Chapter 108

19Wilson and Felkin,op. cit.ii. 46. Baker,Albert N’yanza, ii. 58.

20Stewart, ‘Northern Cachar,’ inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xxiv. 616.

21Marsden,History of Sumatra, p. 209.

22Bancroft,op. cit.i. 654.

23Powers,Tribes of California, p. 403. Bancroft,op. cit.i. 377, 407.

24Veniaminof, quoted by Dall,Alaska, p. 398. See also Bancroft,op. cit.i. 267 (Flatheads).

25Dieffenbach,Travels in New Zealand, ii. 58.

26Snow,Two Years’ Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, i. 345.

27Bancroft,op. cit.i. 83, 102, 184, 231, 492, 626.

28Ibid.i. 51. Seemann,Voyage of“Herald,” ii. 61sq.(Western Eskimo). Kane,Arctic Explorations, ii. 116 (Eskimo of Etah). Cranz,History of Greenland, i. 155.

29Sarytschew, ‘Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,’ inCollection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, v. 67 (Kamchadales). Krasheninnikoff,History of Kamschatka, pp. 176 (Kamchadales), 226 (Koriaks). Sauer,Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia performed by Billings, p. 125 (Jakuts). Georgi,Russia, ii. 398 (Jakuts); iii. 59 (Kotoftzes), 112 (Tunguses); iv. 37 (Kalmucks), 134 (Burats). Liadov, inJour. Anthr. Inst.i. 401; Bergmann,Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken, ii. 102, 123sq.; Pallas, quoted in Spencer’sDescriptive Sociology, ‘Asiatic Races,’ p. 29 (Kalmucks).

30Batchelor,Ainu of Japan, p. 24sqq.Mac Ritchie,Ainos, p. 12sq.

31Spencer,Descriptive Sociology, ‘Asiatic Races,’ p. 29. Grange, ‘Expedition into the Naga Hills,’ inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, ix. 962. Stewart,ibid.xxiv. 637 (Kukis). Mason, ‘Physical Character of the Karens,’ibid.xxxv. pt. ii. 25. Butler,Travels in Assam, p. 98. Anderson,Mandalay to Momien, p. 131 (Kakhyens). Moorcroft and Trebeck,Travels in the Himalayan Provinces, i. 321 (Ladakhis).

32Breton,Excursions in New South Wales, p. 197. Barrington,History of New South Wales, p. 19 (natives of Botany Bay). Angas,Savage Life in Australia, i. 80 (South Australian aborigines). Chauncy, in Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 284 (West Australian aborigines).

33Moffat,Missionary Labours in Southern Africa, p. 15. Barrow,Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, i. 288.

34Stuhlmann,Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika, p. 451. For other instances of uncleanliness in savages see Crawfurd,History of the Indian Archipelago, i. 39; St. John,Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 147 (some of the Land Dyaks); Andersson,Lake Ngami, pp. 50 (Herero), 470 (Bechuanas).

The prevalence of cleanly or dirty habits among a certain people may depend on a variety of circumstances: the occupations of life, sufficiency or want of water, climatic conditions, industry or laziness, wealth or poverty, religious or superstitious beliefs. Castrén observes that filthiness is a characteristic of fishing peoples; among the Ostyaks only those who live by fishing are conspicuous for their uncleanliness, whereas the nomads and owners ofreindeer are not.35It has been observed that the inland negro is clean when he dwells in the neighbourhood of rivers.36In West Australia those tribes only which live by large rivers or near the sea are said to have an idea of cleanliness.37Concerning the filthy habits of the Kukis and other hill peoples in India, Major Butler remarks that they may probably be accounted for by the scarcity of water in the neighbourhood of the villages, as also by the coldness of the climate.38Dr. Kane believes that the indifference of many Eskimo to dirt or filth is largely due to the extreme cold, which by rapid freezing resists putrefaction and thus prevents the household, with its numerous dogs, from being intolerable.39Their well-known habit of washing themselves with freshly passed urine arises partly from scarcity of water and the difficulty of heating it, but partly also from the fact that the ammonia of the urine is an excellent substitute for soap in removing the grease with which the skin necessarily becomes soiled.40A cold climate, moreover, leads to uncleanliness because it makes garments necessary;41and among some savages the practice of greasing their bodies to protect the skin from the effects of a parching air produces a similar result.42Lord Kames maintains that the greatest promoter of cleanliness is industry, whereas its greatest antagonist is indolence. In Holland, he observes, the people were cleaner than all their neighbours because they were more industrious, at a time when in England industry was as great a stranger as cleanliness.43Kolben says that the general laziness of the Hottentots accounts for the fact that “they are in the matter of dietthe filthiest people in the world.”44Of the Siberian Burats Georgi writes that “from their laziness they are as dirty as swine”;45and the Kamchadales are described as a “dirty, lazy race.”46Poverty, also, is for obvious reasons a cause of uncleanliness;47“a starving vulture neglects to polish his feathers, and a famished dog has a ragged coat.”48Very commonly cleanliness is a class distinction.49Thus among the Point Barrow Eskimo the poorer people are often careless about their clothes and persons, whereas most of the wealthier individuals appear to take pride in being well clad, and, except when actually engaged in some dirty work, always have their faces and hands scrupulously clean and their hair neatly combed.50Dr. Schweinfurth maintains that domestic cleanliness and care in the preparation of food are everywhere signs of a higher grade of external culture and answer to a certain degree of intellectual superiority.51But already Lord Kames pointed out the fact indicated above, that “cleanness is remarkable in several nations which have made little progress in the arts of life.”52

35Castrén,Nordiska resor och forskningar, i. 319sq.

36Bastian,Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 75. Mr. Torday, who speaks from extensive experience, tells me the same.

37Chauncy, quoted by Brough Smyth,op. cit.ii. 284.

38Butler,Travels in Assam, p. 98sq.Cf.Stewart, inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xxiv. 616.

39Kane,Arctic Explorations, ii. 116.

40Murdoch, ‘Ethnol. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ix. 421. Dall,op. cit.p. 20.

41Cf.von Humboldt,op. cit.iii. 237.

42Burchell,op. cit.ii. 553 (Bachapins of Litakun).

43Kames,Sketches of the History of Man, i. 323, 327sqq.

44Kolben,Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 47.

45Georgi,op. cit.iv. 134.

46Ibid.iii. 152. See also Sarytschew, inCollection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, v. 67.

47See Marshall,A Phrenologist amongst the Todas, p. 50; Veniaminof, quoted by Dall,op. cit.p. 398 (Aleuts).

48St. John,Village Life in Egypt, i. 187.

49Tickell, ‘Memoir on the Hodésum,’ inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, ix. 808 (Hos). Rowlatt, ‘Expedition into the Mishmee Hills,’ibid.xiv. 489. Williams and Calvert,Fiji, p. 117. Waitz,op. cit.ii. 86 (Ashantees). Arnot,Garenganze, p. 76 (Barotse). Lane,Modern Egyptians, p. 299.

50Murdoch, inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ix. 421.

51Schweinfurth,Heart of Africa, i. 156.

52Kames,op. cit.i. 321.

The factors which determine the cleanliness of a people also naturally influence the moral valuation of it. Aversion to dirt not only leads to cleanly habits, but makes a filthy person an object of disgust and disapprobation; indeed, this aversion is generally stronger with reference to other individuals than with reference to one’s own person. But where for some reason or other dirtiness becomes habitual, it at the same time ceases to be disgusting; and it is often astonishing how soonpeople get used to filthy surroundings. Thus, when cleanliness is insisted upon it is so in the first instance because dirt is directly disagreeable to other persons, and when uncleanness is tolerated it is so because it gives no offence to the senses of the public. But at the higher stages of civilisation, at least, cleanliness is besides inculcated on hygienic grounds.

In many cases cleanliness, either temporary or habitual, is also practised and enjoined from religious or superstitious motives. A Lappishnoaide, or wizard, had to wash all his body before he offered a sacrifice.53The Siberian shamans have compulsory water purifications once a year, sometimes every month, as also on special occasions when they feel themselves defiled by contact with unclean things.54The Shinto priests in Japan bathed and put on clean garments before making the sacred offerings or chanting the liturgies.55Herodotus speaks of the cleanliness observed by the Egyptian priests when engaged in the service of the gods.56As a preliminary to an act of worship the ancient Greeks washed their hands or bathed and put on clean clothes.57One of the legal maxims of the Romans required that men should approach the deity in a state of purity.58According to Zoroastrianism it is the great business of life to avoid impurity, and, when it is involuntarily contracted, to remove it in the correct manner as quickly as possible; and by impurity is then understood not an inward state of the soul, but mainly a physical state of the body, everything going out of the human body being considered polluting.59For a Brahmin bathing is the chief part of the minute ceremonial of daily worship, whilst further washings and aspersions enter into more solemn religious acts;60and not only Brahmins but most Hindus regardit as a religious duty to bathe daily if this is at all convenient.61Lamaism enjoins personal ablution as a sacerdotal rite preparatory to worship, though the ceremony seldom extends to more than dipping the tips of the fingers in water.62Jewish Rabbis are compelled to wash their hands before they begin to pray.63Tertullian mentions that a similar ablution was practised by the Christians before prayer.64According to Islam, the clothes and person of the worshipper should be clean, and so also the ground, mat, carpet, or whatever else it be, upon which he prays; and every act of worship must be preceded by an ablution, though, where water cannot be got, sand may be used as a substitute.65But a polluting influence is not ascribed to everything which we regard as dirt. For instance, Muhammedans consider the excrements of men and dogs defiling, but not the dung of cows and sheep; cow-dung is even used as a means of purification.

53Friis,Lappisk Mythologie, p. 145sq.von Düben,Lappland, p. 256.

54Jour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 88.

55Griffis,Religions of Japan, p. 85.

56Herodotus, ii. 37.Cf.Wiedemann,Herodots zweites Buch, p. 154.

57Iliad, i. 449; iii. 270; vi. 266; ix. 171, 174; xvi. 229sq.; xxiii. 41; xxiv. 302sqq.Odyssey, ii. 261; iv. 750; xvii. 58. Keller,Homeric Society, p. 141. Stengel,Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer, p. 106.

58Cicero,De legibus, ii. 10.

59Darmesteter, inSacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxxii.sqq.

60Ward,View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 61sq.Colebrooke,Miscellaneous Essays, ii. 142sqq.Dubois,People of India, p. 113sq.

61Wilkins,Modern Hinduism, p. 201.

62Waddell,Buddhism of Tibet, p. 423.

63Chwolsohn,Die Ssabier, ii. 71.

64Tertullian,De Oratione, 13 (Migne,Patrologiæ cursus, ii. 1167sq.).

65Sell,Faith of Islam, p. 252sqq.Lane,Modern Egyptians, i. 84sqq.

These practices and rules spring from the idea that the contact of a polluting substance with anything holy is followed by injurious consequences—an idea which will be more fully discussed in connection with sexual abstinences. Such contact is supposed to deprive a deity or holy being of its holiness, or otherwise be detrimental to it, and therefore to excite its anger against him who causes the defilement. So also a sacred act is believed to lose its sacredness by being performed by an unclean individual. Moreover, as a polluting substance is itself held to contain mysterious energy of a baneful kind, it is looked upon as a direct danger even to persons who are not engaged in religious worship. We have previously noticed the rites of purification which a manslayer has to undergo in order to get rid of the blood-pollution.66We have also seen that ablutions and other purificatory ceremoniesare performed for the purpose of removing sins and misfortunes.67And bathing or sprinkling with water is a common method of clearing mourners or persons who have come in contact with a corpse from the contagion of death.68

66Supra,i. 375sqq.

67Supra,i. 54sqq.

68Teit, ‘Thompson Indians of British Columbia,’ inMemoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, ‘Anthropology,’ i. 331. Cruickshank,op. cit.ii. 218 (Negroes of the Gold Coast). Ellis,Ew̔e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 160. Turner,Samoa, p. 145;Idem,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228 (Samoans). Ellis,Polynesian Researches, i. 403 (Society Islanders). Kloss,In the Andamans and Nicobars, p. 305 (Kar Nicobarese). Joinville, ‘Religion and Manners of the People of Ceylon,’ inAsiatick Researches, vii. 437 (Sinhalese). Iyer, ‘Nayādis of Malabar,’ in the Madras Government Museum’sBulletin, iv. 71; Thurston,ibid.iv. 76sq.(Nayādis). Crooke,Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, i. 83 (Arakh, a tribe in Oudh). Ward,View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 147, iii. 275; Dubois,Manners and Customs of the People of India, p. 108sq.; Bose,Hindoos as they are, p. 257. Caland,Die Altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche, p. 79sq.

But whilst religious or superstitious beliefs have thus led to ablutions and cleanliness, they have in other instances had the very opposite effect. Among Arabs young children are often left dirty and ill-dressed purposely, to preserve them from the evil eye.69The Obbo natives in Central Africa declare that if they do not wash their hands with cow’s urine before milking, the cow will lose her milk; and with the same fluid they wash the milk-bowl, and even mix some of it with the milk.70The Jakuts “never wash any of their eating or drinking utensils; but, as soon as a dish is emptied, they clean it with the fore and middle finger; for they think it a great sin to wash away any part of their food, and apprehend that the consequence will be a scarcity.”71A similar custom prevails among the Kirghiz72and Kalmucks. The latter “are forbidden by the laws of their faith” to wash their vessels in river-water, and therefore “do no more than wipe them with a piece of an old sheep-skin shube, which they use also for cleaning their hands upon when dirty.”73They, moreover, abstain from washing theirclothes; and so did the Huns and Mongols.74The ancient Turks never washed themselves, because they believed that their gods punished ablutions with thunder and lightning; and the same belief still prevails among kindred peoples in Central Asia.75Among the Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, a man may smear his body with butter or clay as often as he wishes, but “to wash with water is bad for him, and is a sure way of bringing sickness into his family and amongst his cattle.”76The dread of water may be due partly to ill effects experienced after using it, partly to superstition. The Moors dare not wash their bodies with cold water in the afternoon and evening after theʿâṣar, because all such water is then supposed to be haunted byjnûn, or evil spirits. In various religions the odour of sanctity is associated with filth. Muhammedan dervishes are recognised by their appearance of untidiness and uncleanness. Among the rules laid down for Buddhist monks there is one which prescribes that their dress shall be made of rags taken from a dust or refuse heap.77In the early days of Christian monasticism “the cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul.” The saints who were most admired were those who had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet. A famous virgin, though bodily sickness was a consequence of her habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body except her fingers. And St. Simeon Stylites, who was generally pronounced to be the highest model of a Christian saint, bound a rope round himself so that it became imbedded in his flesh and caused putrefaction; and it is said that “a horrible stench, intolerableto the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed.”78In mediæval Christianity abstinence from every species of cleanliness was also enjoined as a penance, the penitent being required to go with foul mouth, filthy hands and neck, undressed hair and beard, unpared nails, and clothes as dirty as his person. In these cases uncleanliness is a form of asceticism, a subject which we have already touched upon in dealing with industry and fasting, but the principles of which still call for our consideration.

69Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 214. Klunzinger,Upper Egypt, p. 391.

70Baker,Albert N’yanza, i. 381.

71Sauer,op. cit.p. 125.

72Valikhanof, &c.,Russians in Central Asia, p. 80.

73Georgi,op. cit.iv. 37. Bergmann,op. cit.ii. 123.

74Neumann,Die Völker des südlichen Russlands, p. 27. For the excessive dirtiness of the present Mongols, see Prejevalsky,Mongolia, i. 51sq.

75Castrén,op. cit.iv. 61.

76Roscoe, ‘Bahima,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxvii. 111.

77Kern,Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 75.

78Lecky,History of European Morals, ii. 109sqq.

In various religions we meet with the idea that a person appeases or gives pleasure to the deity by subjecting himself to suffering or deprivation. This belief finds expression in all sorts of ascetic practices. We read of Christian ascetics who lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, or in dried-up wells, or in tombs; who disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like animals covered only by their matted hair; who ate nothing but corn which had become rotten by remaining for a month in water; who spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years never lay down.79Hindu ascetics remain in immovable attitudes with their faces or their arms raised to heaven, until the sinews shrink and the posture assumed stiffens into rigidity; or they expose themselves to the inclemency of the weather in a state of absolute nudity, or tear their bodies with knives, or feed on carrion and excrement.80Among the Muhammedans of India there are fakirs who have been seen dragging heavy chains or cannon balls, or crawling upon their hands and knees for years; others have been found lying upon iron spikes for a bed; and others, again, have been swinging for months before a slow fire with atropical sun blazing overhead.81Among modern Jews some of the more sanctimonious members of the synagogue have been known to undergo the penance of voluntary flagellation before the commencement of the fast of atonement, two persons successively inflicting upon each other thirty-nine stripes or thirteen lashes with a triple scourge.82According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, thirty strokes with the Sraoshô-karana is an expiation which purges people from their sins, and makes them fit for offering a sacrifice.83Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians beat themselves while the things offered by them as sacrifices were being burned, and that the Carian dwellers in Egypt on such occasions cut their faces with knives.84Among the ancient Mexicans blood-drawing was a favourite and most common mode of expiating sin and showing devotion. “It makes one shudder,” says Clavigero, “to read the austerities which they exercised upon themselves, either in atonement of their transgressions or in preparation for their festivals. They mangled their flesh as if it had been insensible, and let their blood run in such profusion, that it appeared to be a superfluous fluid of the body.”85Self-mortification also formed part of the religious cult in many uncivilised tribes in North America.86“The Indian,” Colonel Dodge observes, “believes, with many Christians, that self-torture is an act most acceptable to God, and the extent of pleasure that he can give his god is exactly measured by the amount of suffering that he can bear without flinching.”87

79Ibid.ii. 108sq.

80Barth,Religions of India, p. 214sq.Hopkins,Religions of India, p. 352. Monier-Williams,Brāhmanism and Hindūism, p. 395.

81Pool,Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 305. For similar practices among the modern Egyptians, see Lane,Modern Egyptians, p. 244.

82Allen,Modern Judaism, p. 407.

83Yasts, x. 122. Darmesteter, inSacred Books of the East, xxiii. 151, n. 3.

84Herodotus, ii. 40, 61.

85Clavigero,History of Mexico, i. 284. See also Bancroft,op. cit.iii. 441sq.; Réville,Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 100.

86Domenech,Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 380. Catlin,North American Indians, ii. 243. James,Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, i. 276sqq.(Omahas). McGee, ‘Siouan Indians,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xv. 184.

87Dodge,Our Wild Indians, p. 149.

The idea underlying religious asceticism has no doubtbeen derived from several different sources. It should first be noticed that certain ascetic practices have originally been performed for another purpose, and only afterwards come to be regarded as means of propitiating or pleasing the deity through the suffering involved in them. This, as we have seen, is the case with certain fasts, and also with sexual asceticism.88When an act is supposed to be connected with supernatural danger, the evil (real or imaginary) resulting from it is readily interpreted as a sign of divine anger and the act itself is regarded as being forbidden by a god. If then the abstinence from it implies suffering, as is in some degree the case with fasting and sexual continence, the conclusion is drawn that the god delights in such suffering. The same inference is, moreover, made from the fact that such abstinences are enjoined in connection with religious worship, though the primary motive for this injunction was fear of pollution. Beating or scourging, again, was in certain cases originally a mode of purification, intended to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion either personified as demoniacal or otherwise of a magical character. And although the pain inflicted on the person beaten was at first not the object of the act but only incidental to it, it became subsequently the chief purpose of the ceremony, which was now regarded as a mortification well pleasing to the god.89This change of ideas seems likewise to be due both to the tendency of the supernatural contagion to develop into a divine punishment in case it is not removed by the painful rite, and also to the circumstance that purification is held to be a necessary accompaniment of acts of religious worship. The Egyptian sacrifice described by Herodotus was combined with purificatory fasting as well as beating.90Among the Jews, before the commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, “some purify themselves byablutions.”91And that the original object of the scourging mentioned in the Yasts was to purify the worshipper is suggested by the fact that he on the same occasion had to wash his body three days and three nights.92But it should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration;93and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

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