Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/359

 of the weak-women, children and common people generally—from the powerful mana (magical influence) of chiefs and priests; (c) the provision against the dangers incurred by handling or coming in contact with corpses, by eating certain foods, &c.; (d) the guarding the chief acts of life-birth, initiation, marriage and sexual functions, &c., against interference; (e) the securing of human beings against the wrath or power of gods and spirits; (f) the securing of unborn infants and young children, who stand in a specially sympathetic relation with one or both parents, from the consequences of certain actions, and more especially from the communication of qualities supposed to be derived from certain foods. (ii.) Taboos are imposed in order to secure against thieves the property of an individual, his fields, tools, &c.

5. Sanctions.—The sanctions of taboo may be (i.) natural or direct; (ii) social or indirect. Natural sanctions are (a) automatic. where the punishment of the offender results from the operation of natural laws without any element of volition, just as some kinds of magic are held to bring about their results without the intervention of a spirit; (b) animistic, where the penalty results from the wrath of a god, deceased human being, or other spirit. The motive of the social sanction is ultimately religious or magical, but the penalties incurred by the Violator of a taboo are social; they are inflicted by other members of the community, firstly, as a means of averting the supernatural sanctions, which, not having fallen on the actual offender, may visit his innocent fellows; and secondly, as a. means of discouraging other offenders; in these cases the criminal is not himself taboo, but, thanks to his mana, braves the supernatural consequences; the social penalty is also inflicted on those who, like mourners, are themselves taboo and refuse to take steps to seclude themselves, in defence of the community;in the first class the social penalty is at once repressive and prophylactic, saving the innocent by punishing the guilty, and thus averting by a piaculum the vengeance which would otherwise fall somewhere; in the second the penalty is purely repressive.

The violation of a taboo makes the offender himself taboo; other penalties are not unkown: thus a man who partakes of a forbidden animal will break out in sores or the animal will reproduce itself within him and devour his vitals. Sometimes it is thought that the penalty falls on the kinswomen of the offender and that they produce, instead of children, animals of the taboo species. In Melanesia burial-grounds are taboo, and if the shadow of a passer-by falls on one, this entails upon him the loss of his soul; sometimes misfortune is held to dog the footsteps of the offender in this life and the next. But in some of these cases the observer who reports them has probably confused taboos proper with negative magic. The social sanctions range from the death penalty down to the infliction of a fine or exaction of money compensation; the Polynesian custom of despoiling a man who breaks a taboo is perhaps a special case of this penalty, but the practice of ceremonial plundering cannot always be so explained, and may perhaps in this case too be capable of an entirely different explanation. Possibly the savage is more susceptible to suggestion than civilized man; at any rate, cases are not unknown in which the violation of a taboo has been followed by illness or even death, when the offender discovers his error. Not unnaturally rites of purification act as counter suggestions and save the offender from the effects of his erroneous beliefs.

6. Mana.—In the case of automatic taboos, and to some extent of other ritual prohibitions, the penalties for violation are unequal; they may be regarded as varying with the relation between the mana of the person or object and the mana of the offender against the prohibition. In the words of Dr R. H. Codrington, mana “is a power or influence, not physical and in a way supernatural; but it shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses. This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or supernatural (i.e. non-human) beings, have it and can impart it; and it essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water, or a stone or a bone” (cf. the suhman of West Africa, in ). Persons or things which are regarded as taboo may be compared to objects charged with electricity; they are the seat of a tremendous power which is transmissible by contact, and may be liberated with destructive effect if the organisms which provoke its discharge are too weak to resist it; the result of a violation of a taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence inherent in the taboo object or person, partly on the strength of the opposing mana of the violator of the taboo. Thus, kings and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death for their subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person of greater mana than common can approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their inferiors without risk. The burial-place is often taboo for the common people, save when they are actually engaged in funeral rites; but the sorcerer, thanks to his indwelling power, can resist the deadly influences which would destroy the common folk, and may enter a cemetery for ritual or other purposes. So too indirect taboos depend for their strength on the mana of him who imposes them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more powerful than those imposed by a common person. The mana of the priest, or chief, does not depend on his position; on the contrary, it is thanks to his mana that he has risen above the common herd.

7. Transmissibility.—It is characteristic of taboo proper that it is transmissible; as a logical corollary of this idea, acquired taboo may be thrown off by suitable magical or puriiicatory ceremonies; the mourner, or he who takes part in funeral ceremonies; was perhaps at the outset regarded as a person charged with death-dealing power, and fear of the spirit of the dead may well have been secondary; however this may be, we can distinguish taboos, the violation of which charges with supernatural power the human being who violates them, thus rendering him directly dangerous to the community, from ritual prohibitions the violation of which makes him an outcast, not as himself dangerous, but as a person obnoxious to the gods. The ritual prohibitions of pregnancy, and the restrictions imposed on the parents during the early childhood of their offspring, are not taboos proper; though they are transmissible, they do not depend on the transmission of an undifferentiated mana; what the parents seek to avoid is often the transmission of specific qualities, conceived as inherent in certain animals, e.g. cowardice in the hare, slowness in the tortoise; the animal is not necessarily in any sense sacred, nor are the parents, if they disregard the prohibition, liable to any penalty, direct or indirect; neither they nor the child are rendered taboo by any violation; finally, save that the child acquires its qualities by a sympathetic process, the abstinence of the parents is correlative to the converse operation of eating an animal or otherwise acquiring by a magical process the good qualities inherent in anything.

8. Duration of Taboos, Imposition, and Abrogation.—Taboo is properly sanctity and the kind of interdict which it entrains; by a transference of meaning it is sometimes used of a period of time during which ritual prohibitions of a religious nature are enforced; these periods were proclaimed in Polynesia on important occasions and sometimes lasted for many years; they may be termed interdicts. Many persons and things are permanently taboo; among them may be mentioned kings and chiefs, the property of dead persons and, a fortiori, their bodies or anything in contact with them. Other taboos are temporary. Temporary direct taboos, Whether natural or acquired, may be removed by a process of desacralization or of purification. Thus, new crops are frequently taboo till the chief has partaken of them; his mana enables him to run risks which would be fatal to ordinary people, and the crops thus desacralized become free to all; perhaps, however, we may regard the practice as a case of sacralization, in which the fchief, like a sacrificing priest, acquires special sanctity, and in so doing fortifies his people by a sympathetic process against supernatural dangers. A