Hubert Edition (London, 1738), i. 157. For Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern more examples of the death penalty Rhodesia {}-,oxi&ox\, 191 1), p. 57- inflicted for breaches of sexual morality in Africa, see A. H. Post, . 2 Peter Kolben, The Present State Jurisprudenz (Olbenburg and Leipsic, of the Cafe of Good Hope, Second 1887), ii. 69 sqq. 68 MARRIAGE Modes of execution adopted which avoid the shedding of blood. Persons guilty of incest buried alive. if they can cut their way out of the trap, rise through the bubbling water to the surface, and swim ashore, they are allowed to live/ In the island of Bali incest and adultery are punished by drowning ; the criminals are sewed up in a sack half-filled with stones and rice and cast into the sea. A like doom is incurred by a woman who marries a man of a lower caste ; but sometimes she dies a more dreadful death, being burnt alive. Both modes of execution may be adopted in order to avoid shedding the blood of the sinners ; for in Bali, the ordinary way of despatching a criminal is to stab him to the heart with a creese (kris) or crooked Malay sword.^ In the island of Celebes, as we saw, the blood of persons who have been guilty of certain sexual crimes is believed to blast the ground on which it falls ; ^ so that it is natural in their case to resort to a bloodless mode of execution such as drowning or burning. In Mamoedjoe, a district on the west coast of Celebes, the incest of a father with his daughter or of a brother wit4i his sister is punished by binding the culprits hand and focil, weighting them with stones, and flinging them into >the sea.* Among the Bugineese of Southern Celebes persons of princely rank who have committed this crime are placed on a raft of bamboos and set floating away out to sea.^ In Semendo, a district of Sumatra, the punishment for incest and murder used to be to bury the criminals alive. Before they were led to their doom, it was customary for the villagers to feast them, every family killing a fowl for the purpose. Then the whole population escorted the culprits to their grave outside the village and saw the earth shovelled in upon them. In the year 1864, at the village of Tandjong Imam, this doom was executed on a man and his deceased wife's sister, with whom he had been detected in an intrigue. "Great was my emotion and indignation," said the humane Dutch governor, 1883), p. 126. 2 See above, pp. 52 sq. * Hoorweg, "Notabevattendeeenige gegevens betreffende het landschap Mamoedjoe," Tijdschrift voor Indisclie Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde^ Ixiii. (1911) p. 95. ^ G. A. Wilken, Verspreide Ge- schfiften (The Hague, 1912), ii. 481. ' G. J. van Dongen, "De Koeboes," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volken- kunde van Nederlandsch-Indie, Ixiii. (1910) p. 293. 2 R. van Eck, " Schetsen van het eiland Bali," Tijdschrift voor Neder- landsch Indie, Nieuwe Serie, viii. (1879) pp. 370 sq. ; Julius Jacobs, Eenigen Tijd onder de Baliers (Batavia, IV MARRIAGE 69 " when I stood by the grave of these poor wretches along with the unworthy chiefs who had sat on the bench of justice during the enforced absence of Pangeran Anom and pro- nounced this sentence. I told them in plain language that judges who pronounced such a sentence of death on grounds so trivial (the request of the family concerned) deserved themselves to undergo the same punishment." The Dutch Government has since issued stringent orders that no one henceforth is to be buried alive, and has threatened with death any person who shall dare to disregard its orders.^ The same punishment for incest is, or used to be, inflicted by the Pasemhers, another tribe of Sumatra, but more merciful than the people of Semendo they gave the culprits at least a chance for their life. The guilty pair were bound back to back and buried in a deep hole, but from the mouth of each a hollow bamboo communicated with the upper air ; and if when the grave was opened after seven days the wretches were found to have survived a prolonged agony far worse than death, they were granted their life.^ Nor was even this dreadful fate the worst that could befall the sinner who broke the rules of sexual morality in Sumatra. The Battas or Bataks of Central Sumatra Adulterers condemned an adulterer to be killed and eaten ; strictly ™^^ ^""^ speaking he should be speared to death first and eaten afterwards, but as the injured husband and his friends were commonly the judges and executioners, it sometimes happened that, passion proving too strong for a strict adherence to the letter of the law, they cut the flesh from his living body, ate it, and drank his blood, before it occurred to them to terminate his sufferings by a spear- thrust. However, an adulterer occasionally escaped with his life on the payment of a fine, always provided that his accomplice was not the M'ife of a chief; for in that case there was no help for it but he must be killed and eaten.^ Even trivial misdemeanours or acts which we should 1 J. S. G. Gramberg, " Schets der (Singapore, 1894), pp. 105 sg. Kesam, Semendo, Makakauw en Bla- ^ q_ a. Wilken, Verspreide Ge- lauw," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- sckriften, ii. 481 sq. Land- en Volkenkunde, xv. (1866) pp. ^ Franz Junghuhn, Die Baitaldnder 456 - 458. Compare G. G. Batten, mif Sumatra (Berlin, 1847), ii. 147, Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago 1 56 sq. 70 MARRIAGE iv Extreme deem perfectly innocent may draw condign punishment on ftrcode°of*e thoughtless, the imprudent, the light-hearted in the sexul" ^ ° Indian Archipelago. Thus we read that in the island of Lombok'" Lombok " the men are exceedingly jealous and very strict with their wives. A married woman may not accept a cigar or a sirih leaf from a stranger under pain of death. I was informed that some years ago one of the English traders had a Balinese woman of good family living with him — the connexion being considered quite honourable by the natives. During some festival this girl offended against the law by accepting a flower or some such trifle from another man. This was reported to the Rajah (to some of whose wives the girl was related), and he immediately sent to the English- man's house ordering him to give the woman up as she must be ' krissed.' In vain he begged and prayed, and offered to pay any fine the Rajah might impose, and finally refused to give her up unless he was forced to do so. This the Rajah did not wish to resort to, as he no doubt thought he was acting as much for the Englishman's honour as for his own ; so he appeared to let the matter drop. But some time after- wards he sent one of his followers to the house, who beckoned the girl to the door, and then saying, ' The Rajah sends you this,' stabbed her to the heart. More serious infidelity is punished still more cruelly, the woman and her paramour being tied back to back and thrown into the sea, where some large crocodiles are always on the watch to devour the bodies. One such execution took place while I was at Ampanam, but I took a long walk into the country to be out of the way till it was all over." ^ The As the Malay peoples of the Indian Archipelago, from ^h™"'d °^ whom the foregoing examples are drawn, have reached a based at fair level of culture, it might perhaps be thought that the su'ersti-™ extreme severity with which they visit offences against their tion. code of sexual morality springs from an excessive refinement of feeling rather than from a crude superstition ; and no doubt it may well happen that extreme sensitiveness on the point of honour, of which the Malays are susceptible, contributes in many cases to sharpen the sword of justice 1 A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, Sixth Edition (London, 1877), pp. 173 -f?- IV MARRIAGE 71 and add fresh force to the stroke. Yet under this delicacy of sentiment there appears to He a deep foundation of supersti- tion, as we may see by the extraordinary and disastrous in- fluence which in the opinion of these people sexual crime exerts, not so much on the criminals themselves, as on the whole realm of nature, drawing down deluges of rain from the clouds till the crops rot in the fields, shaking the solid earth beneath men's feet, and blowing up into flames the slumber- ing fires of the volcano, till the sky is darkened at noon by a black canopy of falling ashes and illumined at night by the sullen glow of the molten lava shot forth from the subterranean furnace.^ And however much an over-refine- a similar ment of feeling may be invoked to explain the more than 5g™"i'^ '" Puritanical severity of the Malay moral code in sexual matters matters, no such explanation can be applied to the like am^ong^the emotion of horror which similar offences excite among the Australian savage aborigines of Australia, the lowest and the least rhei'mvest' refined probably of all the races of men about whom we of existing possess accurate information. These rude savages also treated with rigorous severity all breaches of that widely ramified network of prohibitions in which throughout the Australian continent, before it fell under English rule, the two sexes lived immeshed. The whole community of a tribe or nation was commonly subdivided into a number of minute bodies, which we are accustomed to call classes or clans according to the principle on which they were variously constituted. No man might marry a woman of his own class or clan, and in most tribes his freedom of choice was still further limited by complex rules of marriage and descent which excluded him from seeking a wife in many more subdivisions of the tribe, and sometimes com- pelled him to look for her only in one out of them all. And the ordinary penalty for any violation of these rules was death. The offender was lucky who escaped with his life and a body more or less riddled with spear wounds. Thus one who knew the aborigines of Victoria well in the Severe old days, before they were first contaminated and then P™'f'': ^ ' -' ments in- destroyed by contact with European civilization, tells us that flicted for "no marriage or betrothal is permitted without the approval ofje^^es 1 See above, pp. 46-54. 72 MARRIAGE IV among the aborigines of Victoria. Severe punish- ments in- flicted for sexual offences in the WakeL bura tribe of Queens- land. of the chiefs of each party, who first ascertain that no 'flesh' relationship exists, and even then their permission must be rewarded by presents. So strictly are the laws of marriage carried out, that, should any signs of affection and courtship be observed between those of ' one flesh,' the brothers, or male relatives of the woman beat her severely ; the man is brought before the chief, and accused of an intention to fall into the same flesh, and is severely repri- manded by the tribe. If he persists, and runs away with the object of his affections, they beat and ' cut his head all over ' ; and if the woman was a consenting party she is half killed. If she dies in consequence of her punishment, her death is avenged by the man's receiving an additional beating from her relatives. No other vengeance is taken, as her punishment is legal. A child born under such con- ditions is taken from the parents, and handed over to the care of its grandmother, who is compelled to rear it, as no one else will adopt it. It says much for the morality of the aborigines and their laws that illegitimacy is rare, and is looked upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always severely beaten by her relatives, and sometimes put to death and burned. Her child is occasionally killed and burned with her. The father of the child is also punished with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed. Should he survive the chastisement inflicted upon him, he is always shunned by the woman's relatives, and any efforts to con- ciliate them with gifts are spurned, and his presents are put in the fire and burned. Since the advent of the Europeans among them, the aborigines have occasionally disregarded their admirable marriage laws, and to this dis- regard they attribute the greater weakness and unhealthiness of their children." ^ Again, in the Wakelbura tribe of eastern Queensland the law was extremely strict as to unlawful connexions or elopements between persons too nearly related to each other. Such persons might be, for example, those whom we call cousins both on the father's and the mother's side, as well as those who belonged to a forbidden class. If such a man ' James Dawson, Australian Aborigines (Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, 1881), p. 28. IV • MARRIAGE 73 carried off a woman who had been betrothed to another, he would be pursued not only by the male relations of the woman and of her betrothed husband, but also by the men of his own tribal subdivision, whom he had outraged by his breach of the marriage law ; and wherever they overtook him, he would have to fight them all. His own brothers would challenge him to fight by throwing boomerangs or other weapons at him ; and if he did not accept the challenge, they would turn on the woman and cripple or kill her with their weapons, unless she could escape into the bush. Nay, the woman's own mother would cut and perhaps slay her with her own hands. Sooner or later the ravisher had to engage in single combat with the man he had injured. Both were fully armed with shield, spear, boomerang and knife. When they had exhausted their missiles, they closed on each other with their knives, a dense ring of blacks generally forming round the combatants to see fair play. In such a fight the man who had broken the tribal law always came off worst ; for even if he got the better of his adversary, the other men and even his own brothers would attack him and probably gash him with their knives. Fatal stabs were sometimes given in these fights, but more usually, it would seem, the onlookers inter- fered and wrested the weapons from the two combatants before they proceeded to extremities. In any case the woman who had eloped was terribly mauled with knives, and if she survived the ordeal was restored to the man whom she had deserted.-^ Among the tribes in the central parts of North- West Severe Queensland, if a man eloped with a single woman whom he ^™'fin. might lawfully marry, but who for any reason was forbidden flicted for to him by the tribal council, he had on returning to camp of^nces with his wife to run the gauntlet of the outraged community, among the who hacked his buttocks and shoulders with knives, beat his of other head and limbs with sticks and boomerangs, and pricked p^i^'s °f ^ . . , . , . , ,. , Australia. the fleshy parts of his thighs with spears, taking care, how- ever, not to inflict fatal injuries, lest they should incur blood revenge. But if the woman with whom the man had eloped ' A. W. Hewitt, Native Tribes of Sonth-East Australia (London, 1904), pp. 222-224. 74 MARRIAGE ' iv was of a class into which he might not marry, both the culprits were put to death, the relations on both sides tacitly- consenting to the execution.-' In the Yuin tribe of New South Wales, if a man eloped with a woman of his own tribal subdivision, all the men would pursue him ; and if he refused to give the woman up, the sorcerer of the place would probably say to his men, " This man has done very wrong, you must kill him " ; whereupon somebody would thrust a spear into him, his relatives not interfering lest the same fate should befall them.^ The same punishment was inflicted for the same offence by the Wotjobaluk tribe of North- Western Victoria ; but their western neighbours, the Mukjarawaint tribe, not content with killing the guilty man, cut off the flesh off his thighs and upper arms, roasted and ate it, his own brother partaking of the cannibal meal. As for the rest of the body, they chopped it up small and left it lying on a log. The same custom is said to have been observed by the Jupagalk tribe.^ Among many tribes of Western Australia, as well as of other parts of that continent, persons who bear the same class-name may not marry. Any such marriage is regarded as incest and rigorously punished. For example, " the union of Boorong and Boorong is to the natives the union of brother and sister, although there may be no real blood relationship between the pair, and a union of that kind is looked upon with horror, and the perpetrators very severely punished . and separated, and if the crime is repeated they are both killed." * On the other side of the continent the Kamilaroi of New South Wales similarly inflicted condign punishment on both the culprits who persisted in marrying each other contrary to the tribal law ; the male relations of the man killed him, and the female relations of the woman killed her. The Kamilaroi of the Gwydir River went further ; they 1 Walter E. Roth, Ethnological ^ Mrs. Daisy M. Bates, "The Studies among the North-West-Central Marriage Laws and some Customs of Queejisland Aborigines (Brisbane and the West Australian Aborigines," London, 1897), p. 181. Victorian Geographical Journal, xxiii.- 2 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of '"''^- (1905-1906) p. 42. The state- South-East Australia, pp. 264, 266. ment m the text was made by a settler ''^ who had lived m the Tableland dis- ^ A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of trict, inland from Roeburne, for twenty South-East Australia, pp. 246 sq. years. IV MARRIAGE 75 killed any man who so much as spoke to or held any com- Penalty of munication with his mother-in-law/ for one of the most ^^fV?" * nicted for stringent laws of savage etiquette is that which prohibits any the crime direct social intercourse between a man and his wife's mother, "oa^'^gther^ The law has been variously explained,^ but a large body of in-law. evidence points to the conclusion that this custom of mutual avoidance is simply a precaution to prevent improper rela- tions between the two. Hence a brief consideration of it is appropriate in this place ; for to all appearance the custom, though it may be wholesome and beneficial in practice, has originated purely in superstition. But before giving my reasons for thinking so it may be well, for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with savage etiquette, to illustrate the practice itself by a few examples.* Speaking of the Boloki, a Bantu tribe of the Upper Thecustom Congo, an experienced missionary, the Rev. John H. Weeks, °'^^™)Jg^"° writes as follows : " Perhaps this will be the best place in in-law and which to make a few remarks on the mother-in-law. She °a*ons ^y and her son-in-law may never look on each other's face. I marriage have often heard a man say, ' So-and-so, your mother-in-law Boiokf of^ is coming,' and the person addressed would run into my the Congo, house and hide himself until his wife's mother had gone by. They can sit at a little distance from each other, with their backs to one another, and talk over affairs when necessary. Bokilo means mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, father-in-law, sister of mother-in-law, brother of father-in-law, wife of wife's brother, and in fact any relation - in - law. Bokilo, the noun, is derived from kila = to forbid, prohibit, taboo, and indicates that all bearing the relationship of ' A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of of the Anthropological Institute, xviii. South-East Australia, p. 208. Simi- (1889) pp. 246-248; Salomon Reinach, larly among tribes on the Hunter " Le Gendre et la Belle-Mere," X'.<4«- River "a man is not permitted to thropologie, xxii. (1911) pp. 649-662; speak to his wife's mother, but can do id., Culies, Mythes et Religions, iv. so through a third party. In former (Paris, 1912) pp. 130-147. days it was death to speak to her, but now a man doing so is only severely ^ \n Toteinism and Exogamy (InAex, reprimanded and has to leave the s.w. " Avoidance" and " Mother-in- camp for a certain time " (A. W. law ") will be found a collection of Howitt, op. cit. p. 267). examples. In what follows I abstain '^ See for example (Sir) E. B. Tylor, for the most part from citing instances "On a method of investigating the which have been adduced by me Development of Institutions," Journal before. 76 MARRIAGE iv bokilo can have no intimate relationship with one another, for it is regarded as incestuous ; and it is according to native ideas just as wrong for a daughter-in-law to speak or look at her husband's father, as for the son-in-law to speak or look at his wife's mother. Some have told me that this was to guard against all possibility of cohabitation, ' For a person you never look at you never desire.' Others have said, 'Well, don't you see, my wife came from her womb.' I am strongly inclined to the opinion that the former is the real reason." ^ From this statement it appears that a man and his wife's mother are not the only persons who are bound to avoid each other in society ; the same rule of social avoidance is incumbent on a man and his son's wife, and on many other persons of opposite sex who are connected with each other by marriage ; and in regard to all such persons it is held that any intimate relationship between them would be in- cestuous. Hence we see, what is important to bear in mind, that the rule of social avoidance incumbent on a man and his wife's mother is by no means solitary of its kind, and cannot be considered apart from a large number of similar The custom rules of avoidance observed between other persons. The reiations'by Same large extension of the rule appears in the customs of marriage the Batamba, a Bantu tribe of Busoga, a country on the BTtambaof "orth side of the Lake Victoria Nyanza. A Catholic mis- Busoga. sionary, who has laboured among the Batamba for nine years, describes their practice in this matter as follows : — " There is a very strange custom which may be con- sidered here. If a son marries or if a daughter does the same, then if they are grown up, from the day the son or daughter marries, the mother, father of both parties, the brothers and sisters of both parties are not allowed to sleep under the same roof If a man marries, then he builds a house for himself, and should his parents live with him, or his brothers and sisters, then they must have a separate house near by. They are not forbidden to go in and visit him or her, but are not allowed to sleep there. The reason is this. They say that otherwise sickness is caused, and this 1 Rev. John H. Weeks, Among Upper Congo," Journal of the Royal Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), pp. Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) 133 sq. Compare id., " Anthropo- pp. 367 j^. logical Notes on the Bangala of the IV MARRIAGE 77 is called endivade ya buko, the sickness of relationship, literally taken. The sickness is called bujugumiro, trembling, from the verb kujuguniira, to shiver or tremble. This cannot be got out of their heads, and no amount of talking or arguing will convince them of the opposite. I have attended many cases of this disease and I have not known one to recover. " Again, the father and mother of the bride and bride- groom, the aunts and uncles of bride and bridegroom may no more shake hands or touch in any way the bride and bridegroom, or else the same disease, bujugumiro, will follow. Of course much less will they commit themselves between each other for the fear of the same reason. And it is never heard of that a brother and sister, aunt and nephew, niece and uncle have ever committed themselves seriously. They are so afraid of the disease they say will follow, that, as a man here over seventy years of age tells me, he has never in his whole life heard of such a misbehaviour. The people say, ' Jekiyinzika = it is impossible for such a thing to happen.' And no doubt one is struck with the care they take. The disease following does not come as a punish- ment from the gods, but they say, 'Endwada ejja yokka, the illness comes by itself " ^ From the foregoing account it appears that among the Avoidance Batamba the rules of social avoidance are observed between relations blood-relations of opposite sexes, such as brothers and sisters, asweiiasof uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, as well as between ^y connexions by marriage. This is a further extension of the marriage. rule of social avoidance which it is important to bear in mind. We shall recur to it presently. For our present purpose it deserves also to be noticed that breaches of the custom are believed to be punished by a disease of trem- bling or shivering, which, though it probably springs purely from the imagination of the culprits, nevertheless appears to be always fatal. Further, we learn that the mere apprehen- sion of this disease acts as a most efficient check upon im- proper relations between persons who are connected with each other by blood or marriage. Among the Akamba, a Bantu tribe of British East Africa, 1 Father M. A. Condon, " Contri- Basoga - Batamba, Uganda Protector- bution to the Ethnography of the sXe" Anthropos, vi. (\<)ii) -pp. jiT] sq. 78 MARRIAGE iv Thecustom " if a man meets his mother-in-law in the road they both motheMn-^ hide their faces and pass by in the bush on opposite sides law and of the path. If a man did not observe this custom and at daughter '^"^ ^imc Wanted to marry another wife, it would prove a among the serious Stigma, and parents would have nothing to do with British East him. Moreover, if a wife heard that her husband had Africa. stopped and spoken to her mother in the road, she would leave him. If a man has business he wishes to discuss with his mother-in-law, he goes to her hut at night, and she will talk to him from behind the partition in the hut. ... If a girl of the age of puberty meets her father in the road, she hides as he passes, nor can she ever go and sit near him in the village until the day comes when he tells her that it has been arranged for her to marry a certain man. After marriage she does not avoid her father in any way." ^ Thus among the Akamba a man must avoid his own marriageable, but unmarried, daughter exactly as he avoids his wife's mother ; but the custom of avoidance ceases when his daughter marries. This extension of the rule to a man's own daughter, and its limitation to the time during which the girl is nubile but single, are most significant, and point plainly to a fear of improper relations between father and daughter. To that point we shall return shortly. Thecustom Among the Bakerewe, a Bantu people inhabiting a large parenu-in-^ and fertile island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, " the wife, whether law among the first [omukuru) or the last [omwengd), must always belong tribes of ^o a family other than that of the husband, for marriages are Central not contracted between relations. Never in any case will Africa. the new household establish itself in the immediate neighbour- hood of the wife's parents. The reason is that the son-in-law ipmukwerima) and his mother-in-law {jnasard), according to their customs, may not see each other nor look upon each other ; hence in order not to run the risk of breaking a rule to which everybody attaches grave importance, they go as far away as possible." ^ Among some tribes of Eastern Africa which formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan of Zanzibar, before a young couple had children 1 C. W. Hobley, Ethnology of A- 2 Father Eugene Hurel, " Religion Kamba and other East African Tribes et vie domestique des Bakerewe," (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 103, 104. Anthropos, vi. (1911) p. 287. IV MARRIAGE 79 they might meet neither their father-in-law nor their mother- in-law. To avoid them they must make a long roundabout. But if they could not do that, they must throw themselvts on the ground and hide their faces till the father-in-law or mother-in-law had passed by.^ Among the Anyanja, a Bantu people of British Central Thecustom Africa, " a man used never to speak to his mother-in-law till °^ avoiding ' -"^ parents-in- after the birth of his first son. Neither a man nor his wife law among will eat in company of their mother or father-in-law until after of^rifeh birth of a child. If a man sees his mother-in-law eat, he Central has insulted her and is expected to pay damages. If a man Northern meets his mother-in-law coming along the road and does not Rhodesia. recognise her, she will fall down on the ground as a sign, when he will run away. In the same way a father-in-law will signal to his daughter-in-law ; the whole idea being that they are unworthy to be noticed till they have proved that they can beget children." ^ However, if a wife should prove barren for three years, the rules of avoidance between the young couple and their parents-in-law cease to be observed.^ Hence the custom of avoidance among these people is asso- ciated in some way with the wife's fertility. So among the Awemba, a Bantu tribe of Northern Rhodesia, " if a young man sees his mother-in-law coming along the path, he must retreat into the bush and make way for her, or if she suddenly comes upon him he must keep his eyes fixed on the ground, and only after a child is born may they converse together." * Among the Angoni, another Bantu tribe of British Central Africa, it would be a gross breach of etiquette if a man were to enter his son-in-law's house ; he may come within ten paces of the door, but no nearer. A woman may not even approach her son-in-law's house, and she is never allowed to speak to him. Should they meet accidentally on a path, the son-in-law gives way and makes a circuit to avoid en- countering his mother-in-law face to face.^ Here then we ' Father Picarda, "Autourdu Man- ^ jj. S. Stannus, op. cit. p. 309. dera, Notes sur I'Ouzigoua, I'Oukwdre * Cullen Gouldsbury and Hubert et rOudo^ (Zanquebar)," Les Missions Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Catholiques, xviii. (1886) p. 286. Rhodesia (London, 1911), p. 259. 2 H. S. Stannus, "Notes on Some ^ " The Angoni-ZuIus,"^;-2&/2 Cis«- Tribes of British Central Africa," tral Africa Gazette, No, 86, April 30th, Journal of the Royql Anthropological 1898, p. 2. Institute, xl. (1910) p. 307. 8o MARRIAGE iv see that a man avoids his son-in-law as well as his mother- in-law, though not so strictly. The custom ' Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, of avoiding ^j^gj^ ^ j^j^jj meets his mother-in-law or her sister on the mother-in- law and road, he steps out of the road into the forest on the right wife'^^ hand side and sits down. She does the same. Then they brother salute each other in the usual way by clapping their hands. Thonga of After that they may talk to each other. When a man is in Delagoa a hut, his mother-in-law dare not enter it, but must sit down outside without seeing him. So seated she may salute him, " Good morning, son of So-and-so." But she would not dare to pronounce his name. However, when a man has been married many years, his mother-in-law has less fear of him, and will even enter the hut where he is and speak to him. But among the Thonga the woman whom a man is bound by custom to avoid most rigidly is not his wife's mother, but the wife of his wife's brother. If the two meet on a path, they carefully avoid each other ; he will step out of the way and she will hurry on, while her companions, if she has any, will stop and chat with him. She will not enter the same boat with him, if she can help it, to cross a river. She will not eat out of the same dish. If he speaks to her, it is with constraint and embarrassment. He will not enter her hut, but will crouch at the door and address her in a voice trembling with emotion. Should there be no one else to bring him food, she will do it reluctantly, watching his hut and putting the food inside the door when he is absent. It is not that they dislike each other, but that they feel a mutual, a mysterious fear.^ However, among the Thonga, the rules of avoidance between connexions by marriage decrease in severity as time passes. The strained relations between a man and his wife's mother in particular become easier. He begins to call her " Mother " and she calls him " Son." This change even goes so far that in some cases the man may go and dwell in the village of his wife's parents, especially if he has children and the children are grown up.^ Again, among the Ovambo, a Bantu ' Henri A. Junod, Les Ba-Ronga (Neuchatel, 1912-1913), i. 230-232. (Neuchatel, 1898), pp. 79 sq. ; id., 2 Henri A. Junod, The Life of a The Life of a South African Tribe South African Tribe, i. 239. IV . MARRIAGE 8i people of German South- West Africa, a man may not look at his future mother-in-law while he talks with her, but is bound to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the ground. In some cases the avoidance is even more stringent ; if the two meet unexpectedly, they separate at once. But after the marriage has been celebrated, the social intercourse between mother-in-law and son-in-law becomes easier on both sides.^ Thus far our examples of ceremonial avoidance between The custom mother-in-law and son-in-law have been drawn from Bantu °he^m°ther? tribes. But in Africa the custom, though apparently most in-law prevalent and most strongly marked among peoples of the other than great Bantu stock, is not confined to them. Among the ^antu Masai of British East Africa, " mothers-in-law and their sons- Africa. in-law must avoid one another as much as possible ; and if a son-in-law enters his mother-in-law's hut she must retire into the inner compartment and sit on the bed, whilst he remains in the outer compartment ; they may then talk. Own brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law must also avoid one another, though this rule does not apply to half-brothers-in- law and sisters-in-law."^ So, too, among the Bogos, a tribe on the outskirts of Abyssinia, a man never sees the face of his mother-in-law and never pronounces her name ; the two take care not to meet.^ Among the Donaglas a husband after marriage " lives in his wife's house for a year, without being allowed to see his mother-in-law, with whom he enters into relations only on the birth of his first son."* In Darfur, when a youth has been betrothed to a girl, however intimate he may have been with her parents before, he ceases to see them until the ceremony has taken place, and even avoids them in the street. They, on their part, hide their faces, if they happen to meet him unexpectedly.^ 1 Hermann Tbnjes, Ovamboland, Recht der Bogos (Winterthur, 1859), Land, Leutt, Mission (Berlin, 1911), p. 63. p. 133. ^ G. Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria 2 A. C. HoUis, "A Note on the 1^°°'^°" ^""^ New York, 1891), Masai System of Relationship and '' s^^ , ^ ^ i a^ , ^ other Matters connected therewith," ^ J . ^^^^^ /f T "^'f, J^'^i^"' Journal of the Royal Anthropological iMohammedlbn Omar El- Tounsy\ m -', ^ . . . ^ , , „ , „, o , Soudan, abridged from the r rench by Institute, Xl. (1910 p. 481. T. 1 C.. T U ,T 1 O.N ' ^ ^ ' r T Bayle St. John (London, 1854), pp. ^ Werner Munzinger, Sitten und 97 sg. G 82 MARRIAGE marriage in Sumatra and New Guinea. The custom To pass now from Africa to other parts of the world, reMont'by ^mong the Looboos, a primitive tribe in the tropical forests of Sumatra, custom forbids a woman to be in her father-in- law's company and a man to be in his mother-in-law's society. For example, if a man meets his daughter-in-law, he should cross over to the other side of the road to let her pass as far as possible from him ; but if the way is too narrow, he takes care in time to get out of it. But no such reserve is prescribed between a father-in-law and his son-in- law, or between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law.^ Among the Bukaua, a Melanesian tribe of German New Guinea, the rules of avoidance between persons connected by marriage are very stringent ; they may not touch each other or mention each other's names. But contrary to the usual practice the avoidance seems to be quite as strict between persons of the same sex as between males and females. At least the writer who reports the custom illustrates it chiefly by the etiquette which is observed between a man and his daughter's husband. When a man eats in presence of his son-in-law, he veils his face ; but if nevertheless his son-in- law should see his open mouth, the father-in-law is so ashamed that he runs away into the wood. If he gives his son-in-law anything, such as betel or tobacco, he will never put it in his hand, but pours it on a leaf, and the son-in-law fetches it away. If father-in-law and son-in-law both take part in a wild boar hunt, the son-in-law will abstain from seizing or binding the boar, lest he should chance to touch his father-in-law. If, however, through any accident their hands or backs should come into contact, the father-in-law is extremely horrified, and a dog must be at once killed, which he gives to his son-in-law for the purpose of wiping out the stain on his honour. If the two should ever fall out about anything, the son-in-law will leave the village and his wife, and will stay away in some other place till his father-in-law, for his daughter's sake, calls him back. A man in like manner will never touch his sister-in-law.^ > J. Kreemer, " De Loeboes in ^ Stefan Lehner, " Bukaua," in R. Mandailing," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Ber- Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- lin, 1911), iii. 426 j^. landsch-Indi'e^ Ixvi. (1912) p. 324. IV MARRIAGE 83 Among the low savages of the Californian peninsula a man The custom was not allowed for some time to look into the face of his °f a™'dmg relations by mother-in-law or of his wife's other near relations ; when these marriage women were present he had to step aside or hide himself.^ ^&\^ *'^ Among the Indians of the Isla del Malhado in Florida a tribesof father-in-law and mother-in-law might not enter the house of '"''"'^^" their son-in-law, and he on his side might not appear before his father-in-law and his relations. If they met by accident they had to go apart to the distance of a bowshot, holding their heads down and their eyes turned to the earth. But a woman was free to converse with the father and mother of her husband.^ Among the Indians of Yucatan, if a betrothed man saw his future father-in-law or mother-in-law at a distance, he turned away as quickly as possible, believing that a meeting with them would prevent him from begetting children.^ Among the Arawaks of British Guiana a man may never see the face of his wife's mother. If she is in the house with him, they must be separated by a screen or partition-wall ; if she travels with him in a canoe, she steps in first, in order that she may turn her back to him.* Among the Caribs " the women never quit their father's house, and in that they have an advantage over their husbands in as much as they may talk to all sorts of people, whereas the husband dare not converse with his wife's relations, unless he is dispensed from this observance either by their tender age or by their intoxication. They shun meeting them and make great circuits for that purpose. If they are surprised in a place where they cannot help meeting, the person addressed turns his face another way so as not to be obliged to see the person, whose voice he is compelled to hear." * 1 J. Baegert, " An Account of the Dhouverte de r Amirique). The orig- Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Califor- inal of this work was published in nian Peninsula," Annual Report of the Spanish at Valladolid in 1555. Board of Regents of the Smithsonian ^ Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire Institution for the year i86j, p. 368. des Nations civilisies du Mexique et This and the following American cases de P Amiriqtie-Centrale (Paris, 1857- have already been cited by me in 1859), ii- 5^ ■'?• Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 314 j^. * G. Klemm, Allgetneine Culiur- 2 Alvar Nunez Cabeja de Vaca, geschichte der Menschheit (Leipsic, Relation et Naufrages (Paris, 1837), 1843-1852), ii. 77. pp. 109 sq. (in Ternaux - Compans' ' J. B. du Tertre, Histoire generale Voyages, Relations, et Mimoires origi- des Isles de S. Christophe, de la Giiade- naux pour servir h f Histoire de la loupe, de la Martinique et autres dans 84 MARRIAGE iv Among the Araucanian Indians of Chili a man's mother-in- law refuses to speak to or even to look at him during the marriage festivity, and "the point of honour is, in some instances, carried so far, that for years after the marriage the mother never addresses her son-in-law face to face ; though with her back turned, or with the interposition of a fence or a partition, she will converse with him freely." ^ The custom It would be easy to multiply examples of similar customs reiadontby ^^ avoidance between persons closely connected by marriage, marriage but the foregoiog may serve as specimens. Now in order to separated determine the meaning of such customs it is very important from the to observe that similar customs of avoidance are practised custom of in some tribes not merely between persons connected with avoiding each other by marriage, but also between the nearest blood relations by . _ , . -, blood; both relations of different sexes, namely, between parents and are prop- children and between brothers and sisters ; ^ and the customs ably pre- cautions to are so alike that it seems difficult or impossible to separate prevent them and to offer one explanation of the avoidance of con- improper ^ relations nexions by marriage and another different explanation of sexls''^""'^ the avoidance of blood relations. Yet this is what is done by some who attempt to explain the customs of avoidance ; or rather they confine their attention wholly to connexions by marriage, or even to mothers-in-law alone, while they completely ignore blood relations, although in point of fact it is the avoidance of blood relations which seems to furnish the key to the problem of such avoidances in general. The true explanation of all such customs of avoidance appears to be, as I have already indicated, that they are precautions designed to remove the temptation to sexual intercourse between persons whose marriage union is for any reason repugnant to the moral sense of the community. This explanation, while it has been rejected by theorists at home, FAmerique (Paris, 1654), p. 419. A rique qui n^ont pas esti encore fubliez, similar, but rather briefer, account of Paris, 1684). the custom is given by De la Borde, ^ Edmond Reuel Smith, The Arau- ■viho may have borrowed from Du cardans (London, 1855)) ?• 217. Tertre. See De la Borde, "Relation ^ We have met with a custom of de I'origine, moeurs, coustumes, re- avoidance between father and daughter ligion, guerres et voyages des Caraibes, among the Akamba (above, p. 78). sauvages des Isles Antilles de I'Ame- For more examples see Totemism and rique," p. 5^ ('" Recueil de divers Exogamy, Index, s.v. "Avoidance," Voyages fails en Afrique et en I'Ame- vol. iv. p. 326. IV MARRIAGE 85 has been adopted by some of the best observers of savage life, whose opinion is entitled to carry the greatest weight.^ That a fear of improper intimacy even between the Mutual nearest blood relations is not baseless among races of a lower =i™''ance " of mother culture seems proved by the testimony of a Dutch mis- and son, sionary in regard to the Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, a °l^l^'°^^ people who have attained to a fairly high degree of barbaric daughter, civilization. The Battas "observe certain rules of avoidance brotherand in regard to near relations by blood or marriage ; and we sister are informed that such avoidance springs not from the B™t°af strictness but from the looseness of their moral practice. A Batta, it is said, assumes that a solitary meeting of a man with a woman leads to an improper intimacy between them. But at the same time he believes that incest or the sexual intercourse of near relations excites the anger of the gods and entails calamities of all sorts. Hence near relations are obliged to avoid each other lest they should succumb to temptation. A Batta, for example, would think it shocking were a brother to escort his sister to an evening party. Even in the presence of others a Batta brother and sister feel embarrassed. If one of them comes into the house, the other will go away. Further, a man may never be alone in the house with his daughter, nor a mother with her son. A man may never speak to his mother-in-law nor a woman to her father-in-law. The Dutch missionary who reports these customs adds that he is sorry to say that from what he knows of the Battas he believes the maintenance of most of these rules to be very necessary. For the same reason, he tells us, as soon as Batta lads have reached the age of puberty they are no longer allowed to sleep in the family house but are sent away to pass the night in a separate building (djambon) ; and similarly as soon as a man loses his wife by death he is excluded from the house." ^ 1 Among those who incline more or missionaries who are only concerned to less definitely to accept this view are record the facts, and have no theories the late Dr. A. W. Howitt (" Notes to maintain. on some Australian Class Systems," ^ Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 188 Journal of the Anthrofological Institute, sq. The authority for these statements xii. (1883) pp. 502 sq.]. Dr. R. H. is M. Joustra, " Het leven, de zeden Codrington (see below, p. 86), M. en gewoonten der Bataks," Mede- Joustra (see below, p. 85), and the deelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Rev. J. H. Weeks (see above, p. 76). Zendelmggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) pp. Three of these writers are experienced 391 sq. 86 MARRIAGE Mutual avoidance of mother and son and of brother and sister atnong the Melane- sians. Mutual avoidance of a man and his mother-in- law among the Melane- sians. In like manner among the Melanesians of the Banks' Islands and the New Hebrides a man must not only avoid his mother-in-law ; from the time when he reaches or approaches puberty and has begun to wear clothes instead of running about naked, he must avoid his mother and sisters, and he may no longer live in the same house with them ; he takes up his quarters in the clubhouse of the unmarried males, where he now regularly eats and sleeps. He may go to his father's house to ask for food, but if his sister is within he must go away before he eats ; if she is not there, he may sit down near the door and eat. If by chance brother and sister meet in the path, she runs away or hides. If a boy, walking on the sands, perceives footprints which he knows to be those of his sister, he will not follow them, nor will she follow his. This mutual avoidance lasts through life. Not only must he avoid the persons of his sisters, but he may not pronounce their names or even use a common word which happens to form part of any one of their names. In like manner his sisters eschew the use of his name and of all words which form part of it. Strict, too, is a boy's reserve towards his mother from the time when he begins to wear clothes, and the reserve increases as he grows to manhood. It is greater on her side than on his. He may go to the house and ask for food and his mother may bring it out for him, but she will not give it to him ; she puts it down for him to take. If she calls to him to come, she speaks to him in the plural, in a more distant manner ; " Come ye," she says, not " Come thou." If they talk together she sits at a little distance and turns away, for she is shy of her grown-up son. " The meaning of all this," as Dr. Codrington observes, " is obvious." ^ When a Melanesian man of the Banks' Islands marries, he is bound in like manner to avoid his mother-in-law. "The rules of avoidance are very strict and minute. As regards the avoidance of the person, a man will not come near his wife's mother ; the avoidance is mutual ; if the two chance to meet in a path, the woman will step out of it and stand with her back turned till he has gone by, or perhaps if it be more 1 R. H. Codrington, D. D., The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 232. IV MARRIAGE 87 convenient he will move out of the way. At Vanua Lava, in Port Patteson, a man would not follow his mother-in-law along the beach, nor she him, until the tide had washed out the footsteps of the first traveller from the sand. At the same time a man and his mother-in-law will talk at a distance." ^ It seems obvious that these Melanesian customs of it is avoidance are the same, and must be explained in the significant ^ that mutual same way whether the woman whom a man shuns is his avoidance wife's mother or his own mother or his sister. Now it is l^f ^^j*^" blood highly significant that just as among the Akamba of East relations Africa the mutual avoidance of father and daughter only °exes^°^"^ begins when the girl has reached puberty, so among the begins at Melanesians the mutual avoidance of a boy on the one puberty. side and of his mother and sisters on the other only begins when the boy has reached or approached puberty. Thus in both peoples the avoidance between the nearest blood relations only commences at the dangerous age when sexual connexion on both sides begins to be possible. It seems difficult, therefore, to evade the conclusion that the mutual avoidance is adopted for no other reason than to diminish as far as possible the chances of sexual unions which public opinion condemns as incestuous. But if that is the reason why a young Melanesian boy, on the verge of puberty, avoids his own mother and sisters, it is natural and almost necessary to infer that it is the same reason which leads him, as a full-grown and married man, to eschew the company of his wife's mother. Similar customs of avoidance between mothers and Mutual sons, between fathers and daughters, and between brothers ^f™ o^jjg^ and sisters are observed by the natives of the Caroline and son, Islands, and the writer who records them assigns the fear \^^ of incest as the motive for their observance. " The pro- daughter, hibition of marriage," he says, "and of sexual intercourse brother and between kinsfolk of the same tribe is regarded by the s's'ei'.i" 'he Central Caroline natives as a divine ordinance ; its breach islands. is therefore, in their opinion, punished by the higher powers with sickness or death. The law influences in a character- istic way the whole social life of the islanders, for efforts ' R. H. Codrington, op. cit. p. 43. 88 MARRIAGE iv are made to keep members of families of different sexes apart from each other even in their youth. Unmarried men and boys, from the time when they begin to speak, may therefore not remain by night in the huts, but must sleep in the fel, the assembly-house. In the evening their meal [Akot) is brought thither to them by their mothers or sisters. Only when a son is sick may his mother receive him in the hut and tend him there. On the other hand entrance to the assembly-house {fet) is forbidden to women and girls except on the occasion of the pwarik festival ; whereas female members of other tribes are free to visit it, although, so far as I could observe, they seldom make use of the permission. Unmarried girls sleep in the huts with their parents. " These restrictions, which custom and tradition have instituted within the family, find expression also in the behaviour of the members of families toward each other. The following persons, namely, have to be treated with respect — the daughters by their father, the sons by their mother, the brothers by their sisters. In presence of such relations, as in the presence of a chief, you may not stand, but must sit down ; if you are obliged on narrow paths to pass by one of them you must first obtain per- mission and then do it in a stooping or creeping posture. You allow them everywhere to go in front ; you also avoid to drink out of the vessel which they have just used ; you do not touch them, but keep always at a certain distance from them ; the head especially is deemed sacred." ^ Mutual In all these cases the custom of mutual avoidance is of maie"and observed by persons of opposite sex who, though physically female capable of sexual union, are forbidden by tradition and public sometribes. Opinion to have any such commerce with each other. Thus far the blood relations whom a man is forbidden to marry and compelled to avoid, are his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. But to this list some people add a man's female cousins or at least certain of them ; for many races draw a sharp line of distinction between cousins according 1 Max Girschner, " Die Karolineninsel Namoluk und ihre Bewohner," Baessler-Archiv, ii. (1912) p. 164. IV MARRIAGE 89 as they are children of two brothers or of two sisters or of a brother and a sister, and while they permit or even prefer marriage with certain cousins, they absolutely forbid marriage with certain others. Now, it is highly significant that some tribes which forbid a man to marry certain of his cousins also compel him to adopt towards them the same attitude of social reserve which in the same or other tribes a man is obliged to observe towards his wife's mother, his own mother, and his own sisters, all of whom in like manner he is forbidden to marry. Thus among Mutual the tribes in the central part of New Ireland (New Mecklen- avoidance '^ ^ of male and burg) a male and a female cousin, the children of a brother female and a sister respectively, are most strictly forbidden by ^"^'"^ '" custom to marry each other ; indeed this prohibition is Ireland. described as the most stringent of all ; the usual saying in regard to such relations is, " The cousin is holy " {i tabu ra k6kup\ Now, in these tribes a man is not merely for- bidden to marry his female cousin, the daughter of his father's sister or of his niother's brother ; he must also avoid her socially, just as in other tribes a man must avoid his wife's mother, his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. The cousins may not approach each other, they may not shake hands or even touch each other, they may not give each other presents, they may not mention each other's names ; but they are allowed to speak to each other at a distance of some paces. These rules of avoidance, these social barriers erected between cousins, the children of a brother and a sister respectively, are interpreted most naturally and simply as precautions intended to obviate the danger of a criminal intercourse between persons whose sexual union would be regarded by public opinion with deep displeasure. Indeed the Catholic missionary, to whom we are indebted for the information, assumes this interpretation of the rules as if it were too obvious to call for serious discussion. He says that all the customs of avoidance " are observed as outward symbols of this" prohibition of marriage " ; and he adds that " were the outward sign of the prohibition of marriage, to which the natives cleave with genuine obstinacy, abolished or even weakened, there would be an immediate danger of the natives contracting such 9° MARRIAGE Mutual avoidance of certain male and female cousins among the Baganda ; marriage or sexual intercourse forbidden between these cousins under pain of death. marriages." ^ It seems difficult for a rational man to draw any other inference. If any confirmation were needed, it would be furnished by the fact that among these tribes of New Ireland brothers and sisters are obliged to observe precisely the same rules of mutual avoidance, and that incest between brother and sister is a crime which is punished with hanging ; they may not come near each other, they may not shake hands, they may not touch each other, they may not give each other presents ; but they are allowed to speak to each other at a distance of some paces. And the penalty for incest with a daughter is also death by hanging.^ Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa in like manner a man was forbidden under pain of death to marry or have sexual intercourse with his cousin, the daughter either of his father's sister or of his mother's brother ; and such cousins might not approach each other, nor hand each other anything, nor enter the same house, nor eat out of the same dish. Were cousins to break these rules of social avoidance, in other words, if they were to approach each other or hand each other anything, it was believed that they would fall ill, that their hands would tremble, and that they would be unfit for any work.^ Here, again, the prohibition of social inter- course was in all probability merely a precaution against sexual intercourse, for which the penalty was death. And the same may be said of the similar custom of avoidance which among these same Baganda a man had to observe towards his wife's mother. " No man might see his mother- in-law, or speak face to face with her ; she covered her face, if she passed her son-in-law, and he gave her the path and made a detour, if he saw her coming. If she was in the house, he might not enter, but he was allowed to speak to her from a distance. This was said to be because he had seen her daughter's nakedness. If a son-in-law accidentally 1 P. G. Peckel, "Die Verwandt- schaftsnamen des mittleren Neumeck- lenburg," Anthropos, iii. (1908) pp. 467, 470 sq. 2 P. G. Peckel, op. cit. pp. 463, 467. ^ Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 191 1), pp. 128 sq., 131 ; Sir W-i.xx'j]fiax&\.axi,TheUganda Protectorate (London, 1904), ii. 695. The latter writer says generally : " Cousins cannot enter the same house, and must not eat out of the same dish. A man cannot marry his cousin." But from Mr. Roscoe's researches it appears that a man has only to avoid certain cousins, called kizibwewe, that is, the daughters either of his father's sisters or of his mother's brothers. IV MARRIAGE 91 saw his mother-in-law's breasts, he sent her a barkcloth in compensation, to cover herself, lest some illness, such as tremor, should come upon him. The punishment for incest was death ; no member of a clan would shield a person guilty thereof ; the offender was disowned by the clan, tried by the chief of the district, and put to death." ^ The prohibition of marriage with certain cousins appears Marriage to be widespread among African peoples of the Bantu stock, ce'tat™ Thus in regard to the Bantus of South Africa we read that cousins "every man of a coast tribe regarded himself as the among protector of those females whom we would call his cousins, sorne South second cousins, third cousins, and so forth, on the father's tribes but side, while some had a similar feeling towards the same allowed relatives on the mother's side as well, and classified them all others. as sisters. Immorality with one of them would have been considered incestuous, something horrible, something un- utterably disgraceful. Of old it was punished by the death of the male, and even now a heavy fine is inflicted upon him, while the guilt of the female must be atoned by a sacrifice performed with due ceremony by the tribal priest, or it is believed a curse will rest upon her and her issue. ... In contrast to this prohibition the native of the interior almost as a rule married the daughter of his father's brother, in order, as he said, to keep property from being lost to his family. This custom more than anything else created a disgust and contempt for them by the people of the coast, who term such intermarriages the union of dogs, and attribute to them the insanity and idiocy which in recent times has become prevalent among the inland tribes." ^ 1 Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. p. 129. 432. The writer adds : "Among the Among the women with whom man tribes within the Cape Colony at the was forbidden to have sexual relations present time the differences are as under pain of death were (besides his follows : — cousins mentioned above) his father's "Xosas,Tembus, and Pondos: marry sister, his daughter, and his wife's no relative by blood, however distant, sister's daughter. See J. Roscoe, op. on either father's or mother's side. c;V. pp. 131, 132. The reason alleged " Hlubis and others commonly called for avoiding a mother-in-law, namely, Fingos : may marry the daughter of because a man has seen her daughter's mother's brother and other relatives on nakedness (compare above, p. 76) is that side, but not on father's side, probably a later misinterpretation of " Basuto, Batlaro, Batlapin, and the custom. Barolong : very frequently marry 2 Q.yiQ.Cs&.'Vaz'iX, Records of South- cousins on father's side, and know of Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) pp. 431, no restrictions beyond actual sisters. " 92 MARRIAGE IV Marriage between cousins allowed in some African tribes on condition that an expiatory sacrifice is offered. Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, marriages between cousins are as a rule prohibited, and it is believed that such unions are unfruitful. However, custom permits cousins to marry each other on condition that they perform an expiatory ceremony which is supposed to avert the curse of barrenness from the wife. A goat is sacrificed, and the couple are anointed with the green liquid extracted from the half-digested grass in the animal's stomach. Then a hole is cut in the goat's skin and through this hole the heads of the cousins are inserted. The goat's liver is then handed to them, quite raw, through the hole in the skin, and they must tear it out with their teeth without using a knife. Having torn it out, they eat it. The word for liver (shibindjt) also means " patience," " determination." So they say to the couple, " You have acted with strong determination. Eat the liver now ! Eat it in the full light of the day, not in the dark ! It will be an offering to the gods." Then the- family priest prays, saying : " You, our gods, So-and-so, look ! We have done it in the daylight. It has not been done by stealth. Bless them, give them children ! " When he has done praying, the assistants take all the half-digested grass from the goat's stomach and place it on the wife's head, saying, " Go and bear children ! "^ Among the Wagogo of German East Africa marriage is forbidden between cousins who are the children of two brothers or of two sisters, but is permitted between cousins who are the children of a brother and sister respectively. However, in this case it is usual for the wife's father to kill a sheep and put on a leather armlet, made presumably from the sheep's skin ; otherwise it is supposed that the marriage would be unfruitful.^ Thus the Wagogo, like the Thonga, imagine that the marriage of cousins is doomed to infertility unless an expiatory sacrifice is offered and a peculiar use made of the victim's skin. Again, the Akikuyu of British East Africa forbid the marriage of cousins and second cousins, the children and grandchildren of brothers and sisters. If such persons 1 Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African TVz'fe (Neuchatel, 1912— 1913), i. 243-245. As to the rules concerning the marriage of cousins in this tribe, see id. i. 241 sq. 2 Heinrich Claus, Die Wagogo (Leipsic and Berlin, 1911), p. 58. IV MARRIAGE 93 married, they would commit a grave sin, and all their children would surely die ; for the curse or ceremonial pollution ithahu) incurred by such a crime cannot be purged away. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that a man unwittingly marries a first or second cousin ; for instance, if a part of the family moves away to another district, it may come about that a man makes the acquaintance of a girl and marries her before he discovers the relationship. In such a case, where the sin has been committed unknowingly, the curse can be averted by the performance of an expiatory rite. The elders take a sheep and place it on the woman's shoulders ; there it is killed and the intestines taken out. Then the elders solemnly sever the intestines with a sharp splinter of wood taken from a bush of a certain sort {muked), "and they announce that they are cutting the, clan kutinyarurira, by which they mean that they are severing the bond of relationship which exists between the pair. A medicine man then comes and purifies the couple." ^ In all these cases we may assume with a fair degree of probability that the old prohibition of marriage between cousins is breaking down, and that the expiatory sacrifice offered when such a marriage does take place is merely a salve to the uneasy conscience of those who commit or connive at a breach of the ancient taboo. Thus the prohibition of marriage between cousins, and The mutual the rules of ceremonial avoidance observed in some tribes ^^^'^ance of male between persons who stand in that relationship to each and female other, appear both to spring from a belief, right or wrong, p°obabi'\ in the injurious effects of such unions and from a desire precaution to avoid them. The mutual avoidance of the cousins is cfimtaaf merely a precaution to prevent a closer and more criminal intimacy , . between intimacy between them. If that is so, it furnishes a con- them. firmation of the view that all the customs of ceremonial avoidance between blood relations or connexions by marriage of opposite sexes are based simply on a fear of incest. The theory is perhaps confirmed by the observation that in some tribes the avoidance between a man and his 1 C. W. Hobley, " Kikuyu Customs Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) and Beliefs," Journal of the Royal p. 438. 94 MARRIAGE iv The mutual wife's mother lasts only until he has had a child by his wife ; ^ baween'^a ^'^''^ i" Others, though avoidance continues longer, it man and gradually wears away with time as the man and woman reiatiins^ advance in years,^ and in others, again, it is observed only seems to be between a man and his future mother-in-law, and comes to an grounded end With his marriage.^ These customs suggest that in the on a fear of minds of the people who practise them there is a close the wife Connexion between the avoidance of the wife's relations infertile. ^nd the dread of an infertile marriage. The Indians of Yucatan, as we saw, believe that if a betrothed man were to meet his future mother-in-law or father-in-law, he would thereby lose the power of begetting children. Such a fear seems to be only an extension by false analogy of that belief in the disastrous consequences of illicit sexual relations which we dealt with in an earlier part of this chapter,* and of which we shall have more to say presently.^ From think- ing, rightly or wrongly, that sexual intercourse between certain persons is fraught with serious dangers, the savage jumped to the conclusion that social intercourse between them may be also perilous by virtue of a sort of physical infection acting through simple contact or even at a distance ; or if, in many cases, he did not go so far as to suppose that for a man merely to see or touch his mother-in-law sufficed to blast the fertility of his wife's womb, yet he may have thought, with much better reason, that intimate social converse between him and her might easily lead to something worse, and that to guard against such a possibility it was best to raise a strong barrier of etiquette between them. It is not, of course, to be supposed that these rules of avoidance were the result of deliberate legislation ; rather they were the spontaneous and gradual growth of feelings and thoughts of which the savages themselves perhaps had no clear consciousness. In what precedes I have merely attempted to sum up in language intelligible to civilized man the outcome of a long course of moral and social evolution. These considerations perhaps obviate to some extent the only serious difficulty which lies in the way of the theory ' See above, pp. 78 sg., 8i. * See above, pp. 44 sgq. '' See above, pp. 80, 81, 84. ' See below, pp. 102 sqq. ' See above, p. 81. IV MARRIAGE 95 here advocated. If the custom of avoidance was adopted in The mutual order to guard against the danger of incest, how comes it b™^^een'^'^ that the custom is often observed towards persons of the persons of same sex, for example, by a man towards his father-in-law sex wa^^ as well as towards his mother-in-law ? The difficulty is probably undoubtedly serious : the only way of meeting it that I can sjon by suggest is the one I have already indicated. We may sup- ^^^^'^ pose that the deeply rooted beliefs of the savage in the the mutual fatal effects of marriage between certain classes of persons, avoidance ^ ^ ' between whether relations by blood or connexions by marriage, persons of gradually spread in his mind so as to embrace the relations s*gg™' between men and men as well as between men and women ; till he had worked himself into the conviction that to see or touch his father-in-law, for example, was nearly or quite as dangerous as to touch or have improper relations with his mother-in-law. It is no doubt easy for us to detect the flaw in this process of reasoning ; but we should beware of casting stones at the illogical savage, for it is possible or even prob- able that many of our own cherished convictions are no better founded. Viewed from this standpoint the customs of ceremonial Thecustom . , . , of mutual avoidance among savages assume a serious aspect very avoidance different from the appearance of arbitrariness and absurdity between which they are apt to present to the civilized observer who tions has does not look below the surface of savage society. So far as p™babiy these customs have helped, as they probably have done, to effect of suppress the tendency to inbreeding, that is, to the marriage '^heckmg of near relations, we must conclude that their effect has been of inbreed- salutary,if, as many eminent biologists hold, long-continued in- '"^^ breeding is injurious to the stock, whether animal or vegetable, by rendering it in the end infertile.^ However, men of science are as yet by no means agreed as to the results of con- sanguineous marriages, and a living authority on the subject has recently closed a review of the evidence as follows : " When we take into account such evidence as there is from animals and plants, and such studies as those of Huth,^ and 1 On the question of the effect of in- Near Kin considered with respect to the breeding see Totemism and Exogamy, Laws of Nations, the Results of Experi- iv. 1 60 sqq. eiice, and the Teachings of Biology, 2 A. H. Huth, The Marriage of Second Edition (London, 1887). 96 MARRIAGE iv the instances and counter-instances of communities with a high degree of consanguinity, we are led to the conclusion that the prejudices and laws of many peoples against the marriage of near kin rest on a basis not so much biological as social." ^ Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of science on this disputed question, it will not affect the result of the present enquiry, which merely affirms the deep and far- reaching influence which in the long course of human history superstition has exercised on morality. Whether the influ- ence has on the whole been for good or evil does not concern us. It suffices for our purpose to shew that superstition has been a crutch to morality, whether to support it in the fair way of virtue or to precipitate it into the miry pit of vice. To return to the point from which we wandered into this digression, we must leave in suspense the question whether the Australian savages were wise or foolish who forbade a man under pain of death to speak to his mother-in-law. Qji^gj. I will conclude this part of my subject with a few more exampiesof instances of the extreme severity with which certain races punish- have visited what they deemed improper connexions between ment of the sexcs. crime. Among the Indians who inhabited the coast of Brazil near The Rio de Janeiro about the middle of the sixteenth century, a Brazt"^ ° married woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child was either killed or abandoned to the caprice of the young men who could not afford to keep a wife. Her child was buried alive ; for they said that were he to grow up he would only serve to perpetuate his mother's disgrace ; he would not be allowed to go to war with the rest for fear of the misfortunes and disasters he might draw down upon them, and no one would eat any food, whether venison, fish, or what not, which The natives the miserable outcast had touched.^ In Ruanda, a district of Ruanda, ^j- Central Africa, down to recent years any unmarried woman who was got with child used to be put to death with her baby, whether born or unborn. A spot at the mouth of the Akanyaru river was the place of execution, 1 J. Arthur Thomson, article " Con- 2 Andre Thevet, La Cosmographie sanguinity," in Dr. James Hastings's Universelle (Paris, 1575), "• 933 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, [967]. iv. (Edinburgh, 191 1) p. 30. IT MARRIAGE 97 where the guilty women and their innocent offspring were hurled into the water. As usual, this Puritanical strictness of morality has been relaxed under European influence ; illegitimate children are still killed, but their mothers escape with the fine of a cow.^ Among the Saxons down The to the days of St. Boniface the adulteress or the maiden ^™'^- who had dishonoured her father's house was compelled to hang herself, was burned, and her paramour hung over the blazing pile ; or she was scourged or cut to pieces with knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.^ Among the Slav peoples of the Balkan peninsula women The convicted of immoral conduct used to be stoned to death. s°avs^™ About the year 1770 a young betrothed couple were thus executed near Cattaro in Dalmatia, because the girl was found to be with child. The youth offered to marry her, and the priest begged that the sentence of death might be commuted to perpetual banishment ; but the people declared that they would not have a bastard born among them ; and the two fathers of the luckless couple threw the first stones at them. When Miss M. Edith Durham related this case to some Montenegrin peasantry, they all said that in the old days stoning was the proper punishment for unchaste women ; the male paramours were shot by the relations of the girls whom they had seduced. When " that modern Messalina," Queen Draga of Servia, was murdered, a decent peasant woman remarked that " she ought to be under the cursed stone heap " (J>od prokletu gomilu). The country-folk of Montenegro, who heard the news of the murder from Miss Durham, " looked on it as a cleansing — a casting out of abominations — and genuinely believed that Europe would commend the deed, and that the removal of this sinful woman would bring prosperity to the land."^ Even down to the second half of the ' Father P. Schumacher, "Das Durham, one of our best authorities on Eherecht in Ruanda," Anthropos, vii. these races, was so good as to favour (191 2) p. 4. me. Her letter is dated 11 6a King 2 H. H. Milman, History of Latin Henry's Road, London, N.W., October Christianity, New Impression (Lon- l6th, 1909. The stoning of the be- don, 1903), ii. 54. trothed couple near Cattaro is recorded, ^ Tliese particulars as to the Slavonic so Miss Durham tells me, in a Servian peoples of the Balkan peninsula I take book, Narodne Pripovjetke i Presude, from a letter with which Miss M. Edith by Vuk Vrcevic. For many more H MARRIAGE IV Inference from the severe punish- ments inflicted for sexual offences. nineteenth century in cases of seduction among the Southern Slavs the people proposed to stone both the culprits to death.-' This happened, for example, in Herzegovina in the year 1859, when a young man named Milutin seduced or (to be more exact) was seduced by three un- married girls and got them all with child. The people sat in judgment upon the sinners, and, though an elder proposed to stone them all, the court passed a milder sentence. The young man was to marry one of the girls, to rear the infants of the other two as his legitimate children, and next time there was a iight with the Turks he was to prove his manhood by rushing unarmed upon the enemy and wresting their weapons from them, alive or dead. The sentence was fulfilled to the letter, though many years passed before the culprit could carry out the last part of it. However, his time came in 1875, when Herzegovina revolted against the Turks. Then Milutin ran unarmed upon a regiment of the enemy and found among the Turkish bayonets a hero's death.^ Even now the Old Catholics among the South Slavs believe that a village in which a seducer is not compelled to marry his victim will be punished with hail and excessive rain. For this article of faith, how- ever, they are ridiculed by their enlightened Catholic neigh- bours, who hold the far more probable view that thunder and lightning are caused by the village priest to revenge himself for unreasonable delays in the payment of his salary. A heavy hail-storm has been known to prove almost fatal to the local incumbent, who was beaten within an inch of his life by his enraged parishioners.^ It is difficult to believe that in these and similar cases the community would inflict such severe punishment for sexual offences if it did not believe that its own safety, and not merely the interest of a few individuals, was imperilled thereby. examples of the death penalty and other severe punishments inflicted for sexual offences, see E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (London, 1906-1908), ii. 366 sqq., 425 sqq. ' F. S. Krauss, Sitte zmd Branch der SUdslaven (Vienna, 1885), pp. 209, 216, 217. Compare F. DemelicS, Le Droit Coutumier des Slaves M^ri- dionaux (Paris, 1876), p. 76. ^ F. S. Krauss, op. cit. pp. 208-212, citing as his authority Vuk Vrfievic, Niz srpskih pripovijedaka, pp. 129-137. ^ F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Branch der SUdslaven, p. 204. IV MARRIAGE 99 If now we ask why illicit relations between the sexes why should be supposed to disturb the balance of nature and ^^^^ particularly to blast the fruits of the earth, a partial answer relations may be conjecturally suggested. It is not enough to say n^g^exes that such relations are displeasing to the gods, who punish bethought indiscriminately the whole community for the sins of a few. the balance For we must always bear in mind that the gods are creations of nature? of man's fancy ; he fashions them in human likeness, and endows them with tastes and opinions which are merely vast cloudy projections of his own. To affirm, therefore, that something is a sin because the gods will it so, is only to push the enquiry one stage farther back and to raise the further question, Why are the gods supposed to dislike and punish these particular acts? In the case with which we are here con- The reason cerned, the reason why so many savage gods prohibit adultery, gg^^'^f^ fornication, and incest under pain of their severe displeasure savages are may perhaps be found in the analogy which many savage to^u°ni5}i men trace between the reproduction of the human species sexual and the reproduction of animals and plants. The analogy severely is not purely fanciful, on the contrary it is real and vital ; may per- , ... , , . . r 1 • - haps be but primitive peoples have given it a false extension in a found in a vain attempt to apply it practically to increasing the food mistaken ^. , ^^ . K , . r , , r ■ I'si'sf 'bat supply. Ihey have imagined, in fact, that by performing irregu- or abstaining from certain sexual acts they thereby directly if'"'^=' °f ^ J J J the human promoted the reproduction of animals and the multiplication sexes pre- of plants.-' All such acts and abstinences, it is obvious, are rg°y]'4_ purely superstitious and wholly fail to effect the desired tion of 1 For examples of the attempt to 1841), ii. 181, 263-267 (multiplication multiply edible plants in this fashion, or attraction of buffaloes) ; Reports of see The Magic Art and the Evolution the Cambridge Anthropological Expedi- of Kings, ii. 97 sqq. The reported tion to Torres Straits, v. (1904) p. 271 examples of similar attempts to assist (multiplication of turtles) ; J. Roscoe, the multiplication of animals seem to "Further Notes on the Manners and be rarer. For some instances see Customs of the Baganda," Journal of George Catlin, 0-Kee-Pa, a Religious the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. Ceremony and other Customs of the (1902) p. 53 ; id.. The Baganda (Lon- Mandans (London, 1867), Folium don, 191 1), p. 144 (multiplication of Reservatum, pp. i.-iii. (multiplication edible green locusts) ; S. Gason, in oi\mS2\oa); History of the Expedition JourncU of the Anthropological Insti- tinder the Command of Captains Lewis tute, xxiv. (iSgjjp- 174 (multiplication and Clark to the Sources of the Mis- of edible rats) ; id. , ' ' The Dieyerie souri (London, 1905), i. 209 sq. (multi- Tribe," in Native Tribes of South plication or attraction of buffaloes) ; Australia (Adelaide, 1879), P- 280 Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das (multiplication of dogs and snakes). innere Nord-America (Coblentz, 1839- loo MARRIAGE iv edible result. They are not religious but magical ; that is, they anirtants compass their end, not by an appeal to the gods, but by and manipulating natural forces in accordance with certain false s!!riw i€i\sk,^' Journal of the Royal An- luck or curse. A person who is thahu thropological Institute, xl. {1910) p. becomes emaciated and ill or breaks 431. The nature of the ceremonial out into eruptions or boils, and if the pollution {thahu) thus incurred is ex- thahit is not removed will probably die. plained by Mr. Hobley {op. cit. p. In many cases this undoubtedly hap- 428) as follows : " Thahu, sometimes pens by the process of auto-suggestion. ii6 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE blood by being smeared with the blood of pigs. Mansiayers Greek mode of purifying a homicide was to kill a sucking purged of pjg ^^^ ^^gj^ tjjg hands of the guilty man in its blood : human ° ° Until this ceremony had been performed the manslayer was not allowed to speak.^ Among the hill-tribes near Raja- mahal in Bengal, if two men quarrel and blood be shed, the one who cut the other is fined a hog or a fowl, "the blood of which is sprinkled over the wounded person, to purify him, and to prevent his being possessed by a devil." ^ In this case the blood -sprinkling is avowedly intended to prevent the man from being haunted by a spirit ; only it is not the aggressor but his victim who is supposed to be in danger and therefore to stand in need of purification. We have seen that among these and other savage tribes pig's blood is sprinkled on persons and things as a mode of purifying them from the pollution of sexual crimes.^ Among the Cameroon negroes in West Africa accidental homicide can be expiated by the blood of an animal. The relations of the slayer and of the slain assemble. An animal is killed, and every person present is smeared with its blood on his face and breast. They think that the guilt of man- slaughter is thus atoned for, and that no punishment will overtake the homicide.* In Car Nicobar a man possessed by devils is cleansed of them by being rubbed all over with pig's blood and beaten with leaves. The devils are sup- posed to be thus swept off like flies from the man's body to the leaves, which are then folded up and tied tightly with a special kind of string. A professional exorciser administers the beating, and at every stroke with the leaves he falls down with his face on the floor and calls out in a squeaky as it never occurs to the Kikuyu mind to be sceptical on a matter of this kind. It is said that the ihahu condition is caused by the ngoma or spirits of de- parted ancestors, but the process does not seem to have been analysed any further." See also above, pp. 93, 105. 1 Aeschylus, Eumenides, 280 sqq., 448 sqq. ; id., quoted by Eustathius on Homer, Iliad, xix. 254, p. 1183, ^TTtT^Setos id6KeL Trpbs Kadapfji.6y 6 aus, ws SvjXoi Aio'xi'Xos eV rp, trph hv waKay/iois atfiaros xotpo/crifou aiJr6s e xpapai Zei>s /carao-Tdlas xepoiv ; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut, iv. 703-717, with the notes of the scholiast. Purifications of this sort are represented in Greek art. See my note on Pausanias ii. 31. 8 (vol. iii. pp. 276 sqq.). 2 Lieutenant Thomas Shaw, "The Inhabitants of the Hills near Rajama- hall," Asiatic Researches, Fourth Edition, iv. (London, 1807) p. 78, compare p. 77. ^ See above, pp. 44 sqq. * Missionary Autenrieth, "Zur Reli- gion derKamerun-Neger,"Afz««7«»^«» der geographischen Gesellschaft zujena, xii. (1893) pp. 93 sg. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 117 voice, " Here is a devil." This ceremony is performed by- night ; and before daybreak all the packets of leaves con- taining the devils are thrown into the sea.-^ The Greeks similarly used laurel leaves as well as pig's blood in purifi- catory ceremonies.^ In all such cases we may assume that the purification was originally conceived as physical rather than as moral, as a sort of detergent which washed, swept, or scraped the ghostly or demoniacal pollution from the person of the ghost-haunted or demon-possessed man. The motive for employing blood in these rites of cleansing is not clear. Perhaps the purgative virtue ascribed to it may have been based on the notion that the offended spirit accepts the blood as a substitute for the blood of the man or woman.^ However, it is doubtful whether this explanation could cover all the cases in which blood is sprinkled as a mode of purification. Certainly it is odd, as the sage Heraclitus long ago remarked, that blood-stains should be thought to be removed by blood-stains, as if a man who had been bespattered with mud should think to cleanse himself by bespattering himself with more mud.* But the ways of man are wonderful and sornetimes past finding out. There was a curious story that after Orestes had gone The matri- mad through murdering his mother he recovered his wits by p'^^'^O'^f ^s ° _ ° .'IS said to biting off one of his own fingers ; the Furies of his murdered have re- mother, which had appeared black to him before, appeared ^°ts^^^y '^ white as soon as he had mutilated himself in this way : it biting off was as if the taste of his own blood sufficed to avert or own fingers. disarm the wrathful ghost.^ A hint of the way in which the blood may have been supposed to produce this result is furnished by the practice of some savages. The Indians of Mansiayers Guiana believe that an avenger of blood who has slain his ^'"'"^ly o taste their man must go mad unless he tastes the blood of his victim ; victims' the notion apparently is that the ghost drives him crazy, o'defnotto be haunted ' V. Solomon, " Extracts from Rohde (Psyche,^ Tiibingen and Leipsic, by their Diaries kept in Car '^izoh'ax," Journal 1903, ii. 77 sq.). ghosts. of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. , .adalpoprac d' dXKois atp.ar, f^iawh- (1902) p. 7. ^ . .. iievot oXov ei tis eh irrikbv iu.Ba.% TrriXu 2 See my note on Pausan.as, 11. 3 1- d,roWfo.ro, Heraclitus, in H. Diels's Die a (vol. in. pp. 27b sqq.}. ■ Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Zweite 3 This viras the view of C. JMemers Auflaee i (Berlin 1006) d 62 (Geschichte der Religionen, Hanover, & > • V > y ; F- 1 806-1 807, ii. 137 sq.), and of E. * Pausanias, viii. 34. 3. ii8 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v just as the ghost of Clytemnestra did to Orestes, who was also, be it remembered, an avenger of blood. In order to avert this consequence the Indian manslayer resorts on the third night to the grave of his victim, pierces the corpse with a sharp -pointed stick, and withdrawing it sucks the blood of the murdered man. After that he goes home with an easy mind, satisfied that he has done his duty and that he has nothing more to fear from the ghost.^ A similar custom was observed by the Maoris in battle. When a warrior had slain his foe in combat, he tasted his blood, believing that this preserved him from the avenging spirit [atud) of his victim ; for they imagined that " the moment a slayer had tasted the blood of the slain, the dead man became a part of his being and placed him under the pro- tection of the atua or guardian -spirit of the deceased."^ Thus in the opinion of these savages, by swallowing a portion of their victim they made him a part of themselves and thereby converted him from an enemy into an ally ; they established, in the strictest sense of the words, a blood- covenant with him. The Aricara Indians also drank the blood of their slain foes and proclaimed the deed by the mark of a red hand on their faces.^ The motive for this practice may have been, as with the Maoris, a desire to appropriate and so disarm the ghost of an enemy. In antiquity some of the Scythians used to drink the blood of the first foes they killed ; and they also tasted the blood of the friends with whom they made a covenant, for " they take that to be the surest pledge of good Homicides faith." * The motive of the two customs was probably to M°mad the same. " To the present day, when a person of another unless they tribe has been slain by a Nandi, the blood must be care- biood of fully washed off the spear or sword into a cup made theirvictim. of grass, and drunk by the slayer. If this is not done it is thought that the man will become frenzied."^ So ^ Rev. J. H. Bernau, Missionary 3 John Bradbury, Travels in the Labours in British Guiana (London, Interior of America (iAvtfpoo\, 1817), 1847), pp. 57 sq. ; R. Schomburgk, p. 160. Reisen in Britisch-Guiana (Leipsic, . „ ■ •««■ 1 ^r •• ,„ o o 01 •• „ > i- ' 4 Pomponms Mela, Chorogr. u. 12, "^''j: Dumont'^D-Urville, Voyage V- 35, ed. G. Parthey (Berlin, 1867). autour du monde et h la recherche de la * A. C. HoUis, The Nandi (Oxford, Pirouse (Paris, 1832-1833), iii. 305. 1909), p. 27. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 119 among some tribes of the Lower Niger " it is customary and necessary for the executioner to lick the blood that is on the blade " ; moreover " the custom of licking the blood off the blade of a sword by which a man has been killed in war is common to all these tribes, and the explanation given me by the Ibo, which is generally accepted, is, that if this was not done, the act of killing would so affect the strikers as to cause them to run amok among their own people ; because the sight and smell of blood render them absolutely senseless as well as regardless of all consequences. And this licking the blood is the only sure remedy, and the only way in which they can recover themselves." ^ So, too, among the Shans of Burma " it was the curious custom of executioners to taste the blood of their victims, as they be- lieved if this were not done illness and death would follow in a short time. In remote times Shan soldiers always bit the bodies of men killed by them in battle." ^ Strange as it may seem, this truly savage superstition exists apparently in Italy to this day. There is a widespread opinion in Calabria that if a murderer is to escape he must suck his victim's blood from the reeking blade of the dagger with which he did the deed.^ We can now perhaps understand why the matricide Orestes was thought to have recovered his wandering wits as soon as he had bitten off one of his fingers. By tasting his own blood, which was also that of his victim, since she was his mother, he might be supposed to form a blood-covenant with the ghost and so to convert it from a foe into a friend. The Various Kabyles of North Africa think that if a murderer leaps f^ke^by "' seven times over his victim's grave within three or seven mansiayers days of the murder, he will be quite safe. Hence the fresh g|os"fof^ grave of a murdered man is carefully guarded.* The Lushai their victims. 1 Major A. G. Leonard, The Lower cient to kill him, and died rather from Niger and its Tribes (London, 1906), loss of blood than from one fatal blow" pp. 180, 181 sq. (Mrs. Leslie Milne, op. cit. pp. 191 2 Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home sq, ). Perhaps each executioner feared (London, 1910), p. 192. Among the to be haunted by his victim's ghost if Shans " in a case of capital punish- he actually despatched him. ment more than one executioner as- , ,,. „ t -r j- ■ , J Ti-ji -J ■ ■ ° Vmcenzo Dorsa, La Iradizione sisted, and each tned to avoid givmg ... ,• • ,/ j . , ' , , , ii. .. 11, ■ i-1-ii' greco-latma nent usz e nelle creaenze the fatal blovi', so that the sm of kilhng * ^ , • , ,, r- 1 i ■ n-t ■ 1 I 'i u u r 11 1 pofiolart della Calabria Literiore the culprit should fall upon several, f^ ,qo.s ,^o each bearing a part. The unfortunate (Cosenza, 1884), p. 138. man vcas killed by reason of repeated * J. Liorel, Kabylie du Jurjura sword cuts, no one of which was suffi- (Paris, N.D.), p. 441. RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE of North-Eastern India believe that if a man kills an enemy the ghost of his victim w^ill haunt him and he virill go mad, unless he performs a certain ceremony which will make him master of the dead man's soul in the other world. The ceremony includes the sacrifice of an animal, whether a pig, a goat, or a mithan.^ Among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, " according to a superstition common among Central African tribes, unless the slayers were purified from blood-guiltiness they would become mad. On the night of return no warrior might sleep in his own hut, but lay in the open nsaka in the village. The next day, after bathing in the stream and being anointed with lustral medicine by the doctor, he could return to his own hearth, and resume inter- course with his wife." ^ In all such cases the madness of the slayer is probably attributed to the ghost of the slain, which has taken possession of him. The custom That the Greek practice of secluding and purifying a an?'^urif"^ homicIde was essentially an exorcism, in other words, that ing homi- its aim was to ban the dangerous ghost of his victim, is i^n^ended to rendered practically certain by the similar rites of seclusion protect and purification which among many savage tribes have to be against the observed by victorious warriors with the avowed intention of angryspirits securing them against the spirits of the men whom they have which are slain in battle. These rites I have illustrated elsewhere,^ but thought to a. few cases may be quoted here by way of example. Thus their among the Basutos " ablution is especially performed on slayers. return from battle. It is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream. At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the current."* According to another account of the Basuto custom, "warriors ' Lieut. -Colonel J. Shakespear, " The Kuki-Lushai clans," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxix. (1909) p. 380 ; id.. The Lushei Kuki Clans (London, 19 12), pp. 78 J?. 2 J. H. West Sheane, " Wemba Warpaths," Journal of the African Society, No. 41 (October, 1911), pp. 31 sq. ^ Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 16S sqq. * Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), p. 258. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 121 who have killed an enemy are purified. The chief has to wash them, sacrificing an ox in the presence of the whole army. They are also anointed with the gall of the animal, which prevents the ghost of the enemy from pursuing them any farther."^ Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South Africa, about Delagoa Bay, " to have killed an enemy on the battle-field entails an immense glory for the slayers ; but that glory is fraught with great danger. They have killed. . . . So they are exposed to the mysterious and deadly influence of the nuru and must consequently undergo a medical treat- ment. What is the nuru ? Nuru, the spirit of the slain which tries to take its revenge on the slayer. It haunts him and may drive him into insanity : his eyes swell, protrude and become inflamed. He will lose his head, be attacked by giddiness {ndzululwan) and the thirst for blood may lead him to fall upon members of his own family and to stab them with his assagay. To prevent such misfortunes, a special medication is required : the slayers must lurulula tiyimpi ta bu, take away the nuru of their sanguinary expedition. . . . In what consists this treatment? The slayers must remain for some days at the capital. They are taboo. They put on old clothes, eat with special spoons, because their hands are ' hot,' and off special plates {rnirekd) and broken pots. They are forbidden to drink water. Their food must be cold. The chief kills oxen for them ; but if the meat were hot it would make them swell internally ' because they are hot themselves, they are defiled {ba na nsila)' If they eat hot food, the defilement would enter into them. ' They are black intima). This black must be removed.' During all this time sexual relations are absolutely forbidden to them. They must not go home, to their wives. In former times the Ba-Ronga used to tattoo them with special marks from • one eyebrow to the other. Dreadful medicines were inocu- lated in the incisions, and there remained pimples 'which gave them the appearance of a buffalo when it frowns.' After some days a medicine-man comes to purify them, ' to remove their black.' There seem to be various means of doing it, according to Mankhelu. Seeds of all kinds are put into a 1 Father Porte, " Les Reminiscences Missions catholiques, xxviii. (1896) d'un missionnaire du Basutoland," Les p. 371. RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE With some savages temporary insanity seems to be really caused by the sight or even thought of blood. broken pot and roasted, together with drugs and psanyi ^ of a goat. The slayers inhale the smoke which emanates from the pot. They put their hands into the mixture and rub their limbs with it, especially the joints. . . . Insanity threatening those who shed blood might begin early. So, already on the battle-field, just after their deed, warriors are given a preventive dose of the medicine by those who have killed on previous occasions. . . . The period of seclusion having been concluded by the final purification, all the implements used by the slayers during these days, and their old garments, are tied together and hung by a string to a tree, at some distance from the capital, where they are left to rot." 2 The accounts of the madness which is apt to befall slayers seem too numerous and too consistent to be dismissed as pure fictions of the savage imagination. However we may reject the native explanation of such fits of frenzy, the reports point to a real berserker fury or unbridled thirst for blood which comes over savages when they are excited by combat, and which may prove dangerous to friends as well as to foes. The question is one on which students of mental disease might perhaps throw light. Meantime it deserves to be noticed that even the people who have staid at home and have taken no share in the bloody work are liable to fall into a state of frenzy when they hear the war- whoops which proclaim the approach of the victorious warriors with their ghastly trophies. Thus we are told that among the Bare'e- speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes, when these notes of triumph were heard in the distance the whole population of the village would turn out to meet and welcome the returning braves. At the mere sound some of those who had remained at home, especially women, would be seized with a frenzy, and rushing forth would bite the severed heads of the slain foes, and they were not to be brought to their senses till they had drunk palm wine or water out of the skulls. If the warriors returned empty-handed, these 1 Psanyi is half-digested grass found South African Tribe (Neuchatel, in the stomachs of sacrificed goats 1912-1913), i. 453-455. I have (H. A. Junod, The Life of a South omitted some of the Thonga words African Tribe, ii. 569). which Mr. Junod inserts in the text. ^ Henri A. Junod, The Life of a V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 123 furies would fall upon them and bite their arms. There was a regular expression for this state of temporary insanity- excited by the sight or even the thought of human blood ; it was called merata lamoanja or merata raoa, " the spirit is come over them," by which was probably meant that the madness was caused by the ghosts of the slaughtered foes. When any of the warriors themselves suffered from this paroxysm of frenzy, they were healed by eating a piece of the brains or licking the blood of the slain.^ Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in British East Means Africa, when a man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves ^^^^"^y ' _ -^ manslayers his head on his return home, and his friends rub a medicine, in Africa which generally consists of cow's dung, over his body to s°ivfs'of™ prevent the spirit of the slain man from troubling him.^ the ghosts Here cow's dung serves these negroes as a detergent of the victims'^, ghost, just as pig's blood served the ancient Greeks. Among the Wawanga, about Mount Elgon in British East Africa, " a man returning from a raid, on which he has killed one of the enemy, may not enter his hut until he has taken cow- dung and rubbed it on the cheeks of the women and children of the village and purified himself by the sacrifice of a goat, a strip of skin from the forehead of which he wears round the right wrist during the four following nights." ^ With the Ja-Luo of Kavirondo the custom is somewhat different. Three days after his return from the fight the warrior shaves his head. But before he may enter his village he has to hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck ; then the bird is decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck. Soon after his return a feast is made for the slain man, in order that his ghost may not haunt his slayer.* In some of these cases the slayer shaves his head, precisely as the matricide Orestes is said to have shorn his hair when he came to his senses.^ From this Greek tradition we may infer with some probability that the hair of Greek homicides, 1 N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, Ve of the tribes of Mount Elgon, by the Bare' e-sfrekendeToradja's van Midden- Hon. Kenneth R. Dundas, which the Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) p. 239. author kindly sent to me. 2 Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda 4 gj^ jj. Johnston, cp. cit. ii. 794 ; Protectorate (London, 1902), 11 743 c. W. Hobley, op. cit. p. 31. sq.\ C. W. Hobley, Eastern Uganda " ^ ^ -^ (London, 1902), p. 20. ^ Pausanias, viii. 34. 3 ; compare 3 Extract from a type- written account Strabo, xii. 2. 3, p. 535. 124 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v like that of these African warriors, was regularly cropped as one way of ridding them of the ghostly infection. Among the Ba-Yaka, a Bantu people of the Congo Free State, " a man who has been killed in battle is supposed to send his soul to avenge his death on the person of the man who killed him ; the latter, however, can escape the vengeance of the dead by wearing the red tail-feathers of the parrot in his hair, and painting his forehead red." ^ Perhaps, as I have suggested elsewhere, this costume is intended to disguise the Precautions slaycr from his victim's ghost.^ Among the Natchez Indians taken by ^f North America young braves who had taken their first the Natchez ^ ° Indians. scalps Were obliged to observe certain rules of abstinence for six months. They might not sleep with their wives nor eat flesh ; their only food was fish and hasty-pudding. If they broke these rules they believed that the soul of the man they had killed would work their death by magic.^ Ghosts of The Kai of German New Guinea stand in great fear of dreaded b ^'^^ ghosts of the men whom they have slain in war. On the Kai of their way back from the field of battle or the scene of j^g™^° massacre they hurry in order to be safe at home or in the Guinea. shelter of a friendly village before nightfall ; for all night long the spirits of the dead are believed to dog the footsteps of their slayers, in the hope of coming up with them and recovering the lost portions of their souls which adhere with the clots of their blood to the spears and clubs that dealt them the death-blow. Only so can these poor restless ghosts find rest and peace. Hence the slayers are careful not to bring back the blood-stained weapons with them into the village ; for that would be the first place where the ghosts would look for them. They hide them, therefore, in the forest at a safe distarlce from the village, where the ghosts can never find them ; and when the spirits are weary of the fruitless search, they go away back to their dead bodies lying, it may be, among the blackened ruins of their 1 E. Torday and T. A. Joyce, (Oxford, 1907), p. 108. "Notes on the Ethnography of the ^ "Relation des Natchez," Recueil HeL-Yalka." ybamal of the Anthropo- de Vcy/ag'es au 2Vord, ix. 24 [Amsterdam, logical Institute, xxxvi. (1906) pp. 1737) ! lettres idifiantes et curieuses, 50 j-^. Nouvelle Edition, vii. (Paris, 1781) 2 J. G. Frazer, "Folk-lore in the p. 26; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Old Testament," in Anthropological Novvelle France (Paris, 1744), vi. Essays presented to E. B. Tylor j86 sq. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 125 desolated home. Then the victors come forth, and taking up the weapons from their hiding-places, wash them clean of blood and bring them back to the village.^ But " as more or less of the soul-stuff of their slain foes always sticks to the victors, none of their people may touch them after their return to the village. They are strictly shunned by their friends for several days. People go shyly out of their way. If any one in the village gets a pain in his stomach, it is assumed that he has sat down on the place of one of the warriors. If somebody complains of toothache, he must have eaten a fruit which had been touched by one of the combatants. All the leavings of the men's food must be most carefully put out of the way, lest a pig should get at them, for that would be the death of the animal. Therefore the remains of their meals are burnt or buried. The warriors themselves cannot suffer much from the soul-stuff of the foes, because they treat themselves with the disinfecting sap of a creeper. But even so they are not secure against all the dangers that threaten them from this quarter." ^ Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, Customs in British New Guinea, "a man who has taken life is "t-servedby ' manslayers considered to be impure until he has undergone certain in British ceremonies : as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses q^^^^ himself and his weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village and seats himself on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or takes any notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which is put in charge of two or three small boys as servants. He may eat only toasted bananas, and only the centre portion of them — the ends being thrown away. On the third day of his seclusion a small feast is prepared by his friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands for him. This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt is organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game cap- tured. It is cut open and the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of the man. He then walks solemnly down to the ^ Ch. Keysser, "Aus dem Leben Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), iii. 147 sq. der ICaileute," in R. Neuhauss's Z>£«/i'^.4 ^ qj,. Keysser, op. cit. p. 132. 126 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself. All young untried warriors swim between his legs. This is supposed to impart his courage and strength to them. The following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed, and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to his house. The beating of flooring boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain method of scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is finished. He can then enter his wife's house." ^ In this last case the true nature of such so-called purifications is clearly manifest : they are in fact rites of exorcism observed for the purpose of banning a dangerous spirit. Customs Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America a murdlrers^ murderer whose life was spared by the kinsmen of his among the victim had to observe certain stringent rules for a period Indians. which Varied from two to four years. He must walk bare- foot, and he might eat no warm food, nor raise his voice, nor look around. He had to pull his robe around him and to keep it tied at the neck, even in warm weather ; he might not let it hang loose or fly open. He might not move his hands about, but had to keep them close to his body. He might not comb his hair, nor might it be blown about by the wind. No one would eat with him, and only one of his kindred was allowed to remain with him in his tent. When the tribe went hunting, he was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of a mile from the rest of the people, " lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind which might cause damage." ^ The reason here alleged for banish- ing the murderer from the camp of the hunters gives the clue to all the other restrictions laid on him : he was haunted by the ghost and therefore dangerous ; hence people kept aloof from him, just as they are said to have done from the ghost-ridden Orestes. Among the Chinook Indians of Oregon and Washington, "when a person has been killed, an old man who has a 1 R. E. Guise, "On the Tribes in- 2 Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, "Omaha habiting the mouth of the V^^anigela Sociology," Third Annual Report of River, New Guinea," Journal of the the Bureatt of Ethnology (Washington, Anthropological Institute , y.:i.m\. {1899) 1884), p. 369. pp. 213 sq. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 127 guardian spirit is asked to work over the murderer. The Ceremonies old man takes coal and mixes it with grease. He puts homiddts"^^ it on to the face of the murderer. He gives him a head among the ring of cedar bark. Cedar bark is also tied around his in^iln", ankles and knees and around his wrists. For five days he does not drink water. He does not sleep, and does not lie down. He always stands. At night he walks about and whistles on bone whistles. He always says ' a a a.' For five days he does not wash his face. Then on the next morning the old man washes his face. He takes off that coal. He removes the black paint from his face. He puts red paint on his face. A little coal is mixed with the red paint. The old man puts this again on to his face. Sometimes this is done by an old man, sometimes by an old woman. The cedar bark which was tied to his legs and arms is taken off and buckskin straps are tied around his arms and his legs. Now, after five days he is given water. He is given a bucket, out of which he drinks. Now food is roasted for him, until it is burned. When it is burned black it is given to him. He eats standing. He takes five mouthsful, and no more. After thirty days he is painted with new red paint. Good red paint is taken. Now he carries his head ring and his bucket to a spruce tree and hangs it on top of the tree. Then the tree will dry up. People never eat in company of a murderer. He never eats sitting, but always standing. When he sits down to rest he kneels on one leg. The murderer never looks at a child and must not see people while they are eating." ^ All these measures are probably intended to rid the murderer of the clinging ghost of his victim, and to keep him in quarantine till the riddance has been effected. While the spirit of a murdered man is thus feared Ghosts of by everybody, it is natural that it should be specially fotkjeiiow- dreaded by those against whom for any reason he may townsmen, , .1,1 IT- 1 ^nd fellow- be conceived to bear a grudge, ror example, among ciansfoik the Yabim of German New Guinea, when the relations of especially ,,,,.. , , dreaded. a murdered man have accepted a bloodwit mstead of avenging his death, they must allow the family of the victim to mark them with chalk on the brow. Were this 1 Franz Boas, Chinook Tex/j- (Washington, 1894), p. 258. 128 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v not done, the ghost of their dead kinsman might come and trouble them for not doing their duty by him ; he might drive away their pigs or loosen their teeth.'' The ghosts of murdered kinsfolk and neighbours are naturally more formidable than those of foreigners and strangers ; for their wrath is hotter and they have more opportunities of wreaking their anger on the hard-hearted friends who either did them to death with their own hands or left their blood unavenged. Indeed some people only fear the wraiths of such persons, and regard with indifference all other ghosts, let them mow and gibber as much as they like. Thus among the Boloki of the Upper Congo " a homicide is not afraid of the spirit of the man he has killed when the slain man belongs to any of the neighbouring towns, as disem- bodied spirits travel in a very limited area only ; but when he kills a man belonging to his own town he is filled with fear lest the spirit shall do him some harm. There are no special rites that he can observe to free himself from these fears, but he mourns for the slain man as though he were a member of his own family. He neglects his personal appearance, shaves his head, fasts for a certain period, and laments with much weeping." ^ Again, a Kikuyu man does not incur ceremonial pollution (thahu) by the slaughter of a man of another tribe, nor even of his own tribe, provided his victim belongs to another clan ; but if the slain man is a member of the same clan as his slayer, the case is grave indeed. However, it is possible by means of a ceremony to bind over the ghost to keep the peace. For this purpose the murderer and the oldest surviving brother of his victim are seated facing each other on two trunks of banana trees ; here they are solemnly fed by two elders with vegetable food of all kinds, which has been provided for the purpose by their mothers and sprinkled with the contents of the stomach of a sacrificed sheep. Next day the elders proceed to the sacred ' K. Vetter, " Uber papuanische ^ Rev. J. H. Weeks, Among Congo Rechtsverhaltnisse, wie solche nament- Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 268; lich bei den Jabim beobachtet wurden," compare id., "Anthropological Notes Nachrichten iiber Kaiser Wilhelms- on the Bangala of the Upper Congo Land und den Bismarck - Archipel, 'S.yvzx" Jou7-nal of the Royal Anthropo- 1897, p. 99; B. Hagen, Unter den logical Institute, fX. (1910) p. 373. Papnas (Wiesbaden, 1899), p. 254. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 129 fig-tree (mugumo), which plays a great part in the religious rites of the Akikuyu. There they sacrifice a pig and deposit some of the fat, the intestines, and the more important bones at the foot of the tree, while they themselves feast on the more palatable parts of the animal. They think that the ghost of the murdered man will visit the tree that very night in the outward shape of a wild cat and consume the meat, and that this offering will prevent him from returning to the village and troubling the inhabitants/ The Bare'e- speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes are Ghosts of greatly concerned about the souls of men who have been dreaded slain in battle. They appear to think that men who have ^y the been killed in war instead of dying by disease have not of Central exhausted their vital energy and that therefore their departed Celebes. spirits are more powerful than the common ruck of ghosts ; and as on account of the unnatural manner of their death they cannot be admitted into the land of souls they continue to prowl about the earth, furious with the foes who have cut them off untimely in the prime of manhood, and demanding of their friends that they shall wage war on the enemy and send forth an expedition every year to kill some of them. If the survivors pay no heed to this demand of the bloodthirsty ghosts, they themselves are exposed to the vengeance of these angry spirits, who pay out their undutiful friends and relatives by visiting them with sickness and death. Hence with the Toradjas war is a sacred duty in which every member of the community is bound to bear a part ; even women and children, who cannot wage real war, must wage mimic warfare at home by hacking with bamboo swords at an old skull of the enemy, while with their shrill voices they utter the war-whoop.^ Thus among these people, as among many more tribes of savages, a belief in the immortality of 1 C. W. Hobley, " Kikuyu Customs in the bark. This appears to have and Beliefs," Journal of the Royal suggested to the savages the idea that Anthropological InUitute, xl. (1910) the tree is a great source of fertility to pp. 438 sq. As to the sanctity of the men and women, to cattle, sheep, and fig-tree (mugumu) among the Akikuyu, goats. see Mervyn W. H. Beech, "The ^ n. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, Z)« sacred fig-tree of the A-kikuyu of East Bare' e-sprekende Toradja's van Midden- Africa," Man, xiii. (1913) pp. 4-6. Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) pp. 285, Mr. Beech traces the reverence for the 290 sq. In recent years the wars be- tree to the white milky sap which tween the tribes have been suppressed exudes from it when an incision is made by the Dutch Government. K I30 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v the soul has been one of the most fruitful causes of blood- shed by keeping up a perpetual state of war between neigh- bouring communities, who dare not make peace with each other for fear of mortally offending the spirits of the dead.^ Ghosts of But, whether friends or foes, the ghosts of all who have all who ijjgj ^ violent death are in a sense a public danger : for their have died '^ r i violent temper is naturally soured and they are apt to fall foul of dMBe^rous '^^ ^''^'- peJ'son they meet without nicely discriminating How the between the innocent and the guilty. The Karens of Burma, projMtfate fo^" example, think that the spirits of all such persons go suchghosts. neither to the upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world of woe, but linger on earth and wander about invisible. They make men sick to death by stealing their souls. Accordingly these vampire-like beings are exceedingly dreaded -by the people, who seek to appease their anger and repel their cruel assaults by propitiatory offerings and the most earnest prayers and supplications.^ They put red, yellow, and white rice in a basket and leave it in the forest, saying : " Ghosts of such as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of hunger or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger's tooth or the serpent's fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of such as died of small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, ill-treat us not, seize not upon our persons, do us no harm. O stay here in this wood. We will bring hither red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for your subsistence." ^ The angry Howcvcr, it is not always by fair words and propitiatory fhe°silin'^ offerings that the community attempts to rid itself of these are some- invisible but dangerous intruders. People sometimes resort cibiy driven '^o more forcible measures. " Once," says a traveller among away with the Indians of North America, " on approaching in the clamour, night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion : they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, 1 found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants ' Compare The Belief in Immortality Oriental Society, iv. No. 2 (New York. andtheWorshipoftheiiead,\.. (London, 1854), pp. 312 sq. 1913) PP- 136-r?., 278j-{i., 468 J?. 3 Bfingau^^ "Les Karins de la 2 Rev. E. B. Cross, "On the Birmanie," Les Missions catholiques, Karens," Journal of the American xx. (1888) p. 208. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 131 from entering the village." ^ Again, after the North American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to death, they used to run through the village, beating the walls, the furniture, and the roofs of the huts with sticks and yelling at the pitch of their voices to drive away the angry ghost of the victim, lest he should seek to avenge the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated body.^ Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, when a murder has been committed in the village, the inhabitants assemble for several evenings successively and shriek and shout to frighten away the ghost, in case he should attempt to come back.^ The Yabim, a tribe in German New Guinea, believe that " the dead can both help and harm, but the fear of their harmful influence is pre- dominant. Especially the people are of opinion that the ghost of a slain man haunts his murderer and brings mis- fortune on him. Hence it is necessary to drive away the ghost with shrieks and the beating of drums. The model of a canoe laden with taro and tobacco is got ready to facilitate his departure."* So when the Bukaua of German New Guinea have won a victory over their foes and have returned home, they kindle a fire in the middle of the village and hurl blazing brands in the direction of the battle- field, while at the same time they make an ear-splitting din, to keep at bay the angry spirits of the slain.* When the cannibal Melanesians of the Bismarck Archipelago have eaten a human body, they shout, blow horns, shake spears, and beat the bushes for the purpose of driving away the ghost of the man or woman whose flesh has just furnished the banquet.^ The Fijians used to bury the sick and aged alive, 1 W. H. Keating, Narrative of an (1891) p. lOl. Expedition to the Sources of St. Peter's 4 k. Vetter, " Uber papuanische River (London, 1825), i. 109, quoting Rechtsverhaltnisse," in Nachrichten Mr. Barron. aber Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den ^ Ch.3.x\evoi-i, Histoire de la Nouvelle Bismarck - Archipel (1897), p. 94; France (Paris, 1744), vi. 77, 122 sq. ; b_ Hagen, Unter den Papuas (Wies- J. F. Lafitau, Mxurs des sauvages baden, 1899), p. 266. amiriquains{^z^% 1724], n. 279. , g ^ Lehner, "Bukaua," in R. 3 H. von Rosenberg Z).. maJayzscAe ^^^^^^^ Neu-Guinea (Ber- Archipel Leipsic, 1878), p. 461- ,. , ■•• Compare J. L. van Hasselt, "Die Im. I9H), '"• 444- Papuastamme an der Geelvinkbai 6 George Brown, D. D. , A/c&K6Sja«j- (Neuguinea)," Mitteilungen der geo- and Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. graphischen Gesellsckaft zu Jena, ix. 142, 145. 132 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE Precau- tions taken against the ghosts of executed criminals and other dangerous persons. and having done so they always made a great uproar with bamboos, shell-trumpets, and so forth in order to scare away the spirits of the buried people and prevent them from returning to their homes ; and by way of removing any temptation to hover about their former abodes they dis- mantled the houses of the dead and hung them with every- thing that in their eyes seemed most repulsive/ Among the Angoni, a Zulu tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, and hang garments of their victims on their persons. This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to banish the ghosts of the slain, which otherwise might bring sickness and misfortune on the people.^ In Travancore the spirits of men who have died a violent death by drowning, hanging, or other means are sup- posed to become demons, wandering about to inflict injury in various ways upon mankind. Especially the ghosts of murderers who have been hanged are believed to haunt the place of execution and its neighbourhood. To prevent this it used to be customary to cut off the criminal's heels with a sword or to hamstring him as he was turned off.* The intention of thus mutilating the body was no doubt to prevent the ghost from walking. How could he walk if he were hamstrung or had no heels? With precisely the same intention it has been customary with some peoples to maim in various ways the dead bodies not only of executed criminals but of other persons ; for all ghosts are more or less dreaded. When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of Bering Strait used in the old days to cut the sinews of his arms and legs " in order to prevent the shade from returning to the body and causing it to walk at night as a ghoul." * The Omaha ^ John Jackson, in J. E. Erskine's Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London, 1853), P- 477- ^ C. Wiese, " Beitrage zur Ge- schichte der Zulu im Norden des Zambesi," Zeitschrift fUr Ethnologie, xxxii. (1900) pp. 197 sq. ^ Rev. Samuel Mateer, The Land of Charity^ a Descriptive Account of Travancore and its People (London, 187 1), pp. 203 sq. * E. W. Nelson, "The Eskimo about Bering Strait," Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part i. (V^ashing- ton. 1899) p. 423. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 133 Indians said that when a man was killed by lightning he should be buried face downwards, and that the soles of his feet should be slit ; for if this were not done, his ghost would walk.'' The Herero of South Africa think that the ghosts of bad people appear and are just as mischievous as in life ; for they rob, steal, and seduce women and girls, sometimes getting them with child. To prevent the dead from playing these pranks the Herero used to cut through the backbone of the corpse, tie it up in a bunch, and sew it into an ox-hide.^ A simple way of disabling a dangerous ghost is to dig up his body and decapitate it. This is done by West African negroes and also by the Armenians ; to make assurance doubly sure the Armenians not only cut off the head but smash it or stick a needle into it or into the dead man's heart.^ The Hindoos of the Punjaub believe that if a mother Precau- dies within thirteen days of her delivery, she will return in i'n°in^^^'^" the guise of a malignant spirit to torment her husband and against the family. To prevent this some people drive nails through ^omenwho her head and eyes, while others also knock nails on either side die in of the door of the house.* A gentler way of attaining the chadbeX^' same end is to put a nail or a piece of iron in the clothes of o"" s°°" the poor dead mother,^ or to knock nails into the earth round the places where she died, and where her dead body was washed and cremated. Some people put pepper in the eyes of the corpse to prevent the ghost from seeing her way back to the house.® In Bilaspore, if a mother dies leaving very young children, they tie her hands and feet before burial to prevent her from getting up by 1 Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, " A Study * H. A. Rose, "Hindu Birth of Siouan Cults," Eleventh Annual Observances in the Punjab," Journal Report of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Royal Anthropological Institute, (Washington, 1894), p. 420. xxxvii. (1907) pp. 225 sq. 2 Dr. P. H. Brincker, " Character, ' G. F. D' Penha, " Superstitions Sitten, und Gebrauche speclell der and Customs in Salsette," The Indian Bantu Deutsch-SUdwestafrikas," Mit- Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 115. teilungen des Seminars fiir orienta- ^ Census of India, igri, vol. xiv. lischen Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. dritte Punjab, Parti. (Lahore, 1912) p, 303. Abteilung (1900), pp. 89 sq. As to these perturbed and perturbing 3 Rev. R. H. Nassau, Felichism in spirits in India, see further W. Crooke, West Africa (London, 1904), p. 220; Popular Religion and Folk-lo7'e of M. Abeghian, Der armenische Volks- Northern India (Westminster, 1896), glauie (Leipsic, 1899), p. II. i. 269-274. They are called churel 134 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v night and going to see her orphaned little ones.-^ The Oraons of Bengal are firmly convinced that any woman who dies in pregnancy or childbirth becomes an evil and danger- ous spirit {bkui), who, if steps are not taken to keep her off, will come back and tickle to death those whom she loved best in life. " To prevent her, therefore, from coming back, they carry her body as far away as they can, but no woman will accompany her to her last resting-place lest similar mis- fortune should happen to her. Arrived at the burial-place, they break the feet above the ankle, twist them round, bringing the heels in front, and then drive long thorns into them. They bury her very deep with her face downwards, and with her they bury the bones of a donkey, and pro- nounce the anathema, ' If you come home may you turn into a donkey ' ; the roots of a palm-tree are also buried with her ; and they say, ' May you come home only when the leaves of the palm-tree wither,' and when they retire they spread mustard seeds all along the road saying, ' When you try to come home pick up all these.' They then feel pretty safe at home from her nocturnal visits, but woe to the man who passes at night near the place where she has been buried. She will pounce upon him, twist his neck, and leave him senseless on the ground, until brooght to by the incantations of a sorcerer." ^ Among the Lushais of Assam, when a woman died in childbed, the relatives offer a sacrifice to her departed soul, " but the rest of that village treat the day as a holiday and put a small green branch on the wall of each house on the outside near the doorpost to keep out the spirit of the dead woman." ^ Precau- Among the Shans of Burma, when a woman dies with an in°Burma° unbom child, it is believed that her spirit turns into a malign- against the ant ghost, " who may return to haunt her husband's home womenwho ^^'^ torment him, unless precautions are taken to keep her die in away. To begin with, her unborn child is removed by an or?hiu-°^ operation ; then mother and child are wrapped in separate I'ed. mats and buried without coffins. If this be not done, the same ' E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk Tales No. 9 (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 139 sq. (London, 1908), p. 47. 3 Lieut. -Colonel H. W. G. Cole, 2 Rev. P. Dehon, S.J., ■' Religion " The Lushais," in Census of India, and Customs of the Uraons," Memoirs igir, vol. iii. Assam, Part I. (Shillong, of the Asiatic Society of BengcU, vol. i. 1912) p. 140. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 135 misfortune may occur again to the woman, in her future life, and the widower will suffer from the attacks of the ghost. When the bodies are being removed from the house, part of the mat wall in the side of the house is taken down, and the dead woman and her baby are lowered to the ground through the aperture. The hole through which the bodies have passed is immediately filled with new mats, so that the ghost may not know how to return." ^ The Kachins of Burma are so afraid of the ghosts of women dying in childbed that no sooner has such a death taken place than the husband, the children, and almost all the people in the house take to flight lest the ghost should bite them. They bandage the eyes of the dead woman with her own hair to prevent her from seeing anything ; they wrap the corpse in a mat and carry it out of the house not by the ordinary door, but by an opening made for the purpose either in the wall or in the floor of the room where she breathed her last. Then they convey the body to a deep ravine where foot of man seldom penetrates, and there, having heaped her clothes, her jewellery, and all her belongings over her, they set fire to the pile and reduce the whole to ashes. " Thus they destroy all the property of the unfortunate woman in order that her soul may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and to bite the people in the attempt." When this has been done, the officiating priest scatters some burnt grain of a climbing plant {shdmien), inserts in the earth the pestle which the dead woman used to husk the rice, and winds up the exorcism by cursing and railing at her ghost, saying : " Wait to come back to us till this grain sprouts and this pestle blossoms, till the fern bears fruit, and the cocks lay eggs." The house in which the woman died is generally pulled down, and the timber may only be" used as firewood or to build small hovels in the fields. Till a new house can be built for them, the widower and the orphans receive the hospitality of their nearest relatives, a father or a brother ; their other friends would not dare to receive them from fear of the ghost. ' Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home ghost, has been observed by many (London, 1910), p. 96. The custom peoples in many parts of the world, of carrying the dead out of the house For examples see The Belief in Im- by a special opening, which is then mortality and the Worship of the Dead, blocked up to prevent the return of the i. 452 sqq. 136 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE V Occasionally the dead mother's jewels are spared from the fire and given away to some poor old crones, who do not trouble their heads about ghosts. If the medicine-man who attended the woman in life and officiated at the funeral is old, he may consent to accept the jewels as the fee for his services ; but in that case no sooner has he got home than he puts the jewels in the henhouse. If the hens remain quiet, it is a good omen and he can keep the trinkets with an easy mind ; but if the fowl flutter and cackle, it is a sign that the ghost is sticking to the jewels, and in a fright he restores them to the family. The old man or old woman into whose hands the trinkets of the dead woman thus some- times fall cannot dispose of them to other members of the tribe ; for nobody who knows where the things come from would be so rash as to buy them. However, they may find purchasers among the Shans or the Chinese, who do not fear Kachin ghosts.^ Precau- The ghosts of womcn who die in childbed are much in the^'^*^" dreaded in the Indian Archipelago ; it is supposed that they Indian appear in the form of birds with long claws and are exceed- peiago i"gly dangerous to their husbands and also to pregnant against the women. A common way of guarding against them is to put woraenwho ^'^ ^gS Under each armpit of the corpse, to press the arms die in close against the body, and to stick needles in the palms of the hands. The people believe that the ghost of the dead woman will be unable to fly and attack people ; for she will not spread out her arms for fear of letting the eggs fall, and she will not clutch anybody for fear of driving the needles deeper into her palms. Sometimes by way of additional precaution another egg is placed under her chin, thorns are thrust into the joints of her fingers and toes, her mouth is stopped with ashes, and her hands, feet, and hair are nailed to the coffin.^ Some Sea Dyaks of Borneo sow the ground 1 Ch. Gilhodes, " Naissance et En- gewoonten op het eiland Timor," fance chez les Katchins (Birmanie)," Tijdschrift voor Neerlands Indie, vii. Anthropos, v\. (\')\l) ^^. ?>']2 sq. Negende Afievering (Batavia, 1845), 2 Van Schmidt, " Aanteekeningen pp. 278 sq., note; B. F. Matthes, nopens de zeden, etc., der bevolking Bijdragen tot de Ethnologic van Zuid- van de eilanden Saparoea, etc.," Celebes (The Hague, 1875), P- 97 > Tijdschrift voor Netrlands Indie, v. W. E. Maxwell, " Folk-lore of the Tweede Deel (Batavia, 1843), pp. 528 M.s.\a.ys," Journal of the Straits Branch sqq. ; G. Heijmering, " Zeden en of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 7 V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 137 near cemeteries with bits of sticks to imitate caltrops, in order Attempts that the feet of any ghosts who walk over them may be and""" lamed.^ The Besisi of the Malay Peninsula bury their dead otherwise in the ground and let fall knives on the grave to prevent the ghosts'! ghost from getting up out of it.^ The Tunguses of Turuk- hansk on the contrary put their dead up in trees, and then lop off all the branches to prevent the ghost from scrambling down and giving them chase.^ The Herbert River natives in Queensland used to cut holes in the stomach, shoulders, and lungs of their dead and fill the holes with stones, in order that, weighed down with this ballast, the ghost might not stray far afield ; to limit his range still further they com- monly broke his legs.^ Other Australian blacks put hot coals in the ears of their departed brother ; this keeps the ghost in the body for a time, and allows the relations to get a good start away from him. Also they bark the trees in a circle round the spot, so that when the ghost does get out and makes after them, he wanders round and round in a circle, always returning to the place from which he started.^ The ancient Hindoos put fetters on the feet of their dead that they might not return to the land of the living.® The Tinneh Indians of Alaska grease the hands of a corpse, so that when his ghost grabs at people's souls to carry them (June 1881), p. 28; W. W. Skeat, Zendelineggnootschaf, xlix. (1905) p. Malay Magic (J^ouAoTi, igoo), p. 325; 113. The common name for these I.G.Y.'SJ.t&tXyDesluik-enkroesharige dreaded ghosts is pontianak. For a rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The full account of them see A. C. Kruijt, Hague, 1886), p. 81 ; B. C. A. J. van Hei Animisme in den Indischen Dinter, " Eenige geographische en Archipel, pp. 245 sqq. ethnographische aanteekeningen betref- ^ J. Perham, "Sea Dyak Religion," fende het eiland Siaoe," Tijdschrift Journal of the Straits Braruh of the voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volken- Royal Asiatic Society, No. 14 (Singa- kunde, xli. (1899) p. 381 ; A. C. pore, 1885), pp. 291 sg. Kruijt, " Eenige ethnografische aantee- ^ W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, keningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de Pagan Paces of the Malay Peninsula Tomori," Mededeelingen van wege het (London, 1906), ii. 109. Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, ' T. de Pauly, Description ethno- xliv. (Rotterdam, 1900) p. 218; id., graphique des peuples de la Russie (St. Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel Petersburg, 1862), Peuples ouralo- (The Hague, 1906), p. 252 : G. A. altdiques, p. 71. Wilken, Handleiding voor de vergelij- * A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of kende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- South-East Australia (London, 1904), Indie (Leyden, 1893), p. 559 ; J. PI. p. 474- Meerwaldt, " Gebruiken der Bataks in * a_ -w. Howitt, op. cit. p. 473. het maatschappelijk leven," Mededeel- ' H. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben ingen van wege het Nederlandsche (Berlin, 1879), p. 402. 138 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v off with him they slip through his greasy fingers and escape.^ The way Some pcoplcs bar the road from the grave to prevent baScaded ^^^ ghost from following them. The Tunguses make the against barrier of snow or trees.^ Amongst the Mangars, one of ghosts. jj^g fighting tribes of Nepal, " when the mourners return home, one of their party goes ahead and makes a barricade of thorn bushes across the road midway between the grave and the house of the deceased. On the top of the thorns he puts a big stone on which he takes his stand, holding a pot of burning incense in his left hand and some woollen thread in his right. One by one the mourners step on the stone and pass through the smoke of the incense to the other side of the thorny barrier. , As they pass, each takes a piece of thread from the man who holds the incense and ties it round his neck. The object of this curious ceremony is to prevent the spirit of the dead man from coming home with the mourners and establishing itself in its old haunts. Conceived of as a miniature man, it is believed to be unable to make its way on foot through the thorns, while the smell of the incense, to which all spirits are highly sensitive, pre- vents it from surmounting this obstacle on the shoulders of one of the mourners." ^ The Chins of Burma burn their dead and collect the bones in an earthen pot. Afterwards, at a convenient season, the pot containing the bones is carried away to the ancestral burial-place, which is generally situated in the depth of the jungle. " When the people convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with them some cotton-yarn, and whenever they come to any stream or other water, they stretch a thread across, whereby the spirit of the deceased, who accompanies them, may get across it too. When they have duly deposited the bones and food for the spirit in the cemetery they return home, ' Rev. Father Julius Jett^, " On and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic the Superstitions of the Ten'a Indians," Glossary, ii. (Calcutta, 1891) pp. 75 Anthrofos, vi. (191 1) p. 707. sq. Compare E. T. Atkinson, The 9„, -r, , „ .,,. J, Himalayan Districts of the North- ■" 1. de rauly. Description ethno- Tjr j n ■ j- 7 j- ■• ,»ii _.,. , J ^T I 1 n • western Frovmces of India, u. (AUa- graphique des peuples de la Russu u u j 00 » o tit /-• i ,cC-o\ 1 ai \ n ^7 , habad, 1884) p. 832: W. Crooke, (bt. i'etersburg, is52), Peuples ouralo- t> , , dT- ■ J t^ ,1 , \r , .. ° " ^ Fopular Religion and Folk - lore of ^ ' "■ ' ■ Northern India (Westminster, 1896), 3 (Sir) H. H. Risley, The Tribes ii. 57. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 139 after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to follow them back to the village. At the same time they block the way by which they return by putting a bamboo across the path." ^ Thus the mourners make the way to the grave as easy as possible for the ghost, but obstruct the way by which he might return from it. The Algonquin Indians, not content with beating the Devices of walls of their huts to drive away the ghost, stretched nets American round them in order to catch the spirit in the meshes, if Indians to lc€60 fifhosts he attempted to enter the house. Others made stinks to at bay. keep him off.^ The Ojebways also resorted to a number of devices for warding off the spirits of the dead. These have been described as follows by a writer who was himself an Ojebway : "If the deceased was a husband, it is often the custom for the widow, after the burial is over, to spring or leap over the grave, and then run zigzag behind the trees, as if she were fleeing from some one. This is called running away from the spirit of her husband, that it may not haunt her. In the evening of the day on which the burial has taken place, when it begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns through the hole left at the top of the wigwam. As soon as this firing ceases, the old women commence knocking and making such a rattling at the door as would frighten away any spirit that would dare to hover near. The next ceremony is, to cut into narrow strips, like ribbon, thin birch bark. These they fold into shapes, and hang round inside the wigwam, so that the least puff of wind will move them. With such scarecrows as these, what spirit would venture to disturb their slumbers ? Lest this should not prove effectual, they will also frequently take a deer's tail, and after burning or singeing off all the hair, will rub the necks or faces of the children before they lie down to sleep, thinking that the offensive smell will be another preventive to the spirit's entrance. I well remember when I used to be daubed over with this disagreeable fumigation, and had great faith in it all. Thinking that the soul lingers about the body a long time before it 1 Rev. G. Whitehead, "Notes on ^ Relations des Jhuiies, 1639, p. 44 the Chins of Burma," Indian Anti- (Canadian reprint, Quebec, 1858). quary, xxxvi. (1907) pp. 214 sq. 140 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v takes its final departure, they use these means to hasten it away."^ Spirits of The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco in South ^ea'tfy'^ America live in great fear of the spirits of their dead. feared by They imagine that any one of these disembodied spirits can indians^oT become incarnate again and take a new lease of life on the Gran earth, if Only it can contrive to get possession of a living man's body during the temporary absence of his soul. For like many other savages they imagine that the soul absents itself from the body during sleep to wander far away in the land of dreams. So when night falls, the ghosts of the dead come crowding to the villages and lurk about, hoping to find vacant bodies into which they can enter. Such are to the thinking of the Lengua Indian the perils and dangers of the night. When he awakes in the morning from a dream in which he seemed to be hunting or fishing far away, he concludes that his soul cannot yet have returned from such a far journey, and that the spirit within him must therefore be some ghost or demon, who has taken possession of his corporeal tenement in the absence of its proper owner. And if these Indians dread the spirits of the departed at all times, they dread them doubly at the moment when they have just shuffled off the mortal coil. No sooner has a person died than the whole village is deserted. Even if the death takes place shortly before sun- set the place must at all costs be immediately abandoned, lest with the shades of night the ghost should return and do a mischief to the villagers. Not only is the village deserted, but every hut is burned down and the property of the dead man destroyed. For these Indians believe that, however good and kind a man may have been in his lifetime, his ghost is always a source of danger to the peace and pros- perity of the living. The night after his death his dis- embodied spirit comes back to the village, and chilled by the cool night air looks about for a fire at which to warm himself He rakes in the ashes to find at least a hot coal which he may blow up into a flame. But if they are all cold and dead, he flings a handful of them in the air 1 Rev. Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians (London, N.D.), pp. 99 sq. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 141 and departs in dudgeon. Any Indian who treads on such « ashes will have ill-luck, if not death, following at his heels. To prevent such mishaps the villagers take the greatest pains to collect and bury all the ash - heaps before they abandon the village. What the fate of a hamlet would be in which the returning ghost found the inhabitants still among their houses, no Indian dares to imagine. Hence it happens that many a village which was full of life at noon is a smoking desert at sunset. And as the Lenguas ascribe all sickness to the machinations of evil spirits and sorcerers, they mutilate the persons of their dying or dead in order to counteract and punish the authors of the disease. For this purpose they cut off the portion of the body in which the evil spirit is supposed to have ensconced himself. A common operation performed on the dying or dead man is this. A gash is made with a knife in his side, the edges of the wound are drawn apart with the fingers, and in the wound are deposited a dog's bone, a stone, and the claw of an armadillo. It is believed that at the departure of the soul from the body the stone will rise up to the Milky Way and will stay there till the author of the death has been discovered. Then the stone will come shooting down in the shape of a meteor and kill, or at least stun, the guilty party. That is why these Indians stand in terror of falling stars. The claw of the armadillo serves to grub up the earth and, in conjunction with the meteor, to ensure the destruction of the evil spirit or the sorcerer. What the virtue of the dog's bone is supposed to be has not yet been ascertained by the missionaries.^ The Bhotias, who inhabit the Himalayan district of a scape- British India, perform an elaborate ceremony for trans- l^osts"" ferring the spirit of a deceased person to an animal, which is finally beaten by all the villagers and driven away, that it may not come back. Having thus expelled the ghost the 1 " Sitten und Gebrauche der Len- diseased members of a corpse, in the gua-Indianer, nach Missionsberichten belief that if they did not do so the von G. Kurze," Mitteilungen der geo- person would suffer from the same grapMschen Gesellschaft zujena, xxiii. disease at his next reincarnation. See (1905) pp. IJ sq., 19 sq., 21 sq. The Charles Partridge, Cross River Natives Cross River natives of Southern Nigeria, (London, 1905), pp. 238 j?. like the Lengua Indians, cut off the 142 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE Precau- tions taken by widows in Africa against their husbands' ghosts. Precau- tions taken by widows and widowers in British Columbia against the ghosts of their spouses. people return joyfully to the village with songs and dances. In some places the animal which thus serves as a scapegoat is a yak, the forehead, back, and tail of which must be white. But elsewhere, under the influence of Hindooism, sheep and goats have been substituted for yaks.^ Widows and widowers are especially obnoxious to the ghosts of their deceased spouses, and accordingly they have to take special precautions against them. For example, among the Ewe negroes of Agome, in German Togoland, a widow is bound to remain for six weeks in the hut where her husband lies buried. She is naked, her hair is shaved off, and she is armed with a stick with which to repel the too pressing familiarities of her husband's ghost ; for were she to submit to them, she would die on the spot. At night she sleeps with the stick under her, lest the wily ghost should attempt to steal it from her in the hours of slumber. Before she eats or drinks she always puts some coals on the food or in the beverage, to prevent her dead husband from eating or drinking with her ; for if he did so, she would die. If any one calls to her, she may not answer, for her dead husband would hear her, and she would die. She may not eat beans or flesh or fish, nor drink palm-wine or rum, but she is allowed to smoke tobacco. At night a fire is kept up in the hut, and the widow throws powdered peppermint leaves and red pepper on the flames to make a stink, which helps to keep the ghost from the house.^ Among many tribes of British Columbia the conduct of a widow and a widower for a long time after the death of their spouse is regulated by a code of minute and burden- some restrictions, all of which appear to be based on the notion that these persons, being haunted by the ghost, are not only themselves in peril, but are also a source of danger to others. Thus among the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia widows and widowers fence their beds with thorn bushes to keep off the ghost of the deceased ; indeed they ' Charles A. Sherring, Western Tibet afid the British Borderland (London, 1906), pp. 127-132. 2 Lieutenant Herold, ' ' Bericht be- trefTend religiose Anschauungen und Gebrauche der deutschen Ewe-Neger," Mitteilungen von Forschungsreisenden und Gelehrten aus den deutschen SchuizgeUeten,v. Heft 4 (Berlin, 1892), p. 1 5 5 ; H. Klose, Togo unter deittscher Flagge (Berlin, 1899), p. 274. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 143 lie on such bushes, in order that the ghost may be under little temptation to share their bed of thorns. They must build a sweat-house on a creek, sweat there all night, and bathe regularly in the creek, after which they must rub their bodies with spruce branches. These branches may be used only once for this purpose ; afterwards they are stuck in the ground all round about the hut, probably to fence off the ghost. The mourners must also use cups and cooking vessels of their own, and they may not touch their own heads or bodies. Hunters may not go near them, and any person on whom their shadow were to fall would at once be ill.'^ Again, among the Tsetsaut Indians, when a man dies his brother is bound to marry the widow, but he may not do so before the lapse of a certain time, because it is believed that the dead man's ghost haunts his widow and would do a mischief to his living rival. During the time of her mourning the widow eats out of a stone dish, carries a pebble in her mouth, and a crab-apple stick up the back of her jacket. She sits upright day and night. Any person who crosses the hut in front of her is a dead man. The restrictions laid on a widower are similar.^ Among the Lkungen or Songish Indians, in Vancouver Island, widow and widower, after the death of husband or wife, are for- bidden to cut their hair, as otherwise it is believed that they would gain too great power over the souls and welfare of others. They must remain alone at their fire for a long time and are forbidden to mingle with other people. When they eat, nobody may see them. They must keep their faces covered for ten days. For two days after the burial they fast and are not allowed to speak. After that they may speak a little, but before addressing any one they must go into the woods and clean themselves in ponds and with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they call out his name when they first break their fast, and they bite very hard in eating. That is believed to kill their enemy, probably (though this is not said) by directing the 1 Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on ^ Pranz Boas, in Tenth Report on the North- Western Tribes of Canada, the North- Western Tribes of Canada, p. <)2 (Report of the British Association p. 45 {Report of the British Associa- for the Advancement of Science, Leeds, tion for the Advancement of Science, 1890, separate reprint). Ipswich, 1895, separate reprint). 144 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE V attention of the ghost to him. They may not go near the water nor eat fresh salmon, or the fish might be driven away. They may not eat warm food, else their teeth would fall out.^ Among the Bella Coola Indians the bed of a mourner is protected against the ghost of the deceased by thorn-bushes stuck into the ground at each corner. He rises early in the morning and goes out into the- woods, where he makes a square with thorn-bushes, and inside of this square, where he is probably supposed to be safe from the intrusion of the ghost, he cleanses himself by rubbing his body with cedar- branches. He also swims in ponds, and after swimming he cleaves four small trees and creeps through the clefts, following the course of the sun. This he does on four sub- sequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day. We may surmise that the intention of creeping through the cleft trees is to give the slip to the ghost. The mourner also cuts his hair short, and the cut hair is burnt. If he did not observe these regulations, it is believed that he would dream of the deceased, which to the savage mind is another way of saying that he would be visited by his ghost. Amongst these Indians the rules of mourning for a widower or widow are especially strict. For four days he or she must fast and may not speak a word, else the dead wife or husband would come and lay a cold hand on the mouth of the offender, who would die. They may not go near water and are forbidden to catch or eat salmon for a whole year. During that time also they may not eat fresh herring or candle-fish (olachen). Their shadows are deemed unlucky and may not fall on any person.^ Precau- Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia tions taken widows or widowers, on the death of their husbands or wives, and™ °"^ went out at once and passed through a patch of rose-bushes widowers four times. The intention of this ceremony is not reported, among the , ^ . , ,, , .. , , , Thompson but wc may conjecture that it was supposed to deter the Indians. ghost from following for fear of scratching himself or herself on the thorns. For four days after the death widows and 1 Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on 2 Yxzxiz Boas, in Seventh Report on the North- Western Tribes of Canada, the North- Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 23 j-jf. [Report of the British Asso- p. 13 [Report of the British Associa- eiation for the Advancement of Science, tion for the Advancement of Science, Leeds, 1890, separate reprint). Cardiff, 1 89 1, separate reprint). Y RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 145 widowers had to wander about at evening or break of day wiping their eyes with fir-twigs, which they hung up in the branches of trees, praying to the Dawn. They also rubbed their eyes with a snnall stone taken from under running water, then threw it away, while they prayed that they might not become blind. The first four days they might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks, and spat out the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into the fire. For a year they had to sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread at the foot, head, and middle. Many also wore a few small twigs of rose-bush on their persons. The use of the rose- bush was no doubt to keep off the ghost through fear of the prickles. They were forbidden to eat fresh fish and flesh of any kind for a year. A widower might not fish at another man's fishing-place or with another man's net. If he did, it would make the station and the net useless for the season. If a widower transplanted a trout into another lake, before releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chew- ing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease out on its head, so as to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let it go, bidding the fish farewell, and asking it to propagate its kind. Any grass or branches upon which a widow or widower sat or lay down withered up. If a widow were to break sticks or branches, her own hands or arms would break. She might not cook food nor fetch water for her children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she lie or sit where they slept. Some widows wore a breech- cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, lest the ghost of her dead husband should have connexion with her. A widower might not fish or hunt, because it was unlucky both for him and for other hunters. He did not allow his shadow to pass in front of another widower or of any person who was supposed to be gifted with more knowledge or magic than ordinary.^ Among the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia the rules enjoined on widows and widowers were somewhat similar. But a widower had to observe a ' James Teit, "The Thompson In- tioit, Memoir of the American Museum dians of British Columbia," pp. 332 of Natural History, April, 1900). sg. ( The Jesup North Pa ific Expedi- Indians. 146 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v singular custom in eating. He ate his food with the right hand passed underneath his right leg, the knee of which was raised.^ The motive for conveying food to his mouth in this roundabout fashion is not mentioned : we may conjecture that it was to baffle the hungry ghost, who might be supposed to watch every mouthful swallowed by the mourner, but who could hardly suspect that food passed under the knee was intended to reach the mouth. Precau- Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia we tions taken ^^.^ ^^j j « ^^ regulations referring to the mourning period and are very severe. In case of the death of husband or wife, Tmong^the ^^ survivor has to observe the following rules : for four Kwakiutl days after the death the survivor must sit motionless, the knees drawn up toward the chin. On the third day all the inhabitants of the village, including children, must take a bath. On the fourth day some water is heated in a wooden kettle, and the widow or widower drips it upon his head. When he becomes tired of sitting motionless, and must move, he thinks of his enemy, stretches his legs slowly four times, and draws them up again. Then his enemy must die. During the following sixteen days he must remain on the same spot, but he may stretch out his legs. He is not allowed, however, to move his hands. Nobody must speak to him, and whosoever disobeys this command will be punished by the death of one of his relatives. Every fourth day he takes a bath. He is fed twice a day by an old woman at the time of low water, with salmon caught in the preceding year, and given to him in the dishes and spoons of the deceased. While sitting so his mind is wandering to and fro. He sees his house and his friends as though far, far away. If in his visions he sees a man near by, the latter is sure to die at no distant day ; if he sees him very far away, he will continue to live long. After the sixteen days have passed, he may lie down, but not stretch out. He takes a bath every eighth day. At the end of the first month he takes off his clothing, and dresses the stump of a tree with it. After another month has passed he may sit in a corner 1 James Teit, " The Lillooet In- pedition. Memoir of the American dians " (Leyden and New York, 1906), Museum of Natural History), p. 271 {The Jesup North Pacific Ex- V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 147 of the house, but for four months he must not mingle with others. He must not use the house door, but a separate door is cut for his use. Before he leaves the house for the first time he must three times approach the door and return, then he may leave the house. After ten months his hair is cut short, and after a year the mourning is at an end."^ Though the reasons for the elaborate restrictions thus imposed on widows and widowers by the Indians of British Columbia are not always stated, we may safely infer that one and all they are dictated by fear of the ghost, who, haunting the surviving spouse, surrounds him or her with a dangerous atmosphere, a contagion of death, which necessi- tates his seclusion both from the people themselves and from the principal sources of their food supply, especially from the fisheries, lest the infected person should poison them by his malignant presence. We can, therefore, understand the Social extraordinary treatment of a widower by the Papuans of °f ''^'^'™ Issoudun in British New Guinea. His miseries begin with widowers the moment of his wife's death. He is immediately stripped Guinea of all his ornaments, abused and beaten by his wife's rela- dictated tions, his house is pillaged, his gardens devastated, there is the ghosts no one to cook for him. He sleeps on his wife's grave till of 'heir '■ ° dead wives. the end of his mournmg. He may never marry agam. By the death of his wife he loses all his rights. It is civil death for him. Old or young, chief or plebeian, he is no longer anybody, he does not count. He may not hunt or fish with the others ; his presence would bring misfortune ; the spirit of his dead wife would frighten the fish or the game. He is no longer heard in the discussions. He has no voice in the council of elders. He may not take part in a dance ; he may not own a garden. If one of his children marries, he has no right to interfere in anything or receive any present. If he were dead, he could not be ignored more completely. He has become a nocturnal animal. He is forbidden to shew himself in public, to traverse the village, to walk in the roads and paths. Like a boar, he must go in the grass or 1 Franz Boas, in Fifth Report on ciation for the Advancement of Science, the North- Western Tribes of Canada, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1889, separate pp. 43 sq. {Report of the British Asso- reprint). 148 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v the bushes. If he hears or sees any one, especially a woman, coming from afar, he must hide himself behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to go hunting or fishing by himself, he must go at night. If he has to consult any one, even the missionary, he does it in great secrecy and by night. He seems to have lost his voice, and only speaks in a whisper. He is painted black from head to foot. The hair of his head is shaved, except two tufts which flutter on his temples. He wears a skull-cap which covers his head com- pletely to the ears ; it ends in a point at the back of his neck. Round his waist he wears one, two, or three sashes of plaited grass ; his arms and legs from the knees to the ankles are covered with armlets and leglets of the same sort ; and round his neck he wears a similar ornament. His diet is strictly regulated, but he does not observe it more than he can help, eating in secret whatever is given him or he can lay his hands on. " His tomahawk accompanies him every- where and always. He needs it to defend himself against the wild boars and also against the spirit of his dead wife, who might take a fancy to come and play him some mis- chievous prank ; for the souls of the dead come back often and their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the spirits without exception are bad and have no pleasure but in harming the living. Happily people can keep them at bay by a stick, fire, an arrow, or a tomahawk. The con- dition of a widower, far from exciting pity or compassion, only serves to render him the object of horror and fear. Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being more or less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to give the lie to public opinion. They are forced to become idlers and thieves, since they are forbidden to work : no work, no gardens ; no gardens, no food : steal then they must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied without some audacity and knavery at a pinch." ^ The wide- It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply evidence of ghostr"^ of the terror which a belief in ghosts has spread among man- among kind, and of the consequences, sometimes tragical, sometimes ' Father Guis (de la Congregation du mort-deuil," Les Missions catholiques, Sacr^-CcEur d'Issoudun, Missionnaire xxxiv. (Lyons, 1 902) pp. 208 sq. en Nouvelle-Guinee), " Les Canaques, V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 149 ludicrous, which that belief has brought in its train.^ The pre- mankind ceding instances may suffice for my purpose, which is merely abiv^had' to indicate the probability that this widespread superstition has the effect served a useful purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human ^en'tess^ life. For it is reasonable to suppose that men are more loth ^ady to to spill the blood of their fellows when they believe that by other's so doing they expose themselves to the vengeance of an I'^^s. angry and powerful spirit whom it is difficult either to evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we are not left wholly to conjecture. In the vast empire of China, as in China we are assured by the best living authority on Chinese '^^ lo^er" religion, the fear of ghosts has actually produced this salutary of ghosts is result. Amongst the Chinese the faith in the existence of ""'™"^' the dead, in their power to reward kindness and avenge injury, is universal and inveterate ; it has been handed down from an immemorial past, and it is nourished in the experience, or rather iri the mind, of everybody by hundreds of ghost stories, all of which are accepted as authentic. Nobody doubts that ghosts may interfere at any moment for good or evil in the business of life, in the regulation of human destiny. To the Chinese their dead are not what our dead are to most ol us, a dim sad memory, a shadowy congregation somewhere far away, to whom we may go in time, but who cannot come to us or exercise any influence on the land of the living. On the contrary, in the opinion of the Chinese the dead not only exist but keep up a most lively intercourse, an active interchange of good and evil, with the survivors. There is, indeed, even in China, a line of demarcation between men and spirits, between the living and the dead, but it is said to be very faint, almost imperceptible. This perpetual commerce between the two worlds, the material and the spiritual, is a source both of bane and of blessing : the spirits of the departed rule human destiny with a rod of iron or of gold. From them man has everything to hope, but also much to fear. Hence as a natural consequence it is to the ghosts, to the souls of the dead, that the Chinaman 1 Elsewhere I have illustrated the Theory of the Soul," Journal of the fear of the dead as it is displayed in Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886) funeral customs ("On certain Burial pp. ()\ sqq.). Customs as illustrative of the Primitive ISO RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v pays his devotions ; it is around their dear or dreadful figures as a centre that his reh'gion revolves. To ensure their good- will and help, to avert their wrath and fierce attacks, that is the first and the last object of his religious ceremonies.-^ In China This faith of the Chinese in the existence and power of huTian Hfe ^^ dead, we are informed, " indubitably exercises a mighty in enforced and Salutary influence upon morals. It enforces respect for ghostt^ ° human life and a charitable treatment of the infirm, the aged and the sick, especially if they stand on the brink of the grave. Benevolence and humanity, thus based on fears and selfishness, may have little ethical value in our eye ; but for all that, their existence in a country where culture has not yet taught man to cultivate good for the sake of good alone, may be greeted as a blessing. Those virtues are even ex- tended to animals, for, in fact, these too have souls which may work vengeance or bring reward. But the firm belief in ghosts and their retributive justice has still other effects. It deters from grievous and provoking injustice, because the wronged party, thoroughly sure of the avenging power of his own spirit when disembodied, will not always shrink from converting himself into a wrathful ghost by committing suicide," in order to wreak in death that vengeance on his oppressor which he could not exact in life. Cases of suicide committed with this intention are said to be far from rare in China.^ " This simple complex of tenets," says Professor de Groot, " lays disrespect for human lives under great In particu- restraint. Most salutarily also they work upon female LTghoste'^'^ infanticide, a monstrous custom practised extensively among acts as a the poor in Amoy and the surrounding farming districts, the prac" ^s i" many other parts of the Empire. The fear that the tice of souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up, in the street for adoption into some family or into a foundling-hospital." Humane and well-to-do people take advantage of these superstitious fears to inculcate a merciful treatment of female infants ; for they print and circulate gratuitously tracts which set forth many gruesome > J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious 2 j_ j, m_ jg Groot, The Religious System of China, iv. (Leyden, 1901) System of China, iv. 450 jj>. pp. 436 sqq., especially pp. 450, 464. V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 151 examples of punishments inflicted upon unnatural fathers and mothers by the ghosts of their murdered daughters. These highly-coloured narratives, though they bear all the marks of a florid fancy, are said to answer their benevolent purpose perfectly ; for they sink deep into the credulous minds to which they are addressed : they touch the seared conscience and the callous hea,rt which no appeal to mere natural affection could move to pity.^ But while the fear of the ghost has thus operated directly The fear to enhance the sanctity of human life by deterring the cruel, of ghosts •' / fc> ' operates in the passionate, and the malignant from the shedding of blood, a twofold it has operated also indirectly to bring about the same salu- ™^r°e tary result. For not only does the hag-ridden murderer respect for himself dread his victim's ghost, but the whole community, it'furnishes as we have seen, dreads it also and believes itself endangered the in- by the murderer's presence, since the wrathful spirit which with a pursues him may turn on other people and rend them. ™o«™ for ^T • 1 - I- 1 i. . ■ 1 • abstaining Hence society has a strong motive for secluding, banishing, from or exterminating the culprit in order to free itself from what ""\rder, it believes to be an imminent danger, a perilous pollution, furnishes a contagion of death.^ To put it in another way, the com- Jjj^n'jt"' munity has an interest in punishing homicide. Not that the with a treatment of homicides by the tribe or state was originally punlJ^ng"^ conceived as a punishment inflicted on them : rather it was the viewed as a measure of self-defence, a moral quarantine, a """"^ '^^^' process of spiritual purification and disinfection, an exorcism. It was a mode of cleansing the people generally and some- times the homicide himself from the ghostly infection, which to the primitive- mind appears to be something material and tangible, something that can be literally washed or scoured away by water, pig's blood, sheep's blood, or other detergents. But when this purification took the form of laying the manslayer under restraint, banishing him from the country, or putting him to death in order to appease his victim's ghost, it was for all practical purposes indis- tinguishable from punishment, and the fear of it would ' J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious curse of barrenness on the land (Anti- System of China, \v. /^^T -^60. phon, ed. F. Blass, Leipsic, 1871, 2 The Greek orator Antiphon ob- pp. 13, 15, 30). See further L. R. serves that the presence of a homicide Farnell, The Evolution of Religion pollutes the whole city and brings the (London, 1905), pp. it,() sqq. 152 RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE v act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been designed to be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is about to be hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told that hanging is not a punishment but a purification. But the one conception slides easily and almost imperceptibly into the other ; so that what was at first a religious rite, a solemn consecration or sacrifice, comes in course of time to be a purely civil function, the penalty which society exacts from those who have injured it: the sacrifice becomes an execution, the priest steps back and the hangman comes forward. Thus criminal justice was probably based in large measure on a crude form of superstition long before the subtle brains of jurists and philosophers deduced it logically, according to their various predilections, from a rigid theory of righteous retribution, a far-sighted policy of making the law a terror to evil-doers, or a benevolent desire to reform the criminal's character and save his soul in another world by hanging or burning his body in this one. If these deduc- tions only profess to justify theoretically the practice of punishment, they may be well or ill founded ; but if they claim to explain it historically, they are certainly false. You cannot thus reconstruct the past by importing into one age the ideas of another, by interpreting the earliest in terms of the latest products of mental evolution. You may make revolutions in that way, but you cannot write history. When the If these views are correct, the dread of the ghost has '^h^ste has operated in a twofold way to protect human life. On the diminished, one hand it has made every individual for his own sake more the law °^ reluctant to slay his fellow, and on the other hand it has roused remains to the whole Community to punish the slayer. It has placed Uves^of ^ every man's life within a double ring-fence of morality and peaceful law. The hot-headed and the cold-hearted have been fur- nished with a double motive for abstaining from the last fatal step : they have had to fear the spirit of their victim on the one side and the lash of the law on the other : they are in a strait between the devil and the deep sea, between the ghost and the gallows. And when with the progress of thought the shadow of the ghost passes away, the grim shadow of the gallows remains to protect society without the aid of superstitious terrors. It is thus that custom often V RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE 153 outlives the motive which originated it. If only an institu- tion is good in practice, it will stand firm after its old theoretical basis has been shattered : a new and more solid, because a truer, foundation will be discovered for it to rest upon. More and more, as time goes on, morality shifts its ground from the sands of superstition to the rock of reason, from the imaginary to the real, from the supernatural to the natural. In the present case the State has not ceased to protect the lives of its peaceful citizens because the faith in ghosts is shaken. It has found a better reason than old wives' fables for guarding with the flaming sword of Justice the approach to the Tree of Life. VI CONCLUSION Summary To sum Up this brief review of the influence which of results, superstition has exercised on the growth of institutions, I think I have shewn, or at least made probable : — I. That among certain races and at certain times super- stition has strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil order : II. That among certain races and at certain times super- stition has strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment : III. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the married and the un- married : IV. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoy- ment. By streng- But government, private property, marriage, and respect thenmg the j-^j. human life are the pillars on which rests the whole fabric respect for '^ govern- of civil society. Shake them and you shake society to its "rtvate foundations. Therefore if government, private property, property, marriage, and respect for human life are all good and arKi human essential to the very existence of civil society, then it Hfe super- follows that by Strengthening every one of them superstition rendered a ^as rendered a great service to humanity. It has supplied great multitudes with a motive, a wrong motive it is true, for 154 VI CONCLUSION 155 right action ; and surely it is better, far better for the world service to that men should do right from wrong motives than that they ^"™=i""y- should do wrong with the best intentions. What concerns society is conduct, not opinion : if only our actions are just and good, it matters not a straw to others whether our opinions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and it is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong action ; hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every effort should be made to correct it. But of the two evils wrong action is in itself infinitely Tjworse than false opinion ; and all systems of religion or philosophy which lay more stress on right opinion than on right action, which exalt orthodoxy above virtue, are so far immoral and prejudicial to the best interests of mankind : they invert the true relative importance, the real ethical value, of thought and action, for it is by what we do, not by what we think, that we are useful or useless, beneficent or maleficent to our fellows. As a body of false opinions, therefore, superstition is indeed a most dangerous guide in practice, and the evils which it has wrought are incalculable. But vast as are these evils, they ought not to blind us to the benefit which superstition has conferred on society by furnishing the ignorant, the weak, and the foolish with a motive, bad though it be, for good conduct. It is a reed, a broken reed, which has yet supported the steps of many a poor erring brother, who but for it might have stumbled and fallen. It is a light, a dim and wavering light, which, if it has lured many a mariner on the breakers, has yet guided some wanderers on life's troubled sea into a haven of rest and peace. Once the harbour lights are passed and the ship is in port, it matters little whether the pilot steered by a Jack-o'-lantern or by the stars. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my plea for Superstition. Super- Perhaps it might be urged in mitigation of the sentence ^''"°" ^' which will be passed on the hoary-headed offender when Sentence he stands at the judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not °'^'^'=^"^- doubt it, is death. But it will not be executed in our time. There will be a long, long reprieve. It is as his advocate, not as his executioner, that I have appeared before you iS6 CONCLUSION vi to-niglit. At Athens cases of murder were tried before the Areopagus by night/ and it is by night that I have spoken in defence of this power of darkness. But it grows late, and with my sinister client I must vanish before the cocks crow and the morning breaks grey in the east. 1 Lucian, Hermotimus, 64, xarA iroiev: id., De domo,\^,d iif)]Tixot-Ti-^ rods ' ApcLOTrayiTas a^rb iroiouvTa, ot iv TravreXQ^ rui^Xds &V ^ iif vvktI &(nrep vvktI Kal (TK&rtf SiKd^ovffLv, ois fii) is Toijs ij i^ 'Apuov irdyov ^ovKij ttoioZto t^v \4yoifTas, dW is rd Xeyd/xeya diropXi- dKpdairiy, THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IS7 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY^ The subject of the chair which I have the honour to hold is Social Social Anthropology. As the subject is still comparatively p°i*™" new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my province. Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving family Anthro- of the sciences. Anthropology, or the Science of Man, is the stud^^o? latest born. So young indeed is the study that three of its recent date. distinguished founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr. Francis Galton, are happily still with us. It is true that particular departments of man's complex nature have long been the theme of special studies. Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has explored his' mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encom- passed on every hand. But it has been reserved for the present generation, or rather for the generation which is passing away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire not merely into the physical and mental structure of the individual, but to compare the various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to ' A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th, 1908. 159 l6o THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY The scope of Social Anthro- pology more limited than that of Sociology ; it includes only the rudiment- ary phases of human society. discover the general laws to which the particular facts may be supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, because research in all departments has rendered it ante- cedently probable that everywhere law and order will be found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that accordingly the affairs of man, however complex and incal- culable they may seem to be, are no exception to the uniformity of nature. Anthropology, therefore, in the widest sense of the word, aims at discovering the general laws which have regulated human history in the past, and which, if nature is really uniform, may be expected to regulate it in the future. Hence the science of man coincides to a certain extent with what has long been known as the philosophy of history as well as with the study to which of late years the name of Sociology has been given. Indeed it might with some reason be held that Social Anthropology, or the study of man in society, is only another expression for Sociology. Yet I think that the two sciences may be conveniently distin- guished, and that while the name of Sociology should be reserved for the study of human society in the most compre- hensive sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology may with advantage be restricted to one particular depart- ment of that immense field of knowledge. At least I wish to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I for one do not pretend to treat of the whole of human society, past, present, and future. Whether any single man's compass of mind and range of learning suffice for such a vast under- taking, I will not venture to say, but I do say without hesitation or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I can only speak of what I have studied, and my studies have been mostly confined to a small, a very small part of man's social history. That part is the origin, or rather the rudimentary phases, the infancy and childhood, of human society, and to that part accordingly I propose to limit the scope of Social Anthropology, or at all events my treatment of it. My successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview beyond the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my knowledge imposes on me. They may survey the latest developments as well as the earliest beginnings of custom THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY i6i and law, of science and art, of morality and religion, and from that survey they may deduce the principles which should guide mankind in the future, so that those who come after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and our fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge is wisdom, and it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and wider acquaintance with the past history of mankind will- in time enable our statesmen to mould the destiny of the race in fairer forms than we of this generation shall live to see. '■'■Ah Love ! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits — and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's desire ! " But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you must At least the not expect your professor of Social Anthropology to aid and {^'^(^^^^'^ abet you. He is no seer to discern, no prophet to foretell limits him- a coming heaven on earth, no mountebank with a sovran l^^^^° remedy for every ill, no Red Cross Knight to head a crusade phases. against misery and want, against disease and death, against all the horrid spectres that war on poor humanity. It is for others with higher notes and nobler natures than his to sound the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He is only a student, a student of the past, who may perhaps tell you a little, a very little, of what has been, but who cannot, dare not tell you what ought to be. Yet even the little that he can contribute to the elucidation of the past may have its utility as well as its interest when it finally takes its place in that great temple of science to which it is the ambition of every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief that if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without any ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however insignificant and useless it may appear, will yet at last be found to work together with the whole accumulated store for the general good of mankind. Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I understand social it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is limited to the crude "^"jl^™' beginnings, the rudimentary development of human society : embraces it does not include the maturer phases of that complex grst^'of''' growth, still less does it embrace the practical problems savagery, M l62 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY and, second, of folklore, that is, of the traces of savagery in civiliza- tion. All civilization evolved from savagery. Hence a study of savagery essential to an under- standing of the evolu- tion of humanity. with which our modern statesmen and lawgivers are called upon to deal. The study might accordingly be described as the embryology of human thought and^nstitutions) or, to be more precise, as that enquiry which seeks to ascertain, first, the beliefs and customs of savages, and, second, the relics of these beliefs and customs which have survived like fossils among peoples of higher culture. In this description of the sphere of Social Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors of the civilized nations were once savages, and that they have transmitted, or may have transmitted, to their more cultured descendants ideas and institutions which, however incongruous with their later surroundings, were perfectly in keeping with the modes of thought and action of the ruder society in which they originated. In short, the definition assumes that civilization has always and everywhere been evolved out of savagery. The mass of evidence on which this assumption rests is in my opinion so great as to render the induction incontrovertible. At least, if any one disputes it I do not think it worth while to argue with him. There are still, I believe, in civilized society people who hold that the earth is flat and that the sun goes round it ; but no sensible man will waste time in the vain attempt to con- vince such persons of their error, even though these flat- teners of the earth and circulators of the sun appeal with perfect justice to the evidence of their senses in support of their hallucination, which is more than the opponents of man's primitive savagery are able to do. Thus the study of savage life is a very important part of Social Anthropology. For by comparison with civilized man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded stage of social development, and an examination of his customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an ex- amination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. To put it otherwise, a savage is to a civilized man as a child is to an adult ; and just as the gradual growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the species, so a study of savage society at various stages of evolution enables us to follow approximately, though of THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 163 course not exactly, the road by which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled in their progress upward through barbarism to civilization. In short, savagery is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand what primitive man was we must know what the savage now is. But here it is necessary to guard against a common Savages of misapprehension. The savages of to-day are primitive only day^arT"' in a relative, not in an absolute sense. They are primitive primitive by comparison with us ; but they are not primitive by com- relative ^ parison with truly primaeval man, that is, with man as he s™se. was when he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of compari-^ existence. Indeed, compared with man in his absolutely son with civilized pristine state even the lowest savage of to-day is doubtless a peoples ; highly developed and cultured being, since all evidence and '^^"^ ™^' 11 1 , -I- . r ^ , . , . . torasand all probability are in favour of the view that every existing beliefs are race of men, the rudest as well as the most civilized, has '" f^'^'t^e ' ' product of reached its present level of culture, whether it be high or a long low, only after a slow and painful progress upwards, which evolution must have extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, as to which of years. Therefore when we speak of any known savages know httie as primitive, which the usage of the English language per- or nothing. mits us to do, it should always be remembered that we apply the term primitive to them in a relative, not in an absolute sense. What we mean is that their culture is rudimentary compared with that of the civilized nations, but not by any means that it is identical with that of primaeval man. It is necessary to emphasize this relative use of the term primi- tive in its application to all known savages without excep- tion, because the ambiguity arising from the double meaning of the word has been the source of much confusion and misunderstanding. Careless or unscrupulous writers have made great play with it for purposes of controversy, using the word now in the one sense and now in the other as it suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving, or at all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order to avoid these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear steadily in mind that while Social Anthropology has much to say of primitive man in the relative sense, it has nothing whatever to say about primitive man in the absolute sense. i64 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY and that for the very simple reason that it knows nothing whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at present, is never likely to know anything. To construct a history of human society by starting from absolutely primordial man and working down through thousands or millions of years to the institutions of existing savages might possibly have merits as a flight of imagination, but it could have none as a work of science. To do this would be exactly to reverse the proper mode of scientific procedure. It would be to work a priori from the unknown to the known instead of a posteriori from the known to the unknown. For we do know a good deal about the social state of the savages of to- day and yesterday, but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, about absolutely primitive human society. Hence a sober enquirer who seeks to elucidate the social evolution of man- kind in ages before the dawn of history must start, not from an unknown and purely hypothetical primaeval man, but from the lowest savages whom we know or possess adequate records of; and from their customs, beliefs, and traditions as a solid basis of fact he may work back a little way hypo- thetically through the obscurity of the past ; that is, he may form a reasonable theory of the way in which these actual customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown up and developed in a period more or less remote, but probably not very re- mote, from the one in which they have been observed and recorded. But if, as I assume, he is a sober enquirer, he will never expect to carry back this reconstruction of human history very far, still less will he dream of linking it up with the very beginning, because he is aware that we possess no evidence which would enable us to bridge even hypothetic- ally the gulf of thousands or millions of years which divides the savage of to-day from primaeval man. For ex- It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an example. marrkV?^ The matrimonial customs and modes of tracing relationships customs which prevail among some savage races, and even among systems of psoples at a higher stage of culture, furnish very strong grounds relation- for believing that the systems of marriage and consanguinity valen^^ which are now in vogue among civilized peoples must have among been immediately preceded at a more or less distant time bv many . . , _ . , . _ "^ savage Very different modes of countmg km and regulating marriage ; THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 165 in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden degrees of kinship tribes have replaced an older system of much wider and looser ^'^^^l '° ^ ^ J have been sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such evolved looser and wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely prereding primitive condition of mankind ; it is only to say that actu- but not ally existing customs and traditions clearly indicate the primUive,^ extensive prevalence of such relations at some former time state of in the history of our race. How remote that time was, we promis- cannot tell ; but, estimated by the whole vast period of man's '='^'y- existence on earth, it seems probable that the era of sexual communism to which the evidence points was comparatively recent ; in other words, that for the civilized races the interval which divides that era from our own is to be reckoned by thousands rather than by hundreds of thousands of years, while for the lowest of existing savages, for example, the aborigines of Australia, it is possible or probable that the interval may not be greater than a few centuries. Be that as it may, even if on the strength of the evidence I have referred to we could demonstrate the former prevalence of a system of sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this would only carry us back a single step in the long history of our species ; it would not justify us in concluding that such a system had been practised by truly primaeval man, still less that it had prevailed among mankind from the beginning down to the comparatively recent period at which its exist- ence may be inferred from the evidence at our disposal. About the social condition of primaeval man, I repeat, we know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to speculate. Our first parents may have been as strict monogamists as Whiston or Dr. Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. We have no information on the subject, and are never likely to get any. In the countless ages which have elapsed since man and woman first roamed the happy garden hand in hand or jabbered like apes among the leafy boughs of the virgin forest, their relations to each other may have undergone in- numerable changes. iFor human affairs, like the courses of the heaven, seem to run in cycles : the social pendulum swings to and fro from one extremity of the scale to the other : in the political sphere it has swung from democracy to despotism, and back again from despotism to democracy ; 1 66 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY The second department of Social Anthro- pology is folklore, or the study of savage survivals in civilization. Such survivals are due to the essential inequality of men, many of whom remain at heart and so in the domestic sphere it may have oscillated many a time between libertinism and monogamy. If I am right in my definition of Social Anthropology, its province may be roughly divided into two departments, one of which embraces the customs and beliefs of savages, while the other includes such relics of these customs and beliefs as have survived in the thought and institutions of more cultured peoples. The one department may be called the study of savagery, the other the study of folklore. I have said something of savagery : I now turn to folklore, that is, to the survivals of more primitive ideas and practices among peoples who in other respects have risen to a higher plane of culture. That suchfsurvivalsjmay be discovered in every civilized nation will hardly now be disputed by any- body. When we read, for example, of an Irishwoman roasted to death by her husband on a suspicion that she was not his wife but a fairy changeling,^ or again, of an Englishwoman dying of lockjaw because she had anointed the nail that wounded her instead of the wound,^ we may be sure that the beliefs to which these poor creatures fell victims were not learned by them in school or at church, but had been trans- mitted from truly savage ancestors through many generations of outwardly though not really civilized descendants. Beliefs and practices of this sort are therefore rightly called super- stitions, which means literally survivals. It is with superstitions in the strict sense of the word that the second department of Social Anthropology is concerned. If we ask how it happens that superstitions linger among a people who in general have reached a higher level of culture, the answer is to be found in the natural, universal, and in- eradicable inequality of men. Not only are different races differently endowed in respect of intelligence, courage, in- dustry, and so forth, but within the same nation men of the same generation differ enormously in inborn capacity and worth. No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous 1 This happened at Bally vadlea, in the county of Tipperary, in March 1895. ^°'^ details of the evidence given at the trial of the murderers, see " The ' Witch-burning ' at Clonmel," Folk-lore, vi. (1895) PP- 373-384- 2 This happened at Norwich in June 1902. See The People's Weekly Journal for Norfolk, July 19, 1902, p. 8. THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 167 than that of the natural equality of men. It is true that the savages legislator must treat men as if they were equal, because laws ™^,'^'' ^ ° . J -1 ' civilized of necessity are general and cannot be made so as to fit the exterior. infinite variety of individual cases. But we must not imagine that because men are equal before the law they are therefore intrinsically equal to each other. The experience of common life sufficiently contradicts such a vain imagination. At school and at the universities, at work and at play, in peace and in war, the mental and moral inequalities of human beings stand out too conspicuously to be ignored or disputed. On the whole the men of keenest intelligence and strongest char- acters lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, out- wardly at least, society is cast. As such men are necessarily Mankind few by comparison with the multitude whom they lead, it by™n"en-'' follows that the community is really dominated by the will lightened of an enlightened minority ^ even in countries where the ™"°" ^^ ruling power is nominally vested in the hands of the numerical majority. In fact, disguise it as we may, the government of mankind is always and everywhere essenti- ally aristocratic. No juggling with political machinery can evade this law of nature. However it may seem to lead, the dull-witted majority in the end follows a keener-witted niinority. That is its salvation and the secret of progress. """^The higher human intelligence sways the lower, just as the intelligence of man gives him the mastery over the brutes. I do not mean that the ultimate direction of society rests with its nominal gdvernors, with its kings, its statesmen, its legislators. The true rulers of men are the thinkers who The un- advance knowledge ; for just as it is through his superior ^Ings"^'^ knowledge, not through his superior strength, that man bears rule over the rest of the animal creation, so among men themselves it is knowledge which in the long run directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the dis- coverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and unsceptred kings of mankind ; monarchs, statesmen, and law-givers are but their ministers, who sooner or later do their bidding by carrying out the ideas of these master 1 I say "an enlightened minority," of them are very far from enlightened, because in any large community there It is possible to be below as well as are alvvays many minorities, and some above the average level of our fellows. i68 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY minds. The more we study the inward workings of society and the progress of civilization, the more clearly shall we perceive how both are governed by the influence of thoughts which, springing up at first we know not how or whence in a few superior minds, gradually spread till they have leavened the whole inert lump of a community or of man- kind. The origin of such mental variations, with all their far-reaching train of social consequences, is just as obscure as is the origin of those physical variations on which, if biologists are right, depends the evolution of species, and with it the possibility of progress. Perhaps the same un- known cause which determines the one set of variations gives rise to the other also. We cannot tell. All we can say is that on the whole in the conflict of competing forces, whether physical or mental, th e strongest at last prevails, the fittest survives. In the mental sphere the struggle for existence is not less fierce and internecine than in the physical, but in the end the better ideas, which we call the truth, carry the day. The clamorous opposition with which at their first appearance they are regularly greeted, whenever they conflict with old prejudices, may The tombs retard but cannot prevent their final victory. It is the of the practice of the mob first to stone and then to erect useless prophets. ^ memorials to their greatest benefactors. All who set them- selves to replace anc ient error arid supe rstitio n by tru th and reason must lay theirjLccountjyith_b rickbats in their li fb-and a marble monument after death. Super- I have been led into making these remarks by the wish ^""d" nhe *° explain jdi^z_itjs. that superstitions of all sorts, political, laggards in moral, and religious, survive among peoples who have the oHnteUect opportunity of knowing better. The reason is that the better ideas, which are constantly forming in the upper stratum, have not yet filtered through from the highest to the lowest minds. Such a filtration is generally slow, and by the time that the new notions have penetrated to the bottom, if indeed they ever get there, they are often already obsolete and superseded by others at the top. Hence it is that if we could open the heads and read the thoughts of two men of the same generation and country but at opposite ends of the intellectual scale, we should probably find their minds as THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 169 different as if the two belonged to different species. Man- kind, as it has been well said, advances in ichelons ; that is, the columns march not abreast of each other but in a straggling line, all lagging in various degrees behind the leader. The image well describes the difference not only between peoples, but between individuals of the same people and the same generation. Just as one nation is continually outstripping some of its contemporaries, so within the same nation some men are constantly outpacing their fellows, and the foremost in the race are those who have thrown off the load of superstition whic h still b urdens the harVs and rings the footsteps of the laggards. To drop metaphor, superstitions survive because, while they shock the views of enlightened members of the community, they are still in harmony with the thoughts and feelings of others who, though they are drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilization, remain barbarians or savages at heart. That is why, for example, the barbarous punishments for high treason and witchcraft and the enormities of slavery were tolerated and defended in this country down to modern times. Such Super- survivals may be divided into two sorts, according as they g-J'iJ°"^ are public or private ; in other words, according as they are public or embodied in the law of the land or are practised with or p"™'^- without the connivance of the law in holes and corners. The examples I have just cited belong to the former of these Examples two classes. Witches were publicly burned and traitors were \^^. "^ publicly disembowelled in England not so long ago, and stitions. slavery survived as a legal institution still later. The true nature of such public superstitions is apt, through their very publicity, to escape detection, because until they are finally swept away by the rising tide of progress, there are always plenty of people to defend them as institutions essential to the public welfare and sanctioned by the laws of God and man. It is otherwise with those private superstitions to which The wide the name of folklore is usually confined. In civilized society or^r^a'tr most educated people are not even aware of the extent to super- ,. . . . . J 1 • 1 stitions which these relics of savage ignorance survive at their doors, constitutes The discovery of their wide prevalence was indeed only made ^ standing last century, chiefly through the researches of the brothers civilization. I70 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY Grimm in Germany. Since their day systematic enquiries carried on among the less educated classes, and especially among the peasantry, of Europe have revealed the astonish- ing, nay, alarming truth that a mass, if not the majority, of people in every civilized country is still living in a state of intellectual savagery, that, in fact, the smooth surface of cultured society is sapped and mined by superstition. Only those whose studies have led them to investigate the subject are aware of the depth to which the ground beneath our feet is thus, as it were, honeycombed by unseen forces. We appear to be standing on a volcano which may at any moment break out in smoke and fire to spread ruin and devastation among the gardens and palaces of ancient culture wrought so laboriously by the hands of many generations. After looking on the ruined Greek temples of Paestum and contrasting them with the squalor and savagery of the Italian peasantry, Renan said, " I trembled for civiliza- tion, seeing it so limited, built on so weak a foundation, resting on so few individuals even in the country where it is dominant." ^ It is the If we examine the superstitious beliefs which are tacitly crudest ^""^ but firmly held by many of our fellow-countrymen, we shall super- find, perhaps to our surprise, that it is precisely the oldest that°survive ^"'^ Crudest superstitions which are most tenacious of life, longest, while views which, though also erroneous, are more modern they'^^^ ^nd refined, soon fade from the popular memory. For answer to example, the high gods of Egypt and Babylon, of Greece of the and Rome, have for ages been totally forgotten by the people lowest and survive only in the books of the learned ; yet the minds. 1 1 r /->v Hence peasants, who never even heard of Isis and Osiris, of Apollo sur'fac'^'^f ^"'^ Artemis, of Jupiter and Juno, retain to this day a firm society is belief in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, those chanring^ lesser creatures of the mythical fancy in which their fathers its depths, believed long before the great deities of the ancient world of the °^'^ were ever thought of, and in which, to all appearance, their ocean, descendants will continue to believe long after the great almost deities of the present day shall have gone the way of all motionless, their predecessors. The i-eason why the higher forms of superstition or religion (for the religion of one generation is 1 E. Renan et M. Berthelot, Correspondance (Paris, 1898), pp. 75 sq. THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 171 apt to become the superstition of the next) are less permanent than the lower is simply that the higher beliefs, being a creation of superior intelligence, have little hold on the minds of the vulgar, who nominally profess them for a time in conformity with the will of their betters, but readily shed and forget them as soon as these beliefs have gone out of fashion with the educated classes. But while they dismiss without a pang or an effort articles of faith which were only super- ficially imprinted on their minds by the weight of cultured opinion, the ignorant and foolish multitude cling with a sullen determination to far grosser beliefs which really answer to the coarser texture of their undeveloped intellect. Thus while the avowed creed of the enlightened minority is con- stantly changing under the influence of reflection and enquiry, the real, though unavowed, creed of the mass of mankind appears to be almost stationary, and the reason why it alters so little is that in the majority of men, whether they are savages or outwardly civilized beings, intellectual progress is so slow as to be hardly perceptible. The surface of society, like that of the sea, is in perpetual motion ; its depths, like those of the ocean, remain almost unmoved. Thus from an examination, first, of savagery and, second. The early of its survivals in civilization, the study of Social Anthro- '"s'°'7°f ' •' mankind, pology attempts to trace the early history of human thought recon- and institutions. The history can never be complete, unless f'^^'the science should discover some mode of reading the faded joint testi- record of the past of which we in this generation can hardly ^vaLry dream. We know indeed that every event, however in- and folk- significant, implies a change, however slight, in the material of gaps, constitution of the universe, so that the whole history of the ^'''* '^a° world IS, m a sense, engraved upon its face, though our eyes imperfectly are too dim to read the scroll. It may be that in the 'f '"^^ed by •'. _ the Corn- future some wondrous reagent, some magic chemical, may parative yet be found to bring out the whole of nature's secret hand- '^^"'°'^- writing for a greater than Daniel to interpret to his fellows. That will hardly be in our time. With the resources at present at our command we must be content with a very brief, imperfect, and in large measure conjectural account of man's mental and social development in prehistoric ages. 172 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY As 1 have already pointed out, the evidence, fragmentary and dubious as it is, only runs back a very little way into the measureless past of human life on earth ; we soon lose the thread, the faintly glimmering thread, in the thick dark- ness of the absolutely unknown. Even in the comparatively short space of time, a few thousand years at most, which falls more or less within our ken, there are many deep and wide chasms which can only be bridged by hypotheses, if the story of evolution is to run continuously. Such bridges are built in anthropology as in biology by the Comparative The Method, which enables us to borrow the links of one chain legitimacy ^f evidence to supply the gaps in another. For us who oftheCom- . , , ^ ^ , i-r i • i i parative deal, not With the various forms of animal life, but with the Method various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the in social ^ t> ) £> -' anthro- Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity S^^?ul'^'^^'^ of the working of the human mind in all races of men. I on the o similarity have laid strcss on the great inequalities which exist not human °"^y between the various races, but between men of the mind in same racc and generation ; but it should be clearly under- stood and remembered that these divergencies are quanti- tative rather than qualitative, they consist in differences of degree rather than of kind. The savage is not a different sort of being from his civilized brother : he has the same capacities, mental and moral, but they are less fully de- veloped : his evolution has been arrested, or rather retarded, at a lower level. And as savage races are not all on the same plane, but have stopped or tarried at different points of the upward path, we can to a certain extent, by compar- ing them with each other, construct a scale of social pro- gression and mark out roughly some of the stages on the long road that leads from savagery to civilization. In the kingdom of mind such a scale of mental evolution answers to the scale of morphological evolution in the animal kingdom. It is only From what I have said I hope you have formed some years that idea of the extreme importance which the study of savage the im- ufg possesses for a proper understanding of the early history of savagery of mankind. The savage is a human document, a record of as a docu- man's efforts to raise himself above the level of the beast. meut of human It is Only of late years that the full value of the document THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 173 has been appreciated ; indeed, many people are probably history still of Dr. Johnson's opinion, who, pointing to the three un^eT-^" large volumes of Voyages to the South Seas which had just stood. come out, said : " Who will read them through ? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through ; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books ; one set of savages is like another." ^ But the world has learned a good deal since Dr. Johnson's day ; and the records of savage life, which the sage of Bolt Court con- signed without scruple to the rats and mice, have now their place among the most precious archives of humanity. Their fate has been like that of the Sibylline Books. They were neglected and despised when they might have been obtained complete ; and now wise men would give more than a king's ransom for their miserably mutilated and imperfect remains. It is true that before our time civilized men often viewed savages with interest and described them intelligently, and some of their descriptions are still of great scientific value. For example, the discovery of America naturally excited. in Great the minds of the European peoples an eager curiosity as to ^g^'^to the inhabitants of the new world, which had burst upon the study their gaze, as if at the waving of a wizard's wand the curtain L a™^^'^^ of the western sky had suddenly rolled up and disclosed discovery scenes of glamour and enchantment. Accordingly some of and of the' the Spaniards who explored and conquered these realms of Pacific. wonder have bequeathed to us accounts of the manners and customs of the Indians, which for accuracy and fulness of detail probably surpass any former records of an alien race. Such, for instance, is the great work of the Franciscan friar Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, and such the work of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself half an Inca, on the Incas of Peru. Again, the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth ' century, with its revelation of fairy-like islands scattered in profusion over a sea of eternal summer, drew the eyes and stirred the imagination of Europe ; and to the curiosity thus raised in many minds, though not in Dr. Johnson's, we owe some precious descriptions of the islanders, who, in those days of sailing ships, appeared to dwell so remote from us 1 J. Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson^ (London, 1822), iv. 315. 174 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY that the poet Cowper fancied their seas might never again be ploughed by English keels.^ The pass- These and many other old accounts of savages must safage"'^ always retain their interest and value for the study of Social Anthropology, all the more because they set before us the natives in their natural unsophisticated state, before their primitive manners and customs had been altered or destroyed by European influence. Yet in the light of subsequent research these early records are often seen to be very defective, because the authors, unaware of the scientific importance of facts which to the ordinary observer might appear trifling or disgusting, have either passed over many things of the highest interest in total silence or dismissed them with a brief and tantalizing allusion. It is accordingly necessary to supplement the reports of former writers by a minute and painstaking investigation of the living savages in order to fill up, if possible, the many yawning gaps in our knowledge. Unfortunately this cannot always be done, since many savages have either been totally exterminated or so changed by contact with Europeans that it is no longer possible to obtain trustworthy information as to their old habits and traditions. But whenever the ancient customs and beliefs of a primitive race have passed away unrecorded, a document of human history has perished beyond recall. Unhappily this destruction of the archives, as we may call it, is going on apace. In some places, for example, in Tasmania, the savage is already extinct ; in others, as in Australia, he is dying. In others again, for instance in Central and Southern Africa, where the numbers and inborn vigour of the race shew little or no sign of succumbing in the struggle for existence, the influence of traders, officials, and mission- aries is so rapidly disintegrating and effacing the native customs, that with the passing of the older generation even the memory of them will soon in many places be gone. It is therefore a matter of the most urgent scientific importance to secure without delay full and accurate reports of these perishing or changing peoples, to take permanent copies, so 1 " In boundless oceans, never to be Or plougKd perhaps by British passed bark again." By navigators uninformed as they, The Task, book i. 629 sqq. THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 175 to say, of these precious monuments before they are destroyed. It is not yet too late. Much may still be learned, for example, in West Australia, in New Guinea, in Melanesia, in Central Africa, among the hill tribes of India and the forest Indians of the Amazons. There is still time to send expeditions to these regions, to subsidize men on the spot, who are conversant with the languages and enjoy the confi- dence of the natives ; for there are such men who possess or can obtain the very knowledge we require, yet who, unaware or careless of its inestimable value for science, make no effort to preserve the treasure for posterity, and, if we do not speedily come to the rescue, will suffer it to perish with them. In the whole range of human knowledge at the present moment there is no more pressing need than that of recording this priceless evidence of man's early history before it is too late. For soon, very soon, the opportunities which we still enjoy will be gone for ever. In another quarter of a century probably there will be little or nothing of the old savage life left to record. The savage, such as we may still see him, will then be as extinct as the dodo. The sands are fast running out : the hour will soon strike : the record will be closed : the book will be sealed. And how shall we of this The duty generation look when we stand at the bar of posterity generation arraigned on a charge of high treason to our race, we who to pos- neglected to study our perishing fellow-men, but who sent out ^" ^' costly expeditions to observe the stars and to explore the barren ice-bound regions of the poles, as if the polar ice would melt and the stars would cease to shine when we are gone? Let us awake from our slumber, let us light our lamps, let us gird up our loins. The Universities exist for the advancement of knowledge. It is their duty to add this new province to the ancient departments of learning which they cultivate so diligently. Cambridge, to its honour, has led the way in equipping and despatching anthropological expeditions ; it is for Oxford, it is for Liverpool, it is for every University in the land to join in the work. More than that, it is the public duty of every civilized The state actively to co-operate. In this respect the United the^st°ate. States of America, by instituting a bureau for the study of the aborigines within its dominions, has set an example 176 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY The duty of England. Monu- menium acre perennius. which every enlightened nation that rules over lower races ought to imitate. On none does that duty, that responsi- bility, lie more clearly and more heavily than on our own, for to none in the whole course of human history has the sceptre been given over so many and so diverse races of men. We have made ourselves our brother's keepers. Woe to us if we neglect our duty to our brother ! It is not enough for us to rule in justice the peoples we have subjugated by the sword. We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to posterity, who will require it at our hands, that we should describe them as they were before we found them, before they ever saw the English flag and heard, for good or evil, the English tongue. The voice of England speaks to her subject peoples in other accents than in the thunder of her guns. Peace has its triumphs as well as war : there are nobler trophies than captured flags and cannons. There are monuments, airy monuments, monuments of words, which seem so fleeting and evanescent, that will yet last when your cannons have crumbled and your flags have mouldered into dust. When the Roman poet wished to present an image of perpetuity, he said that he would be remembered so long as the Roman Empire endured, so long as the white-robed procession of the Vestals and Pontiffs should ascend the Capitol to pray in the temple of Jupiter. That solemn procession has long ceased to climb the slope of the Capitol, the Roman Empire itself has long passed away, like the empire of Alexander, like the empire of Charlemagne, like the empire of Spain, yet still amid the wreck of kingdoms the poet's monument stands firm, for still his verses are read and remembered. I appeal to the Universities, I appeal to the Government of this country to unite in building a monument, a beneficent monument, of the British Empire, a monument " Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere, aut innunierabilis Annorum series, et fuga temporum.^^ INDEX Aborigines of Australia, the severity witli which they punish sexual offences, 71 sgf. Abraham and Sarah, 60 sg. Abyssinia, 66, 81 Action and opinion, their relative values for society, 155 Adulterer and injured husband, physical relationship supposed to exist between, 104 sg. called a miu-derer, 65, 104 Adultery, expiation for, 44 sg. ; disas- trous effects supposed to flow from, 44 sgj., 60 sg. ; punishment of, 46, 50 sf. , 63 sf}. ; supposed to be dangerous to the culprits, their spouses, and their offspring, 102 sgg. See also Infidelity. Africa, superstitious veneration for kings in, 12 sqq. ; superstition as a support of property in, 38 sqg. ; disastrous effects supposed to flow from sexual immor- ahty in, 54 sqq. ; British Central, 66, 79, 105 ; British East, 77, 81, 92, 105, 115, 123 ; German East, 92, 105, 106; North, 119 Akamba, the, of British East Africa, 77 sq., 105 Akikuyu, the, of British East Africa, 92, 105, IIS, 128 Aleutian hunters, 106 Algonquin Indians, their modes of keep- ing off ghosts, 139 Amboyna, taboo in, 27 sq. America, Indians of North, 130 sq. ; the discovery of, 173 Amulets for the protection of fruit-trees, 29 sqq. Analogy between the reproduction of men, animals, and plants, 99 sqq. Ancestor-worship, 7 Anger of gods or spirits at sexual offences, 44, 46, 47, so, SI. 54. 55 sq., 57. 61. 63, 107 Angola, 108 ; Cazembes of, 11 Angoni, the, of British Central Africa 79. 132 Annam, savages of, 46 Annamites, the, 33 Anne, Queen, 18 Anointing the nail instead of the wound, 166 Antambahoaka, the, of Madagascar, S9 Anthropology, social, the scope of, 157 sqq. Anyanja, the, of British Central Africa, 66, 79, los Arab rnerchant in Darfur, 39 Araucanians of Chili, 84 Arawaks of British Guiana, 83 Areopagus, trials for murder before the, 156 Argos, massacre at, us Aricara Indians, 118 Armenians, their mutilation of the dead, 133 Assam, tribes of, 45 Attic law as to homicides, 114 Aiua, guardian spirit, 118 Atua tonga, divinity, 8 Aunt, incest with, 50, si Australia, .aborigines of, the severity with which they punish sexual offences, 71 sqq. , Western, 74 Australian aborigines, their precautions against ghosts, 137 Avebury, Lord, 159 Avoidance, ceremonial, of relations by marriage, 75 sqq. ; a precaution against incest, 7s, 84 sqq., 93 ; of wife's mother, y^ sqq. , 86 sq. , 90 sq. ; between father-in-law aad daughter-in-law, 76 ; between various relations, 76 sq. ; be- tween father and daughter, 78, 85, 87 ; between father-in-law and son-in-law, T)sq.; of wife of wife's brother, 80; of brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, 81 ; of future parents-in-law, 81, 83 ; be- tween woman and her father-in-law, 82 ; between a man and his father-in- law, 82, 83 ; of blood relations, 84 sqq. ; between brother and sister, 85, 177 N 178 INDEX 86, 87, 88, 90 ; between mother and son, 85, 86, 87 Awemba, the, of Northern Rhodesia, 66, 79, 103 sq., 120 Babylonian code of Hammurabi, 64 ■ kings, their curses, 37 sq. Baddat Dyaks of Borneo, 48 Baganda, punishment of sexual offences among the, 64^^. ; rules of ceremonial avoidance among the, 90 sq, ; their ideas as to adultery, 102 sq. ; their ideas as to effect of wife's infidelity on absent husband, 106 sq. Bakerewe, a Bantu people, 78 Bali, punishment of incest and adultery in, 68 Balkan peninsula, the Slavs of the, 97 Balonda, the, 38 Bangala, the, of the Upper Congo, 107 Banggai Archipelago, 54 Banishment of homicides, 113 jy^. Banks' Islands, 6, 86 Banner, a fairy, 17 Bantu tribes, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 103, 123 Bantus, the, of South Africa, their cus- toms as to the marriage of cousins, 91 Barea, the, tribe on the borders of Abyssinia, 66 Barring the road from the grave against the ghost, 138 sq. Basis of morality shifted from super- natural to natural, 153 Basoga, the, of Central Africa, 65 Bastards put to death, 96, 97 Basutos, the, 56 ; purification for homi- cide among the, 120 sq. Batamba, the, of Busoga, 76 Batang Lupar river in Borneo, 48 Battas, or Bataks, of Sumatra, their ideas as to sexual immorality, 46 ; their punishment of adultery, 6g ; their rules of ceremonial avoidance, 85 Bavili, the, of Loango, 55 Ba-Yaka, the, of the Congo Free State, 124 Beech, M. W. H., 129 k.' Belief in immortality a fruitful source of war, 129 sq. ; waste of life and pro- perty entailed by the, 111 sq. Bella Coola Indians, mourning customs of the, 144 Beni Amer, tribe on the borders of Abyssinia, 66 Bering Strait, 132 Besisi, the, of the Malay Peninsula, 137 Bhotias, the, of the Himalayas, 141 Bilaspore in India, 133 Bismarck Archipelago, 131 Black and white Furies, 117 Blood of pigs used in expiatory cere- monies, 44 sqq. ; of incestuous persons not to be shed on the ground, 52, 53, 68 ; of pigs used in ceremonies of purification,' 116 sq. ; of the slain drunk by the slayers, xiZ sq. Blood covenant, 118, 119 relations, ceremonial avoidance of, 84 sqq. Blu-u Kayans', the, of Borneo, 51 Boas, Franz, quoted, 126 sq., 146 sq. Bogos, tribe on borders of Abyssinia, 81 Bolivia, 106 Boloki, the, of the Congo, 39, 75, 107, 128 Borneo, the Sea Dyaks of, 34, 47 sq., 51, 136 ; pagan tribes of, 49 sq. ; tribes of Dutch, 50 sq. Brazil, Indians of, 96 British Columbia, mourning customs among the tribes of, 142 sqq. Brooke, tDharles, quoted, 50 Brooke, Rajah, 12 Brother and sister, ceremonial avoidance between, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88, go ; incest of, 51, 54, 59, 60 «.i, 62, 67, 68 Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, mutual avoidance of, 81 Buduma, the, of Lake Chad, 109 Bugineese, the, of Celebes, 51 Bukaua, tribe of German New Guinea, 82, 131 Bureau of Ethnology in the U.S. America, 175 Burgundians, the, 16 Burma, 119, 130, 134, 135, 138 ; the Karens of, 44 sq. Burning as punishment of sexual crime, 63, 64, 68 Buru, an East Indian island, 109 n.^ Burying alive as punishment, 46, 68, 69 Busoga, 76 Cairbre Muse, Irish legend of, 62 Calabria, superstition as to murderers in, 119 Californian Indians, 83 Cambridge in relation to anthropology, I7S Cameroon negroes, 116 Car Nicobar, rite of purification in, 116 sq. Caribs, the, 83 Caroline Islands, rules of ceremonial avoidance in the, 87 sq. Cazembes of Angola, 11 Celebes, 68 Central, 12, 29, 30, 52, 53, 122 Southern, 51 Celts of Ireland and Scotland, 17 Central Provinces of India, 33 INDEX 179 Ceram, island of, 51 ; taboo in, 28 Laut Islands, taboo in, 28 sq. Ceylon, modes of protecting property in, 33 Chad, Lake, log Charms to protect property, 25 sqq., 38 sq., 41 sqq. ; for the protection of fruit-trees, 29 sqq. Chastity required of those who handle corn or enter a granary, 56 sq. Chiefs, supernatural powers attributed to, 6 sqq. Children supposed to suffer for the adult- ery of their father or mother, 102 sqq. Chili, 84 Chinese, their faith in ghosts, 149 sqq. Chinook Indians, their purification of homicides, 126 sq. Chins of Burma, their burial customs, 138 sq. Chitom^, the sacred pontiff of Congo, 108 Circumcision, orgies at, in Fiji, 60 «.' Civilization evolved from savagery, 162 ; endangered by superstition, 170 Clan, marriage within the, forbidden, 4Si ^S' 71 i marriage within mother's clan forbidden, 55 Claudius, the emperor, 61 Clytemnestra, ghost of, 118 Codrington, Dr. R. H., 6, 85 k.i, 86 Communism, era of sexual, 164 sq. Comparative Method in anthropology, legitimacy of the, 172 Condon, Father M. A. , quoted, 76 sq. Confession of sin, 45, £7, 61, 62, 64 sq,, 103, 104, 107, 109 Congo, the, 39, 75, 107, 108, 124 Consanguineous marriages, question as to the results of, 95 sq. Continence required at certain times, 106 sq. , 108 Core and Cormac, Irish legend of, 62 sq. Corn, chastity required of persons who handle, 56 sq. Corpses mutilated in order to disable the ghosts, -Loflsq., 134, 136, 137 Cousins, marriage of, 88 sq., 91 ; expia- tion for, 47 sq., 92 sq. ; forbidden, 47, 48, S3, 67, 72, 89, 90, 91, 92 ; pun- ished, 67; supposed to be unfruitful, 92 , mutual avoidance between male and female, 88 sqq. Cow's dung as a detergent of ghosts, 123 Cowper, the poet, 174 Crawford, Raymond, 17 n.^ Criminals, precautions against the ghosts of executed, 132 Crops, chiefs and kings thought to have power over the, 11 sq,, 15, 16 sq. ; supposed to be blighted by sexual im- morality, 44 sq,, 46, 48, 49, 50 sqq. Cross-stick taboo, 25 Cuniana in South America, 33 Curses as modes of protecting property, 24 sq., 28, 29, 31 sq., 34 sqq., 40 sq. Cycles in human affairs, 165 sq. Cynaetha in Arcadia, 115 guardian - spirits of property, 39 -f?- Darfur, 39, 81 Daughter, incest with, 49, 51, 54, 58, 67, 68 ; and father, mutual avoidance of, 78 David, his sin, 107 Dawson, James, quoted, 71 sq. Dead, the fear of the, 111 sq. ; carried out of house by a special opening, 135 De Groot, Professor J. J. M., quoted, 150 sq. Delagoa Bay, 57, 80, 92, 104, 121 Delphic oracle, 61 Demeter and Persephone, 36 Destruction of the property of the dead, ■ III sq., 135 Deuteronomy, 37 Development of moral theory, hypo- thetical, 102 " Devil going on his wife," 54 m.^ Devils, exorcism of, 116 sq. Diana, sacred grove of, 61 Dinkas, the, of the Upper Nile, 57 Divinity of IVTaori chiefs, 7 sqq. ; of kings, 10 sqq. Donaglas, the, 81 d'Orbigny, A., quoted, in sqq. Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, 131 Dos Santos, J., Portuguese historian, 13, 14 , Drinking water as test of wife's fidelity, 107 Drowning as a punishment for sexual offences, 49, 51, 52, '53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 68 Dunvegan, 17 Durham, Miss M. Edith, 97 Dyaks of Borneo, 47 sq. , 51, 137 ; curses among the, 34 sqq. of Sarawak, 11 Early history of mankind, the imperfec- tion of the record, 171 sq. Earthquakes thought to be caused by sexual immorality, 54 East Indies, sexual offences severely punished in, 67 sqq. Edward the Confessor, 18 Egypt, divinity of kings in ancient, 14 sq, Ekoi, the, of Southern Nigeria, 39 Epidemics supposed to be caused by in- cest, 46, 51 Eruptions of volcanoes supposed to be caused by incest, 54 N 2 l8o INDEX Esquimaux of Bering Strait, 132 Evolution, a scale of mental, 172 Ewe negroes of Togoland, 142 speaking tribesof the Slave Coast, 41 Executioners taste the blood of their victims, iig Exorcism of devils, wk sq. Expiation for sexual immorality, 44 sqq. , i;], 61, 62 j^. ; for marriage of cousins, 92 sq. ; for incest, 105 sq. ; for homi- cide, 128 sq. Extinction of the savage, 174 sq. Fady, or taboo, in Madagascar, 31 sq. Fairy banner, 17 changeling, 166 Father, incest with, 106 • and daughter, mutual avoidance of, 78, 85, 87 Father-in-law avoided ceremonially by his daughter-in-law, 82 ; avoided cere- monially by his son-in-law, 82, 83 Fear of ghosts, in sqq. ; salutary effect of. III, 113, T.i,i) sqq. ; of women who die in pregnancy or childbed, 133 sqq. Fertility of women and cattle, supposed power of chiefs and kings over the, 14, 16 ; of land supposed to be impaired by sexual offences, 44 sqq. , Diana a goddess of, 6i sq. Fetishes in Guinea, 41 Fetters put on the dead, 137 Fidelity, test of conjugal, 107 Fig-tree, sacred, among the Akikuyu, 128 sq. Fiji, authority of chiefs in, 7 ; taboo in, 27 ; orgies at circumcision in, 60 n.^ Fijians, their custom of driving away ghosts, 131 sq. Finger, sacrifice of, 117 First-fruits offered to chiefs, 7 Fish sacred, 36 Floods supposed to be caused by incest, 49 Folklore, a department of Social Anthro- pology, 166, 169 Food-supply supposed to be affected by improper relations between the sexes, 100 sq. Fornication, expiation for, 44 sq. ; disas- trous effects supposed to flow from, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 57, 63, 65, 96 ; punishment of, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, SS' 57, 63, 65, 66, 96 sqq. Frenzy caused by sight or thought of blood, X22 sq. Fruit-trees, charms for the protection of, 29 sqq. Furies of Clytemnestra, 117 Galelareese, the, of Halmahera, 54 Galton, Sir Francis, 159 Garcilasso de la Vega, quoted, 15 sq. ; on the Incas, 173 Gardens, superstition as to, 57 Gennep, A. van, 31 Ghostly power ascribed to chiefs, 6 sq. Ghosts as protectors of property, 26 ; the fear of, in sqq, ; salutary effect of belief in, in, T13, 149 sqq. ; of all who have died violent deaths accounted dangerous, 130 ; of bad people, pre- cautions against the, 132 sq. ; dis- abled by the mutilation of their corpses, 132 jy., 134, 136, 137; blinded, 133 and goblins outlast the high gods, 170 sq. of slain especially dreaded by their slayers, 113 sqq. ; thought to drive their slayers mad, 117 sqq. ; precau- tions taken by slayers against the, 117 sqq., 123 sqq. ; scared or driven away, 126, 130 sqq. ; especially dreaded by their kinsfolk and neigh- bours, 127 sqq. of women dying in pregnancy or childbed especially feared, 133 sqq. Girdle of red feathers, badge of royalty, 10 Girschner, Max, quoted, 87 sq. Goat, expiatory sacrifice of, 92 Gods or spirits angry at sexual offences, 44. 46. 47. 5°. SI. 54. 55 -f?-, 57. 61, 63, 107 ; the creations of man's fancy, 99 ; the stalking-horses of savages, loi ; the high, ephemeral compared to ghosts and goblins, 170 sq. Government, superstition as a prop of, 6 sqq. ; of mankind essentially aristo- cratic, 167 Governors, supernatural powers attri- buted to, 6 Granaries, superstitions concerning, 56 sq. Gran Chaco, Indians of the, 140 Granddaughter, incest with, 48 Grave, the road from the, barred against the ghost, 138 sq. Greasing the hands of the dead, 137 sq. Greece, superstitious veneration for kings in Homeric, 16 Greegrees, charms, 42 Greek piu-ification of homicides, 116, 120, 123 sq. Greeks, the ancient, their use of curses, 36 sq. ; their ideas as to incest, 61 ; their customs as to homicide, 113 sq. Grimm, the brothers, 169 sq. Guiana, British, 83 ; Indians of, their notion as to homicides, 117 sq. Guinea, fetishes in, 41 Gula, Babylonian goddess, 38 Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands, 107 INDEX i8i Hair of homicides shaved, 123 sq. , 128 Halmahera, East Indian island, 54 Hammurabi, code of, 64 Hanging as punishment for incest, 90 Hebrews, their ideas as to adultery, 60 sq. Heraclitus on purification for homicide, 117 Herbert River in Queensland, 137 Herero, the, of South Africa, 133 Herzegovina, 98 Hindoos of the Punjaub, 133 ; ancient, burial custom of the, 137 Hippopotamus hunters, superstitions of, 57 ^ii- History regulated by general laws, 160 ; of mankind, imperfection of the early records, 171 sq. Hlengoues, the, of South-East Africa, 57 Hobley, C. W., 105 «.^; quoted, 115 Homicide, purification for, 114, iic, sqq., 120 sqq., 122 sqq. ; expiation for, 128 Homicides fear the ghosts of their victims, 113 sqq.; secluded, 114 sq., 120, izi sq., 124, 12^ sqq. ; taste the blood of their victims, 118 sq. Horror of sexual irregularities among savages, suggested reason for, loi Hose, Ch. , and McDougall, W. , quoted, 49 -f?- Hottentots forbid marriage of cousins, 67 Howitt, A. W., 75 K.i, 8s n.^ Huichol Indians of Mexico, 106 Human history regulated by general laws, 160 life, superstition as a prop to the security of, ill sqq. Huth, A. H. , 95 Hypotheses, their place in science, 172 Ibo, the, of Nigeria, 119 Iguana used in magic, 30 sq. Illegitimate children put to death, 96 sq. Immorality, sexual, disastrous effects believed to flow from, 44 sqq., 63; supposed to disturb the course of nature, 99 sqq. ; original ground of the conception unknown, 102 ; supposed to be injurious to the culprits them- selves and their relations, I02 sqq. ; superstition as to, no Immortality, waste of life and property entailed by the belief in, iii sq.; belief in, a fruitful source of war, 129 sq. Impalement as punishment of adultery, 67 Inbreeding, question of the effects of, 95 ^S- Incas of Peru, 173 Incest, disastrous effects supposed to flow from, 45 sqq. , 61 ; with granddaughter, 48 ; withadopted daughter, 49 ; punish- ment of, 49 sq., 51, 52 sqq., go, 91 ; with aunt, 50, 51 ; with a mother, 51, 61, 67 ; with a niece, 51, 53 ; with a daughter, 51, 54, 58, 67, 68 ; with a sister, 51, 54, 59, 60 n.^, 62, 67, 68, 105 ; enjoined in certain circum- stances, 57 sqq. ; expiation for, 105 sq. ; with father, 106 India, superstitious veneration for kings in ancient, 16 Indian Archipelago, precautions against ghosts of women dying in childbed in the, 136 Indians of North America, their custom of driving away the ghosts of the slain, 130 sq. Infanticide in China checked by fear of ghosts, 150 sq. Infection, physical, supposed to bespread by unchaste persons, 109 Infertile marriage, dread of, 94 Infertility thought to be caused by sexual immorality, 57, 60 sq. ; of women and cattle supposed to be caused by forni- cation, 109 sq. Infidelity of husband supposed to be dangerous to his offspring, 103 : of wife supposed to endanger her hus- band, 106 sqq. See also Adultery Inoculation, magical, of hunters, 57 sq. ; of homicides, 121 Insanity, temporary, caused by blood, 122 sq. Institutions, early history of, imperfec- tions in the records, 171 sq. Ireland, superstitions as to kings in ancient, 17 Irish legend as to incest of brother and sister, 62 Ishtar, the goddess, 38 Isla del Malhado in Florida, 83 Issoudun in British New Guinea, 147 Ja-Luo, the, of Kavirondo, 123 Job on adultery, 60 Johnson, Dr. S. , 17, 18 ; on Voyages to the South Seas, 173 Jok, ancestral spirits, 57 Joustra, M., 85 n.^ Jupagalk tribe of Australia, 74 Juris, the, of Brazil, 33 Kabyles, the, of North Africa, 119 Kachins of Burma, their fear of the ghosts of women dying in childbed, 135 sq. Kai, the, of German New Guinea, their fear of the ghosts of the slain, 124 sq. Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales, 74 l82 INDEX Karens of Burma, their ideas as to sexual immorality, 44 sq. ; their dread of ghosts, 130 Kavirondo, the, of British East Africa, 65, 123 Kawars, the, 33 Kayans, the, of Borneo, 49, 50, 51 Khasis, the, of Assam, 45 Kickapoo Indians, 130 Kikuyu. See Akikuyu King's Evil, touching for, 17 sq. Kings, superstitious veneration for, 10 sqq. of Tahiti, their sacredness 10 sq. Kouis, the, of Laos, 32 Kubus, the, of Sumatra, 67 Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 146 sq. Landmarks protected by gods and curses, I^aos, 32 Laurel leaves used in purificatory rites, 117 Laws regulating marriage, their origin unknown, 102; which regulate human history, 160 Leaden tablets, 36 Leaping over grave of murdered man, 119 Leaves used in exorcism, 116 jy. Lengua Indians, their fear of ghosts, 140 sq. Leviticus, 6i Licence, periods of, 60 n,^ Lightning a punishment of incest, 45 Lillooet Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 145 sq. Livingstone, David, quoted, 38 Lkungen or Songish Indians of Van- couver Island, mourning customs of the, 143 Loango, the king of, 12, 13 ; ideas as to sexual immorality in, 54 sq. Lombok, sexual offences severely punished in, 70 Looboos, a people of Sumatra, 82, 109 Loot, pollution incurred by unchastity, 109 Loowoo, in Celebes, 12 Louis XV. , 18 Louis XVI. , 18 Low, Hugh, 48 Lushai, the, of North -Eastern India, 119 sq. Macassars, the, of Celebes, 51 iVIcDougall, W. , and Hose, Ch. , quoted, 49 sq. Macleods, chief of the, 17 IVIadagascar, 59, 106 ; taboo in, 31 sq. Madness supposed to be caused by homicide, 117 sqq. Magic older than religion, 100 Magical rites tend to become religious, 100 Maiming as a punishment of adultery, 64 Malagasy charms, 31 Malay Archipelago, taboo in the, 27 sq. Peninsula, 137 peoples, the severity with which they piinish sexual offences, 70 sq. region, divinity of kings in the, II sqq. Maloulekes, the, of South- Eastern Africa, 57- Mamoedjoe, district of Celebes, 68 Man, the science of, 159 sq. ; primaeval, unknown, 163 sq. Mana, supernatural power, 6 Mangars, a tribe of Nepal, 138 Mankind dominated by an enlightened minority, 167 sq. Manslayer. See Homicide Mantineans, their purification, 115 Manu, laws of, 16, 63 Maori chiefs, authority of, 7 sqq. ; esteemed gods, 7 sq. Maoris, taboo among the, 20 sqq. Marks of taboo to protect property, 25 sqq., 38 sq., 41 sqq. Marquesas Islands, taboo in the, 23 sq. Marrah, in Darfur, 39 Marriage, superstition in relation to, 44 sqq. of cousins, different customs as to the, 88 sq. , 91 ; forbidden, 89, 90, 91, 92 , supposed to be unfruitful, 92 ; expiation for the, 92 sq. laws, their origin unknown, 102 Marriages, consanguineous, question as to the results of, 95 sq. Masai, the, of British East Africa, 81 ; of German East Africa, 105 Medicine-man, respect for, 14 Melanesia, taboo as a preserver of property in, 26 sq. Melanesians, authority of chiefs among the, 6 sq. ; rules of ceremonial avoid- ance amongst the, 86 sq. ; of the Bismarck Archipelago, 131 Men Aziottenos, 37 Men naturally unequal, 166 sq. Mental evolution, a scale of, 172 Meteors, superstition as to, 141 Milky Way, 141 Mimic warfare, 129 Mimicry in magic, 100 Minority, mankind dominated by an enlightened, iby sq. Montenegrin peasantry, their strict views of sexual immorality, 97 Moral theory, hypothetical development of, 102 INDEX 183 Morality, sexual, enforced by superstition, 44 sqq. ; change in the theoretical basis of, loi sq. ; basis of, shifted from supernatural to natural, 153 Morocco, superstitions concerning granaries in, 56 sq. Mosaic law, punishments for sexual offences under the, 64 Mother, incest with a, 51, 61 ; and son, ceremonial avoidance between, 85, 86, 87 Mother-in-law, ceremonial avoidance of, 75 sqq. , 86 sq. , 90 sq. Mount Elgon, 123 Mourning customs ot widows and widowers, 142 sqq. Moxos Indians of Bolivia, 106 Mukjarawaint tribe of Victoria, 74 Murderer, rules observed by pardoned, 126 Murderers, their precautions against the ghosts of their victims, 117 sqq. Mutilation of corpses in order to disable the ghosts, 132 sq., 134, 136, 137 ; of the dying or dead, 141 Nails used to prevent ghosts from walk- ing, 133 Names of kings sacred, 10 Nandi, the, of British East Africa, 14, 56, 66, 118 ; curses among the, t^o sq. Natchez Indians of North America, 124 Natural inequality of men, 166 sq. Natiu'e, why illicit relations between the sexes are thought to disturb the balance of, 99 sqq. the Sphinx, 102 Nebuchadnezzar, the king, quoted, 37 sq. Nepal, 138 Nets to catch ghosts, 139 New Britain, 109 ; taboo in, 26 sq. Guinea, British, 125, 147 ; Dutch, 131 ; German, 82, 124, 127, 131 Hebrides, 86 Ireland, 89, 90 Mecklenburg, 89 South Wales, 74 Zealand, authority of chiefs in, 7 sqq. Nias, the island of, 46 sq. ; curses in, 34 Niece, incest with, 51, 53 Niger, tribes of the Lower, 119 Nile, the Upper, 57 Ninib, Babylonian god, 38 Nuru, the spirit of the slain, 121 Nusku, Babylonian god, 38 Oaths and imprecations as preservers of property, 24 sqq. See also Curses Obeah man, magician, 42 OH, magic, 42 Oedipus, the incest of, 61 Ojebways, their modes of keeping off ghosts, 139 sq. Omaha Indians, 132 sq. ; their customs as to pardoned murderers, 126 Opinion and action, their relative values for society, 155 Orang Glai, the, savages of Annam, 46 Oraons of Bengal, their fear of the ghosts of women dying in childbed or preg- nancy, 134 Oregon, Chinook Indians of, 126 Orestes, the matricide, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 126 Orinoco, the, 112 Ottawa Indians, 131 Ovakumbi, a tribe of Angola, 108 Ovambo, a Bantu people of South-West Africa, 80 sq. Pacific, first exploration of the, 173 Paestum, the temples at, 170 Paint-house, the, 55 Pamali, taboo, 27 Papuans of New Guinea, 131 ; of Issoudun, 147 Parents-in-law, ceremonial avoidance by man of his future, 81, 83 Parricide, Roman punishment of, 52 ; guilt of, 61 Pasemhers, a tribe of Sumatra, 69 Pasir, a district of Borneo, 51 Patagonians, their fear of the dead, in sqq. Peasantry of Europe, their intellectual savagery, 170 Pemali, taboo, 27 Pepper put in eyes of corpse to blind ghost, 133 Perham, J. , 47 Persephone, 36 Peru, the Yncas of, 15 sq., iTi Petara, Dyak name for deity, 47 Pig's blood used in ceremonies of purifi- cation, 116 sq. Pigs used in expiatory ceremonies, 44 sqq. Physical causation, false notions of, 100 infection supposed to be spread by unchaste persons, 109 relationship supposed to exist be- tween adulterer and injured husband, 104 sq. Plato on sanctity of landmarks, 37 Pollution, ceremonial, 93, 105 ; incurred by homicide, 115 sqq., 128 , dangerous, supposed to be incurred by unchastity, 109 Polynesia, authority of chiefs in, 7 sqq. ; taboo in, 20 sqq. Pomali, taboo, 27 Pontianak, ghost of woman who died in childbed, 137 «. 1 84 INDEX Precautions taken by homicides against the ghosts of their victims, 117 sqq., 123 sqq. ; against the ghosts of bad people, 132 sq. ; against ghosts of women dying in pregnancy or child- bed, 133 sqq. ; taken by widows and widowers against the ghosts of their spouses, 142 sqq. Prehistoric ages, imperfections in the records of, 171 sq. Primseval man unknown, 163 sq. Primitive, relative sense in which the word is applied to existing savages, 163 sq. Private property, superstition as a prop of, 20 sqq. Propagation of animals and plants sup- posed to be affected by the relations of the human sexes, 99 sqq. Property, superstition as a support of priv- ate, 20 sqq. ; of the dead destroyed, III sq., 135 Psanyi, 122 Punans, the, of Borneo, 50 Punishments, severe, for sexual offences, 63 sqq. , 96 sqq. Punjaub, the, 133 Purification for unchastity by means of blood, 44 sqq. ; for unchastity by means of water, 109 ; for homicide, 114, 115 sqq., 120 sqq., 123 sqq.; and capital punishment, 151 sq. Queen Anne, 18 Queen Charlotte Islands, 107 Queen Draga of Servia, 97 Queensland, native tribes of, 72 sqq. ; their mutilation of the dead, 137 Rain, kings expected to give, 13 jy. ; failure or excess of, supposed to be caused by sexual immorality, 44, 46, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56 Rajah Brooke, 12 Rajamahal in Bengal, 45 Ramanandroany, a Malagasy deity, 31 Rape, punishment of, 66 Red paint put on homicides, 118, 124, 127 Regalia, sanctity of, 11 Relations by marriage, ceremonial avoid- ance of, 75 sqq. Religion supplies the new theoretical basis of sexual morality, loi ; of one generation the superstition of the next, 170 sq. and magic, their relations, 100 Renan, Ernest, on the menace to civiliza- tion, 170 Reproduction of men, animals, and plants, analogy between the, 99 sq. Rhodesia, Northern, 66, 79, 103, 120 Rhys, Sir John, quoted, 54 «.^, 62 sq. Rio de Janeiro, 96 Risley, Sir Herbert H. , quoted, 138 Road from the grave barred against the ghost, 138 sq. Robert the Pious, 18 Roman custom as to incest, 61 sq. punishment of parricide, 52 Roscoe, Rev. J., quoted, 64^^., 90^^., 102 sq. Ruanda, a district of Central Africa, 96 Sacred chiefs, 7 sqq. fig-tree among the Akikuyu, 128 sq. ■ fish, 36 Sacredness of chiefs in Polynesia, 7 sqq. Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, 173 St. Patrick, canon of, 17 Samoa, superstition as a preserver of property in, 24 sqq. Samoan taboos, 25 sq. Sarah and Abraham, 60 sq. Sarawak, Hill Dyaks of, 11 sq., 48 Savage, the, a human document, 172 sq. ; the passing of the, 174 sq. Savage horror of sexual irregularities, suggested reason for, loi Savagery, civilization evolved out of, 162 ; importance of the study of, 162 sq., 172 sqq. ; intellectual, of Euro- pean peasantry, 170 Savages of to-day primitive only in a relative sense, 163 sq. Saxons, their punishment of sexual offences, 97 Scapegoat for ghosts, 141 sq. Scarecrows for ghosts, 139 Scepticism, religious, undermines founda- tions of society, 7 Science of man, 159 sq. , the temple of, 161 Scrofula, touching for, 17 sq. Scythians drank the blood of friends and foes, 118 Sea-pike taboo, 25 Seclusion of homicides, 114 sq., 120, 121 sq., 124, 125 sqq. Semendo, a district of Sumatra, 68 Servius Tullius, King, 61 Sexual communism, era of, 164 sq. ■ immorality supposed to be injurious to the culprits themselves and to their relations, 102 sqq. ; superstitions as to, no morality enforced by superstition, 44 sqq. ; change in the theoretical basis of, loi offences punished severely, 63 sqq. , 96 sqq. ; reason why savages punish these offences severely, 99 sqq. " Slialcing tubercule," 32 * Slians, the, of Burma, 119, 134 INDEX i8s Sheep, expiatory sacrifice of, 92, 93 Shushwap Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 142 sq. Siam, 32 Sibuyaus, the, of Sarawak, 48 Sibylline Books, 173 Sickness caused by evil spirits or sor- cerers, 141 "Sickness of relationship," 76 sq. Sierra Leone, 42 Similarity of the human mind in all races, 172 Sister, incest with a, 51, 54, 59, 60 n?-, 62, 67, 68, 105 Sisters and brothers, mutual avoidance of, 77 Slave Coast, the, 41 Slavery in England, 169 Slavs, punishment of sexual offences among the Southern, 97 sq. Slayers fear the ghosts of their victims, 113 sqq. Sle, pollution incurred by unchastity, 109 Smyrna, 36 Social anthropology, the scope of, 157 sqq. Society, concerned with conduct, not opinion, 155 : ultimately controlled by knowledge, 167 ; sapped by supersti- tion, 170 ; its surface in perpetual motion, 171 Sociology, 160 Sofala, the king of, 13, 14 Son-in-law, ceremonial avoidance of, 79 sq. Sophocles on Oedipus, 61 Sphinx, riddles of the, 102 State, duty of the, in regard to anthro- pology, 175 sq. Stinks to keep off ghosts, 139 Stoning as a punishment of sexual offences, 64, 97 sq. Sulka, the, of New Britain, 109 Sumatra, 46, 67, 68, 69, 82, 109 Sun, Yncas descended from the, 15 Supernatural powers attributed to chiefs, 6 sqq. Superstition, baneful effects of, 3 ; a plea for, 3 sq., 154 sq.; as a prop of government, 6 sqq. ; as a prop of private property, 20 sqq, ; as a prop of marriage, 44 sqq. ; as a prop to the security of human life, 11 1 sqq.; heavy toll paid to, 113 ; services which super- stition has rendered to humanity, 154 sq.; at the bar, 155 sq.; the creed of the laggards in the march of intellect, 168 sq. ; a danger to society, 170 ; the religion of a past generation, 170 sq. Superstitions either public or private, 169 ; the crudest, survive longest, 170 sq. Superstitious fear of contact with Maori chiefs, 9 sq. Surface of society in perpetual motion, 171 Survivals of savagery in civilization, 166 Swedes, the ancient, 16 Taboo as a support of chiefs, 7 sqq. ; as a prop of private property, 20 sqq. ; {tambu) in Melanesia, 26 sq. Tabooed, homicides, 121 Tahiti, sacredness of kings of, 10 sq. Tamanaques, the, of the Orinoco, 112 Tambu (taboo) in Melanesia, 26 sq. Tapu (taboo) among the Maoris, 20 sqq. Tattooing of homicides, 121 Taylor, Rev. Richard, 8 Ternate, 54 Thahu, ceremonial pollution, 93, 105, 115, 128 Theal, G. McCall, quoted, 91 Theoretical basis of sexual moirality, loi Thieves cursed, 34 sqq. Thompson Indians of British Columbia, mourning customs of the, 144 sq. Thomson, Basil, quoted, 7 Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 95 sq. Thonga tribe of South-East Africa, 57, 80, 92, 104; their purification of homi- cides, 121 sq. Thorn bushes to keep off ghosts, 142 sq. , 144. 14s Thunder taboo, 26 Tigers, plague of, a punishment for sexual offences, 45, 46 Timor, taboo in, 27 Togoland, 142 Tololaki, the, of Central Celebes, 53 Tomori, the, of Central Celebes, 52 Tonga, sacredness of chiefs in, 10 ; taboo in, 26 Tonquin, 33 Toradjas of Central Celebes, 12, 29, 30, 122 ; their fear of the ghosts of the slain, 129 Torture to extract confession, 64 sq. Touched, chiefs and kings not to be, 9, II Touching for scrofula, 17 sq. Traitors disembowelled in England, 169 Travail pangs supposed to be aggravated by adultery, 104 Travancore, 132 Trembling thought to be caused by con- tact with certain relations, 77, 90 Troezen, purification of Orestes at, 115 Tsetsaut Indians of British Columbia, . mourning customs of the, 143 Tubercule, the shaking, 32 Tunguses, their burial customs, 137, 138 Turner, Dr. George, quoted, 241?., 26 i86 INDEX Tylor, Sir E. B., 159 Ulcer taboo, 25 sq. Unchastity, supposed physical infection of, 109 United States of America, their Bureau of Ethnology, 175 Universities, the function of the, 175 Unmarried persons, disastrous effects supposed to flow from sexual inter- course between, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55. 57. 63. 6s, 96 Vancouver Island, 143 Victoria, aborigines of, 71 sq. N3'^anza, Lake, 78 Voyages to the South Seas, 173 Wagogo, the, of German East Africa, 92, 106 Wakelbura tribe of Queensland, 72 Wallace, A. R. , quoted, 27, 70 Wanigela River, 125 Wanika, the, of East Africa, 38 War, a sacred duty, 129 ; wives expected to be faithful ciuring their husbands' absence at the, 106 sq. Warfare, mimic, conducted by women and children at home, 129 Washamba, the, of German East Africa, 106 Water ordeal, 107 Wawanga, the, of British East Africa, 123 Weeks, Rev. John H. , 85 n.^ \ quoted, 75 j^r., 128 Welsh saying as to rain, 54 n.'^ West Indies, charms to protect property in the, 42 sq. Westermarck, Dr. Edward, 32, 56 White-shark taboo, 25 Widows and widowers, precautions taken by them against the ghosts of their spouses, 142 sqq. Wife of wife's brother, ceremonial avoid- ance of, 80 Wife's mother, ceremonial avoidance of, 7S sqq. , 86 sq. , 90 sq. Witches burned in England, 169 Women dying in pregnancy or childbed, fear of their ghosts, 133 sqq. Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria, 74 Yabim, the, of German New Guinea, 127, 131 Yncas of Peru, superstitious veneration for the, 15 sq. Yucatan, Indians of, 83 Yuin tribe of New South Wales, 74 Zanzibar, 78 Zeus as guardian of landmarks, 37 Zulus, their ideas as to injurious effects of adultery, 107 sq. THE END Printed by R. & R. Clakk, LIMITED, Edinburgh. Works by J. Q. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Utt.D. THE GOLDEN BOUGH A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION Third Edition, revised and enlarged. 8vo. Part I. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings. Two volumes. Second Impression. 20s. net. II. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. One volume. 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