Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/355

Rh suggests are totems. Here again the taboo is only temporary, though it is not taken off until the youths have attended a second Bora, or sacred initiation ceremony.

The real origin and meaning of the food prohibitions in Leviticus are still a puzzle to scholars. Perhaps Mr. Lang has an explanation up his sleeve that will apply equally to the Hebrew permanent prohibitions, resting ostensibly on the distinction between clean and unclean animals, and these Australian temporary prohibitions, intended for a probationary purpose, and resting ostensibly on ceremonial or mythic reasons. Otherwise, in the name of science what meaning have the words "Leviticus, passim"?

There were further rules, not recounted by Mr. Lang, imposed by the same divine authority of Mungan-ngaur. They are not, indeed, quite so redolent of the Decalogue or Leviticus, passim, even to a sensitive nostril, as some of the foregoing. But they are of quite as much value to inquirers who really desire to know the meaning of the initiation ceremonies, and to estimate aright the relation of the ceremonies and the ideas expressed thereby to the civilisation, or rather to the savagery, of the Kurnai. Two are set forth by Mr. Howitt. The novice was "not to use the right hand for anything, unless told to do so by the Bullawang," an adult kinsman in charge of him during the rites. The penalty threatened for breach of this rule was that some magical substance would enter the offending member, and would require the doctor to extract it. It is hard with our present knowledge to understand this taboo. It may have had some object beyond that of further impressing the youths with unreasoning terror and submission; that object it certainly had. The other prohibition has parallels among most savage nations: "They were cautioned not to go near an enceinte woman, nor to let a woman's shadow fall across them, nor to permit a woman to make bread for them, under