Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/449

 The Principles of Fasting. 407

course.! Hence, also, they are often prohibited from touching food ; and this may in some cases have led to fasting, whilst in other instances they have to be fed by their neighbours."-

However, an unclean individual may be supposed to pollute a piece of food not only by touching it with his hand, but in some cases by eating it, and, in accordance with the principle oi pars pro toto, the pollution may then spread to all victuals belonging to the same species. Ideas of this kind are sometimes conspicuous in connection with the restrictions in diet after a death. Thus the Siciatl of British Columbia believe that a dead body, or anything connected with the dead, is inimical to the salmon, and therefore the relatives of a deceased person must abstain from eating salmon in the early stages of the run, as also from entering a creek where salmon are found.^ Among the Stlatlumh, a neighbouring people, not even elderly widowers, for whom the period of abstention is compara- tively short, are allowed to eat fresh salmon till the first of the run is over and the fish have arrived in such numbers that there is no danger of their being driven away.* It is not unlikely that if the motives for the restrictions in diet after a death were sufficiently known

^Teit, lof. cit. p. 331 (Upper Thompson Indians). Tout, \n /our. Anthr. Inst. XXXV. 139 (Stlatlumh of British Columbia). Oldenberg, op. cit. pp. 578, 590 ; Caland, Die altiiidischen Tudten- und Bestatlutigsgebrduche, p. 81. de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 609 (Chinese). Wilken, in Revue Internationale coloniale, iv. 352, n. 41.

'■* Turner, Sawoa, p. 145 ; Idem, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228 (Samoans). Ellis, Polynesian Researches (1859), i. 403 (Tahitians). P'razer, Golden Bough (1900), i. 323 (Maoris). Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 169. Among the Upper Thompson Indians the persons who handled the dead body would not touch the food with their hands, but must put it into their mouths with sharp-pointed sticks (Teil, loc. cit. p. 331).

^Tout, 'Ethnology of the Siciatl of British Columbia,' m Jour. Anthr. xxxiv. 33.

■•Tout, m Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 139.