Chapter 79

145Casalis,Basutos, p. 304.

146Cf.Wilda,op. cit.p. 878 (ancient Teutons).

147Supra,i. 294.

148Hunter,Roman Law, p. 257. Puchta,op. cit.ii. 220.

149Sproat,Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 159 (Ahts). Scott Robertson,Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 440.

150See, besides statements referred to above, Lumholtz,Unknown Mexico, i. 420, and ii. 477; Nordenskiöld,Vegas färd kring Asien och Europa, ii. 140sq.(Chukchi); Worcester,Philippine Islands, p. 413 (Mangyans); Colenso,op. cit.p. 43 (Maoris); Macdonald,Light in Africa, p. 212 (Bantu); Campbell,Travels in South Africa, p. 517, and Leslie,Among the Zulus and Amatongas, p. 201 (Kafirs).

151Supra,i. 593sq.

Theft is not only punished by men, but is supposed to be avenged by supernatural powers. The Alfura of Halmahera are said to be honest only because they fear that they otherwise would be subject to the punishment of spirits.152The natives of Efate, in the New Hebrides, maintained that theft was condemned by their gods.153In Aneiteum, another island belonging to the same group, thieves were supposed to be punished after death.154In Netherland Island theywere said to go to a prison of darkness under the earth;155according to the beliefs of the Banks Islanders they were excluded from the true Panoi or Paradise.156On the Gold Coast, “if a man had property stolen from his house, he might go to the priest of the local deity he was accustomed to worship, state the loss that had befallen him, make an offering of a fowl, rum, and eggs, and ask the priest to supplicate the god to punish the thief.”157In Southern Guinea fetishes are inaugurated to detect and punish certain kinds of theft, and persons who are cognisant of such crimes and do not give information about them are also liable to be punished by the fetish.158The Bechuanas speak of an unknown being, vaguely called by the name of Lord and Master of things (Mongalinto), who punishes theft. One of them said: “When it thunders every one trembles; if there are several together, one asks the other with uneasiness, Is there any one amongst us who devours the wealth of others? All then spit on the ground saying, We do not devour the wealth of others. If a thunderbolt strikes and kills one of them, no one complains, no one weeps; instead of being grieved, all unite in saying that the Lord is delighted (that is to say, he has done right) with killing that man; we also say that the thief eats thunderbolts, that is to say, does things which draw down upon men such judgments.”159

152Kükenthal,Forschungsreise in den Molukken, p. 188.

153Macdonald,Oceania, p. 208.

154Turner,Samoa, p. 326.

155Ibid.p. 301.

156Codrington,Melanesians, p. 274.

157Ellis,Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 75. See also Cruickshank,op. cit.ii. 152, 160, 184; Schultze,Der Fetischismus, p. 91.

158Wilson,Western Africa, p. 275.

159Arbousset and Daumas,Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 322sq.

According to the Zoroastrian Yasts, Rashnu Razista was “the best killer, smiter, destroyer of thieves and bandits.”160In Greece Zeus κτήσιος was a guardian of the family property;161and according to a Roman tradition the domestic god repulsed the robber and kept off the enemy.162The removing of landmarkshas frequently been regarded as sacrilegious.163It was strictly prohibited by the religious law of the Hebrews.164In Greece boundaries were protected by Zeus ὅριος. Plato says in his ‘Laws’:—“Let no one shift the boundary line either of a fellow-citizen who is a neighbour, or, if he dwells at the extremity of the land, of any stranger who is conterminous with him…. Every one should be more willing to move the largest rock which is not a land mark, than the least stone which is the sworn mark of friendship and hatred between neighbours; for Zeus, the god of kindred, is the witness of the citizen, and Zeus, the god of strangers, of the stranger, and when aroused terrible are the wars which they stir up. He who obeys the law will never know the fatal consequences of disobedience, but he who despises the law shall be liable to a double penalty, the first coming from the Gods, and the second from the law.”165The Romans worshipped Terminus or Jupiter Terminalis as the god of boundaries.166According to an old tradition, Numa directed that every one should mark the bounds of his landed property by stones consecrated to Jupiter, that yearly sacrifices should be offered to them at the festival of the Terminalia, and that, “if any person demolished or displaced these bound-stones, he should be looked upon as devoted to this god, to the end that anybody might kill him as a sacrilegious person with impunity and without being defiled with guilt.”167In the higher religions theft of any kind is frequently condemned as a sin.

160Yasts, xii. 8.

161Aeschylus,Supplices, 445. Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, i. 55.

162Ovid,Fasti, v. 141.

163Trumbull,The Threshold Covenant, p. 166sq.

164Deuteronomy, xix. 14; xxvii. 17.Proverbs, xxii. 28; xxiii. 10sq.Hosea, v. 10.Cf.Job, xxiv. 2.

165Plato,Leges, viii. 842sq.Demosthenes,Oratio de Halonneso, 39, p. 86. See also Hermann,Disputatio de terminis eorumque religione apud Græcos,passim.

166Ovid,Fasti, ii. 639sqq.Festus,De verborum significatione‘Termino.’ Lactantius,Divinæ Institutiones, i. 10 (Migne,Patrologiæ cursus, vi. 227sqq.). Pauly,Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, vi. pt. ii. 1707sqq.Fowler,Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 324sqq.

167Dionysius of Halicarnassus,Antiquitates Romanæ, ii. 74. Plutarch,Numa, xvi. i. Festus,op. cit.‘Termino.’

This religious sanction given to ownership is no doubt in some measure due to the same circumstances as, in certain cases, make morality in general a matter of divineconcern—a subject which will be dealt with in a future chapter. But there are also special reasons which account for it. Partly it has its origin in magic practices, particularly in the curse.

Cursing is a frequent method of punishing criminals who cannot be reached in any other way.168In the Book of Judges we read of Micah’s mother who had pronounced a curse with reference to the money stolen from her, and afterwards, when her son had confessed his guilt, hastened to render it ineffective by a blessing.169In early Arabia the owner of stolen property had recourse to cursing in order to recover what he had lost.170In Samoa “the party from whom anything had been stolen, if he knew not the thief, would seek satisfaction in sitting down and deliberately cursing him.”171The Kamchadales “think they can punish an undiscovered theft by burning the sinews of the stonebuck in a publick meeting with great ceremonies of conjuration, believing that as these sinews are contracted by the fire so the thief will have all his limbs contracted.”172Among the Ossetes, if an object has been secretly stolen, its owner secures the assistance of a sorcerer. They proceed together to the house of any person whom they suspect, the sorcerer carrying under his arm a cat, which is regarded as a particularly enchanted animal. He exclaims, “If thou hast stolen the article and dost not restore it to its owner, may this cat torment the souls of thy ancestors!” And such an imprecation is generally followed by a speedy restitution of the stolen property. Again, if their suspicions rest upon no particular individual, they proceed in the same manner from house to house, and the thief then, knowing that his turn must come, frequently confesses his guilt at once.173A common mode of detecting the perpetrator of a theft is to compel the suspected individual to make oath,that is to say, to pronounce a conditional curse upon himself.174

168See,e.g., Mason, inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xxxvii. pt. ii. 149 (Karens).

169Judges, xvii. 2.

170Wellhausen,Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 192.

171Turner,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 318.

172Krasheninnikoff,History of Kamschatka, p. 179sq.

173von Haxthausen,Transcaucasia, p. 398sq.

174von Struve, inDas Ausland, 1880, p. 796 (Samoyedes). Worcester,Philippine Islands, p. 412 (Mangyans of Mindoro). Turner,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 292sq.(Samoans). Bosman,op. cit.p. 125 (Negroes of the Gold Coast). Bowdich,Mission to Ashantee, p. 267; &c.

Cursing is resorted to not only for the purpose of punishing thieves or compelling them to restore what they have stolen, but also as a means of preventing theft. In the South Sea Islands it is a common practice to protect property by making ittaboo, and the tabooing of an object is, as Dr. Codrington puts it, “a prohibition with a curse expressed or implied.”175The curse is then, in many cases, deposited in some article which is attached to the thing or place it is intended to protect. The mark of taboo, in Polynesia calledrahuiorraui, sometimes consists of a cocoa-nut leaf plaited in a particular way,176sometimes of a wooden image of a man or a carved post stuck in the ground,177sometimes of a bunch of human hair or a piece of an old mat,178and so forth. In Samoa there were various forms of taboo which formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, and each was known by a special name indicating the sort of curse which the owner wished would fall on the thief. Thus, if a man desired that a sea-pike should run into the body of the person who attempted to steal, say, his bread-fruits, he would plait some cocoa-nut leaflets in the form of a sea-pike, and suspend it from one or more of the trees which he wanted to protect. This was called the “sea-pike taboo”; and any ordinary thief would be terrified to touch a tree from which this was suspended, believing that, if he did so, a fish of the said description would dart up and mortally wound him the next time he went to the sea. The “white shark taboo” was done by plaiting a cocoa-nut leaf in the form of a shark, and was tantamount to anexpressed imprecation that the thief might be devoured by the white shark when he went to fish. The “cross-stick taboo,” again, consisted of a stick suspended horizontally from the tree, and meant that any thief touching the tree would have a disease running right across his body and remaining fixed there till he died.179Exactly equivalent to the taboo of the Pacific Islanders is thepomaliof the natives of Timor; “a few palm leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of thepomaliwill preserve its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring-guns, or a savage dog, would do with us.”180Among the Santals, whenever a person “is desirous of protecting a patch of jungle from the axes of the villagers, or a patch of grass from being grazed over, or a newly sown field from being trespassed upon, he erects a bamboo in his patch of grass or field, to which is affixed a tuft of straw, or in the case of jungle some prominent and lofty tree has the same prohibitory mark attached, which mark is well understood and strictly observed by all parties interested.”181So also in Madagascar “on rencontre sur les chemins, on voit dans les champs de longs bâtons munis à leur sommet d’un paquet d’herbes et qui sont plantés en terre soit pour interdire le passage du terrain soit pour indiquer que les récoltes sont réservées à l’usage d’individus déterminés.”182Among the Washambala the owner of a field sometimes puts a stick wound round with a banana leaf on the road to it, believing that anybody who without permission enters the field “will be subject to the curse of this charm.”183The Wadshagga protect a doorless hut against burglars by placing a banana leaf over the threshold, and any maliciously inclined person who dares to step over it is supposed to get ill or die.184The Akka “stick an arrow in a bunch of bananas still on the stalk to mark it as their ownwhen ripe,” and then not even the owner of the tree would think of touching the fruit so claimed by others.185Of the Barotse we are told that “when they do not want a thing touched they spit on straws and stick them all about the object.”186When a Balonda has placed a beehive on a tree, he ties a “piece of medicine” round the trunk, and this will prove sufficient protection against thieves.187Jacob of Edessa tells us of a Syrian priest who wrote a curse and hung it on a tree, that nobody might eat the fruit.188In the early days of Islam a masterful man reserved water for his own use by hanging pieces of fringe of his red blanket on a tree beside it, or by throwing them into the pool;189and in modern Palestine nobody dares to touch the piles of stones which are placed on the boundaries of landed property.190The old inhabitants of Cumaná on the Caribbean Sea used to mark off their plantations by a single cotton thread, in the belief that anybody tampering with these boundary marks would speedily die.191A similar idea seems still to prevail among the Indians of the Amazon. Among the Jurís a traveller noticed that in places where the hedge surrounding a field was broken, it was replaced by a cotton string; and when Brazilian Indians leave their huts they often wind a piece of the same material round the latch of the door.192Sometimes they also hang baskets, rags, or flaps of bark on their landmarks.193In these and in various other instances just referred to it is not expressly stated that the taboo mark embodies a curse, but their similarity to cases in which it does so is striking enough topreclude much doubt about their real meaning. It is true that an object which is sacred by itself may, on that account, protect everything in its neighbourhood;194in Morocco any article deposited in theḥormof a saint is safe, and among pagan Africans the same effect is produced by using fetishes as protectors of fields or houses.195But a thing of inherent holiness may also be chosen for taboo purposes for the reason that its sanctity is supposed to give particular efficacy to any curse with which it may be loaded.

175Codrington,Melanesians, p. 215.

176Taylor White, inJour. Polynesian Soc.i. 275.

177Hamilton,Maori Art, p. 102; Thomson,Story of New Zealand, i. 102; Polack,op. cit.ii. 70 (Maoris). Ellis,Polynesian Researches, iii. 116 (Tahitians).

178Thomson,op. cit.i. 102 (Maoris). See also Colenso,op. cit.p. 34 (Maoris); Ellis,Polynesian Researches, iii. 201 (Tahitians).

179Turner,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 294sqq.

180Wallace,Malay Archipelago, p. 149sq.

181Sherwill, ‘Tour through the Rájmahal Hills,’ inJour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xx. 568.

182van Gennep,Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar, p. 184sqq.

183Lang, in Steinmetz,Rechtverhältnisse, p. 263.

184Volkens,op. cit.p. 254.

185Junker,Travels in Africa during the Years 1882-1886, p. 86.

186Decle,op. cit.p. 77.

187Livingstone,Missionary Travels, p. 285.

188Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, p. 164, n. 1.

189Ibid.p. 336, n. 1.

190Pierotti,Customs and Traditions of Palestine, p. 95sq.According to Roman sources (Digesta, xlvii. 11. 9), there was in the province of Arabia an offence called σκοπελισμό ς, which consisted in laying stones on an enemy’s ground as a threat that if the owner cultivated the land “malo leto periturus esset insidiis eorum, qui scopulos posuissent”; and so great was the fear of such stones that nobody would go near a field where they had been put.

191Gomara,Primera parte de la historia general de las Indias, ch. 79 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxii. 206).

192von Martius,Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 37sq.

193Ibid.p. 34.

194Cf.van Gennep,op. cit.p. 185 (natives of Madagascar). It was an ancient Roman usage to inter the dead in the field belonging to the family, and in the works of the elder Cato there is a formula according to which the Italian labourer prayed the manes to take good care against thieves (Fustel de Coulanges,op. cit.p. 75). Cicero says (Pro domo, 41) that the house of each citizen was sacred because his household gods were there.

195Rowley,Africa Unveiled, p. 174. Bastian,Afrikanische Reisen, p. 78sq.3 Nassau,Fetichism in West Africa, p. 85.Cf.Schneider,Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 230. If we knew the ceremonies with which magicians transform ordinary material objects into fetishes, we might perhaps find that they charge them with curses. Dr. Nassau says (op. cit.p. 85):—“For every human passion or desire of every part of our nature, for our thousand necessities or wishes, a fetich can be made, its operation being directed to the attainment of one specified wish.” See also Schultze,Der Fetischismus, p. 109.

We have previously noticed another method of charging a curse with magic energy, namely, by giving it the form of an appeal to a supernatural being.196So also spirits or gods are frequently invoked in curses referring to theft. On the Gold Coast, “when the owner of land sees that some one has been making a clearing on his land, he cuts the young inner branches of the palm tree and hangs them about the place where the trespass has been committed. As he hangs each leaf he says something to the following effect: ‘The person who did this and did not make it known to me before he did it, if he comes here to do any other thing, may fetish Katawere (or Tanor or Fofie or other fetish) kill him and all his family.’”197In Samoa, in the case of a theft, the suspected persons had to swear before the chiefs, each one invoking the village god to send swift destruction if he had committed the crime; and if all had sworn and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs solemnly made a similar invocation on behalf of thethief.198The Hawaiians seem likewise to have appealed to an avenging deity in certain cursing ceremonies, which they performed for the purpose of detecting or punishing thieves.199In ancient Greece it was a custom to dedicate a lost article to a deity, with a curse for those who kept it.200Of the Melanesian taboo, again, Dr. Codrington observes that the power at the back of it “is that of the ghost or spirit in whose name, or in reliance upon whom, it is pronounced.”201In Ceylon, “to prevent fruit being stolen, the people hang up certain grotesque figures around the orchard and dedicate it to the devils, after which none of the native Ceylonese will dare even to touch the fruit on any account. Even the owner will not venture to use it till it be first liberated from the dedication.”202On the landmarks of the ancient Babylonians, generally consisting of stone pillars in the form of a phallus, imprecations were inscribed with appeals to various deities. One of these boundary stones contains the following curse directed against the violator of its sacredness:—“Upon this man may the great gods Anu, Bêl, Ea, and Nusku, look wrathfully, uproot his foundation, and destroy his offspring”; and similar invocations are then made to many other gods.203

196Supra,i. 564.

197Jour. African Soc.no. xviii. January, 1906, p. 203.

198Turner,Samoa, p. 19.Idem,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 292sq.

199Jarves,History of the Hawaiian Islands, p. 20.

200Rouse,Greek Votive Offerings, p. 339.

201Codrington,op. cit.p. 215.

202Percival,Account of the Island of Ceylon, p. 198.

203Trumbull,The Threshold Covenant, p. 166sq.Hilprecht, quotedibid.p. 167sqq.

Now we can understand why gods so frequently take notice of offences against property. They are invoked in curses uttered against thieves; the invocation in a curse easily develops into a genuine prayer, and where this is the case the god is supposed to punish the offender of his own free will. Besides, he may be induced to do so by offerings. And when often appealed to in connection with theft, a supernatural being may finally come to be looked upon as a guardian of property. This, for instance, I take to be the explanation of the belief prevalent among the Berbersof Ḥaḥa, in Southern Morocco, that some of the local saints punish thieves who approach their sanctuaries, even though the theft was committed elsewhere; being constantly appealed to in oaths taken by persons suspected of theft, they have become the permanent enemies of thieves. We can, further, understand why in some cases certain offences against property have actually assumed the character of a sacrilege, even apart from such as are committed in the proximity of a supernatural being. Curses are sometimes personified and elevated to the rank of divine agents; this, as we have seen, is the origin of the Erinyes of parents, beggars, and strangers, and of the Romandivi parentumanddii hospitales; and this is also in all probability the origin of the god Terminus.204Or the curse may be transformed into an attribute of the chief god, not only because he is frequently appealed to in connection with offences of a certain kind, but also because such a god has a tendency to attract supernatural forces which are in harmony with his general nature. This explains the origin of conceptions such as Zeus ὅριος and Jupiter Terminalis, as well as the extreme severity with which Yahweh treated the removal of landmarks. In all these cases there are indications of a connection between the god and a curse. Apart from other evidence to be found in Semitic antiquities, there is the anathema of Deuteronomy, “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark.”205That the boundary stones dedicated to Zeus ὅριος were originally charged with imprecations appears from a passage in Plato’s ‘Laws’ quoted above,206as also from inscriptions made on them.207The Etruscans cursed anyone who should touch or displace a boundary mark:—Such a person shall be condemned by the gods; his house shall disappear; his race shall be extinguished; his limbs shall be covered with ulcers and waste away; his land shall no longer producefruits; hail, rust, and the fires of the dog-star shall destroy his harvests.208Considering the important part played by blood as a conductor of imprecations, it is not improbable that the Roman ceremony of letting the blood of a sacrificial animal flow into the hole where the landmark was to be placed209was intended to give efficacy to a curse. In some parts of England a custom of annually “beating the bounds” of a parish has survived up to the present time, and this ceremony was formerly accompanied by religious services, in which a clergyman invoked curses on him who should transgress the bounds of his neighbour, and blessings on him who should regard the landmarks.210

204Cf.Festus,op. cit.‘Termino’:—“Numa Pompilius statuit eum, qui terminum exarasset, et ipsum, et boves sacros esse.”

205Deuteronomy, xxvii. 17.Cf.Genesis, xxxi. 44sqq.

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