Chapter 105

7Reichard, ‘Die Wanjamuesi,’ inZeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, xxiv. 321.

8Park,Travels in the Interior of Africa, i. 114.

9Torday and Joyce, ‘Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxvi. 41, 42, 51.

10Roscoe, ‘Bahima,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxvii. 101.

11Felkin, ‘Notes on the For Tribe,’ inProceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 218.

12Dalton,Ethnology of Bengal, p. 33.

13Curr,The Australian Race, i. 81. Brough Smyth,op. cit.i. xxxv.

14Macgillivray,Voyage of Rattlesnake, ii. 10.

15von Kotzebue,Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea, iii. 249, note. Cook, quoted by Buckle,Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, iii. 355.

16Torday and Joyce, ‘Ethnography of the Ba-Huana,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxvi. 279.

17Powell,Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 173.

18von Kittlitz,Reise nach dem russischen Amerika, &c.ii. 103sq.

19Low,Sarawak, p. 266.

Among various peoples certain foods are forbidden to priests or magicians. The priests of the ancient Egyptians were not allowed to eat fish,20nor to meddle with the esculent or potable substances which were produced out of Egypt;21and, according to Plutarch, they so greatly disliked the nature of excrementitious things that they not only rejected most kinds of pulse, but also the flesh of sheep and swine, because it produced much superfluity of nutriment.22The lamas of Mongolia will touch no meat of goats, horses, or camels.23Among the Semang of the Malay Peninsula the medicine-men will not eat goat or buffalo flesh and but rarely that of fowl.24The dairymen of the Todas may drink milk from certain buffaloes only, and are altogether forbidden to eat chillies.25These and similar restraints laid upon priests or wizards are probably connected with the idea that holiness is a delicate quality which calls for special precautions.26Schomburgk states that the conjurers of the British Guiana Indians partake but seldom of the native hog, because they consider the eating of it injurious to the efficacy of their skill.27And the Ulád Bu ʿAzîz in Morocco believe that if a scribe or a saint eats wolf’s flesh the charms he writes will have no effect, and the saliva of the saint will lose its curative power.

20Herodotus, ii. 37. Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride, 7. Porphyry,De abstinentia ab esu animalium, iv. 7.

21Porphyry,op. cit.iv. 7.

22Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride, 5.

23Prejevalsky,Mongolia, i. 56.

24Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, ii. 226.

25Rivers,Todas, p. 102sq.For some other instances see Landtman,Origin of Priesthood, p. 161sq.

26Cf.Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 391.

27Schomburgk, ‘Expedition to the Upper Corentyne,’ inJour. Roy. Geograph. Soc. London, xv. 30.

There are still other cases in which certain persons are permanently required to abstain from certain kinds of food. Thus in the Andaman Islands every man and woman “is prohibited all through life from eating someone (or more) fish or animal: in most cases the forbidden dainty is one which in childhood was observed (or imagined) by the mother to occasion some functional derangement; when of an age to understand it the circumstance is explained, and cause and effect being clearly demonstrated, the individual, in question thence forth considers that particular meat hisyât-tūb, and avoids it carefully. In cases where no evil consequences have resulted from partaking of any kind of food, the fortunate person is privileged to select his ownyât-tūb, and is, of course, shrewd enough to decide upon some fish, such as shark or skate, which is little relished, and to abstain from which consequently entails no exercise of self-denial.” It is believed that the god Pūluga would punish severely any person who might be guilty of eating hisyât-tūb, either by causing his skin to peel off, or by turning his hair white, and flaying him alive.28In Samoa each man had generally his god in the shape of some species of animal; and if he ate one of these divine animals it was supposed that the god avenged the insult by taking up his abode in the eater’s body and there generating an animal of the same kind until it caused his death.29The members of a totem clan are usually forbidden to eat the particular animal or plant whose name they bear.30Thus among the Omaha Indians men whose totem is the elk believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies; and men whose totem is the red corn think that if they ate red corn they would have running sores all round their mouths.31Yet, however general, prohibitions of this kind cannot be said to be a universal characteristic of totemism.32Sir J. G. Frazer even suggests that the original custom was perhaps to eat the totem and thelatter custom to abstain from it.33But this is hardly more than a guess.

28Man, ‘Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands.’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xii. 354.

29Turner,Samoa, p. 17sq.

30Frazer,Totemism, p. 7sqq.Idem,Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6.

31Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.iii. 225, 231.Idem, ‘Siouan Folk-Lore,’ inAmerican Antiquarian, vii. 107.

32Frazer,Totemism, p. 19.Idem,Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6.sq.

33Frazer,Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6sq.

There are, finally, restrictions in eating which refer to the whole people or tribe. In early society certain things which might serve as food are often not only universally abstained from, but actually prohibited by custom or law. The majority of these prohibitions have reference to animals or animal products, which are naturally more apt to cause disgust than is vegetable food—probably because our ancestors in early days, by instinct, subsisted chiefly on a vegetable diet, and only subsequently acquired a more general taste for animal nourishment.34Certain animals excite a feeling of disgust by their very appearance, and are therefore abstained from. This I take to be a reason for the aversion to eating reptiles. It is said that snakes are avoided as food because their flesh is supposed to be as poisonous as their bite;35but this explanation is hardly relevant to harmless reptiles, which are likewise in some cases forbidden food.36The abstinence from fish seems generally to have a similar origin, though some peoples say that they refuse to eat certain species because the soul of a relative might be in the fish.37The Navahoes of New Mexico “must never touch fish, and nothing will induce them to taste one.”38The Mongols consider them unclean animals.39The South Siberian Kachinzes are said to refrain from them because they believe that “the evil principle lives in the water and eats fish.”40The Káfirs on the North-Western frontier of India “detest fish, though their rivers abound in them.”41The same aversion is common in the SouthAfrican tribes42and among most Hamitic peoples of East Africa;43when asked for an explanation of it, they say that fish are akin to snakes. Fish, or at least certain species of fish, were forbidden to the ancient Syrians;44and the Hebrews were prohibited from eating all fish that have not fins and scales.45It is curious to note that various peoples who detest fish also abstain from fowl.46The Navahoes are strictly forbidden to eat the wild turkey with which their forests abound;47and the Mongols dislike of fowl is so great that one of Prejevalsky’s guides nearly turned sick on seeing him eat boiled duck.48Some peoples have a great aversion to eggs,49which are said to be excrements, and therefore unfit for food.50There may be a similar reason for the abstinence from milk among peoples who have domesticated animals able to supply them with it.51The Dravidian aborigines of the hills ofCentral India, who never use milk, are expressly said to regard it as an excrement.52The ancient Caribs had a horror of eggs and never drank milk.53The Ashantees are “forbidden eggs by the fetish, and cannot be persuaded to taste milk.”54The Kimbunda in South-Western Africa detest milk, and consider it inconceivable how a grown-up person can enjoy it; they believe that the Kilulu, or spirit, would punish him who partook of it.55The Dyaks of Borneo, the Javanese, and the Malays abstain from milk.56To the Chinese milk and butter are insupportably odious.57

34Cf.Schurtz,Die Speiseverbote, p. 17.

35Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 130 (Berembun). Schurtz,op. cit.p. 22.

36Leviticus, xi. 29sq.Sayce,Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 83.

37Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 430, 432.

38Stephen, ‘Navajo,’ inAmerican Anthropologist, vi. 357.

39Prejevalsky,op. cit.i. 56.

40von Strümpell, ‘Der Volksstamm der Katschinzen,’ inMittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Leipzig, 1875, p. 23.

41Fosberry, ‘Some of the Mountain Tribes of the N.W. Frontier of India,’ inJour. Ethn. Soc. London, N.S. i. 192.

42Fritsch,Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika, p. 338. Shooter,Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country, p. 215 (Zulus). Kropf,Das Volk der Xosa-Kaffern, p. 102. Campbell,Second Journey in the Interior of South Africa, ii. 203 (Bechuanas). The Hottentots, however, eat fish (Fritsch, p. 339).

43Hildebrandt, ‘Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,’ inZeitschr. f. Ethnol.x. 378. Paulitschke,Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, i. 155 (Somals, Gallas). Schurtz,op. cit.p. 23.

44Porphyry,op. cit.iv. 15. Plutarch,De superstitione, 10.

45Leviticus, xi. 10sqq.

46Hildebrandt, inZeitschr. f. Ethnol.x. 378 (Gallas, Wadshagga, Waikuyu, &c.). Paulitschke,op. cit.i. 153sqq.(Gallas, Somals). Burton,Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 95 (Somals). Meldon, ‘Bahima of Ankole,’ inJour. African Soc.vi. 146; Ashe,Two Kings of Uganda, p. 303 (Bahima). Kropf,Das Volk der Xosa-Kaffern, p. 102. Among the Zulus domestic fowls are eaten by none except young persons and old (Shooter,op. cit.p. 215). For other peoples who abstain from fowl, see Bastian,Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 185; Casati,Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 165 (Monbuttu); Salt,Voyage to Abyssinia, p. 179 (Danakil); Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 135 (Sabimba), 136 (Orang Muka Kuning);Globus, l. 330 (inhabitants of Hainan); Ehrenreich, quoted by Schurtz,op. cit.p. 20 (Karaya of Goyaz); von den Steinen,Durch Central-Brasilien, p. 262 (Yuruna); Cæsar,De bello Gallico, v. 12 (ancient Britons).

47Stephen, inAmerican Anthropologist, vi. 357.

48Prejevalsky,op. cit.i. 56.

49The Kafirs formerly abstained from eggs (Kropf,op. cit.p. 102). Among the Zulus eggs are eaten by young and old persons only (Shooter,op. cit.p. 215). The Bahima refuse this kind of food (Ashe,op. cit.p. 303), and so do generally the Waganda, especially the women (Felkin, ‘Notes on the Waganda Tribe,’ inProceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 716; Ashe, p. 303). See also Andree,Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 126sq.; Schurtz,op. cit.p. 23sq.

50Reichard, ‘Die Wanjamuesi,’ inZeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, xxiv. 321. Hildebrandt, ‘Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,’ inZeitschr. f. Ethnol.x. 378.

51See Westermarck,History of Human Marriage, p. 484.

52Crooke,Things Indian, p. 92.

53Du Tertre,Histoire générale des Antilles, ii. 389.

54Bowdich,Mission to Ashantee, p. 319.

55Magyar,Reisen in Süd-Afrika, i. 303, 321.

56Low,op. cit.p. 267.

57Huc,Travels in Tartary, i. 281. Westermarck,op. cit.p. 484.

The meat of certain animals may also be regarded with disgust on account of their filthy habits or the nasty food on which they live. In the Warramunga tribe, in Central Australia, there is a general restriction applying to eagle-hawks, and the reason assigned for it is that this bird feeds on the bodies of dead natives.58It seems that the abstinence from swine’s flesh, at least in part, belongs to the same group of facts. Various tribes in South Africa hold it in abomination.59In some districts of Madagascar, according to Drury, the eating of pork was accounted a very contemptible thing.60It is, or was, abstained from by the Jakuts of Siberia, the Votyaks of the Government of Vologda,61and the Lapps.62The disgust for pork has likewise been met with in many American tribes. The Koniagas will eat almost any digestible substance except pork.63The Navahoes of New Mexico abominate it “as if they were the devoutest of Hebrews”;64it is not forbidden by their religion, but “they say they will not eat the flesh of the hog simply because the animal is filthy inits habits, because it is the scavenger of the town.”65In his description of the Indians of the South-Eastern States Adair writes:—“They reckon all those animals to be unclean that are either carnivorous, or live on nasty food, as hogs, wolves, panthers, foxes, cats, mice, rats…. When swine were first brought among them, they deemed it such a horrid abomination in any of their people to eat that filthy and impure food, that they excluded the criminal from all religious communion in their circular town-house…. They still affix vicious and contemptible ideas to the eating of swine’s flesh; insomuch thatShúkàpa, ‘swine eater,’ is the most opprobrious epithet that they can use to brand us with; they commonly subjoinAkang-gàpa, ‘eater of dunghill fowls.’ Both together signify ‘filthy, helpless animals.’”66So also those Indians in British Guiana who have kept aloof from intercourse with the colonists reject pork with the greatest loathing. Schomburgk tells us that an old Indian permitted his children to accompany him on a journey only on the condition that they were never to eat any viands prepared by his cook, for fear lest pork should have been used in their preparation. But this objection does not extend to the native hog, which, though generally abstained from by wizards, is eaten by the laity indiscriminately, with the exception of women who are pregnant or who have just given birth to a child.67This suggests that the aversion to the domestic pig partly springs from the fact that it is a foreign animal. Indeed, the Guiana Indians refuse to eat the flesh of all animals that are not indigenous to their country, but were introduced from abroad, such as oxen, sheep, and fowls, apparently on the principle “that any strange and abnormal object is especially likely to be possessed of a harmful spirit.”68The Kafirs, also, abstainfrom the domestic swine, though they eat the wild hog.69Some writers maintain that pork has been prohibited on the ground that it is prejudicial to health in hot countries;70but, as we have seen, this prohibition is found among various northern peoples as well, and it seems besides that the unwholesomeness of pork in good condition has been rather assumed than proved. Sir J. G. Frazer, again, believes that the ancient Egyptians, Semites, and some of the Greeks abstained from this food not because the pig was looked upon simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but because it was considered to be endowed with high supernatural powers.71In Greece the pig was used in purificatory ceremonies.72Lucian says that the worshippers of the Syrian goddess abstained from eating pigs, some because they held them in abomination, others because they thought them holy.73The heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine’s flesh once a year.74According to Greek writers, the Egyptians abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal, and to drink its milk was believed to cause leprosy and itchy eruptions;75but once a year they sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris and ate of the flesh of the victims, though at any other time they would not so much as taste pork.76

58Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612.

59Fritsch,Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika, p. 339. Kropf,op. cit.p. 102 (Kafirs).

60Drury,Madagascar, p. 143.

61Latham,Descriptive Ethnology, i. 363.

62Leem,Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 501.

63Bancroft,Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 75.

64Stephen, inAmerican Anthropologist, vi. 357.

65Matthews, ‘Study of Ethics among the Lower Races,’ inJour. American Folk-Lore, xii. 5.

66Adair,History of the American Indians, p. 132sqq.

67Schomburgk, inJour. Roy. Geograph. Soc. London, xv. 29sq.

68Im Thurn,Indians of Guiana, p. 368. Dr. Schurtz suggests (op. cit.p. 19sqq.) that some other peoples, as the Indians of Brazil, abstain from fowls because they are not indigenous to their country.

69Müller,Allgemeine Ethnographie, p. 189.

70Ramsay,Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 32. Wiener, ‘Die alttestamentarischen Speiseverbote,’ inZeitschr. f. Ethnol.viii. 103. See also Buckle,Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, iii. 354sq.

71Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 304sqq.Idem,Pausanias’s Description of Greece, iv. 137sq.

72Ramsay,op. cit.p. 31sq.Frazer,Pausanias’s Description of Greece, iii. 277, 593.

73Lucian,De dea Syria, 54.

74Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, p. 290.Cf.Isaiah, lxv. 4, and lxvi. 3, 17, where this sacrifice is alluded to as a heathen abomination.

75Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride, 8. Aelian,De natura animalium, x. 16.

76Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch,De Iside et Osiride, 8.

Of the abhorrence of cannibalism I shall speak in a separatechapter, but in this connection it is worth noticing that the eating of certain animals is regarded with horror or disgust either because they are supposed to be metamorphosed ancestors77or on account of their resemblance to men. Various peoples refrain frommonkey’s flesh;78and European travellers mention their own instinctive repugnance to it and their aversion to shooting monkeys.79The Indians of Lower California will eat any animal, except men and monkeys, “the latter because they so much resemble the former.”80According to an ancient writer quoted by Porphyry, the Egyptian priests rejected those animals which “verged to a similitude to the human form.”81The Kafirs say that elephants are forbidden food because their intelligence resembles that of men.82

77Frazer,Golden Bough, ii. 430sqq.St. John,op. cit.i. 186 (Land Dyaks).

78Shooter,op. cit.p. 215 (Zulus). Schurtz,op. cit.p. 28 (Abyssinians). Skeat and Blagden,op. cit.i. 134 (Orang Sletar). In theInstitutes of Vishnu(li. 3) the eating of apes is particularly stigmatised.

79Schurtz,op. cit.p. 28.Infra, onRegard for the Lower Animals.

80Bancroft,op. cit.i. 560.

81Porphyry,op. cit.iv. 7.

82Müller,Ethnographie, p. 189.

Moreover, intimacy with an animal easily takes away the appetite for its flesh. Among ourselves, as Mandeville observes, “some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with, whilst they were alive; others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse on beef, mutton, and fowls, when they are bought in the market.”83Among other races we meet with feelings no less refined. Mencius, the Chinese moralist, said:—“So is the superior man affected towards animals, that, having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die; having heard their dying cries, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore he keeps away from his slaughter house and cook-room.”84The abstinence from domestic fowls and their eggs, as also from the tame pig, may occasionally have sprung from sympathy. Dr. von den Steinen states that the Brazilian Yuruna cannot be induced to eat any animal which they have bred themselves, and that they apparently considered it very immoral when he and his party ate hen-eggs.85In thesacred books of India it is represented as a particularly bad action to eat certain domestic animals, including village pigs and tame cocks; a twice-born man who does so knowingly will become an outcast.86Among the Bechuanas in South Africa dogs and tame cats are not eaten, though wild cats are.87The Arabs of Dukkâla in Morocco eat their neighbours’ cats but not their own. Among the Dinka only such cows as die naturally or by an accident are used for food; but a dead cow is never eaten by the bereaved owner himself, who is too much afflicted at the loss to be able to touch a morsel of the carcase of his departed beast.88Herodotus says that the Libyans would not taste the flesh of the cow, though they ate oxen;89and the same rule prevailed among the Egyptians and Phœnicians, who would sooner have partaken of human flesh than of the meat of a cow.90The eating of cow’s flesh is prohibited by the law of Brahmanism.91According to Dr. Rájendralála Mitra, the idea of beef as an article of food “is so shocking to the Hindus, that thousands over thousands of the more orthodox among them never repeat the counterpart of the word in their vernaculars, and many and dire have been the sanguinary conflicts which the shedding of the blood of cows has caused.”92In China “the slaughter of buffaloes for food is unlawful, according to the assertions of the people, and the abstaining from the eating of beef is regarded as very meritorious.”93It is said in the ‘Divine Panorama’ that he who partakes of beef or dog’s flesh will be punished by the deity.94In Japan neither cattle nor sheep were in former days killed for food;95and in the rural districts many people still think it wrong to eat beef.96In Rome the slaughter ofa labouring ox was in olden days punished with excommunication;97and at Athens and in Peloponnesus it was prohibited even on penalty of death.98Indeed, the ancient idea has survived up to modern times in Greece, where it has been held as a maxim that the animal which tills the ground ought not to be used for food.99These prohibitions are no doubt to some extent expressions of kindly feelings towards the animals to which they refer.100A Dinka is said to be fonder of his cattle than of his wife and children;101and according to classical writers, the ploughing ox is not allowed to be slaughtered because he is himself an agriculturist, the servant of Ceres, and a companion to the labourer in his work.102But at the same time the restrictions in question are very largely due to prudential motives. Peoples who live chiefly on the products of their cattle show a strong disinclination to reduce their herds, especially by killing cows or calves;103and agricultural races are naturally anxious to preserve the animal which is used for work on the field. With reference to the Egyptian and Phœnician custom of eating bulls but abstaining from cows, Porphyry observes that “for the sake of utility in one and the same species of animals distinction is made between that which is pious and that which is impious,” cows being spared on account of their progeny.104Until quite recently in Egypt no one was allowed to kill a calf, and permission from the government was required for the slaughter of a bull.105Moreover, domestic animals are frequently regarded as sacred in consequence of their utility, and for that reason also abstained from. The Dinka pay akind of reverence to their cattle.106In Egypt, according to Herodotus, the cow was sacred to Isis.107In India she has been the object of a special worship.108

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