Homer. Thus a king or a chief is sacred (ἱερὴ ἲς Τηλεμάχοιο, Od., ii. 409, xviii. 405, &c.; ἱερὸν μένοςˀ Αλκινόιο, Od., vii. 167, viii. 2, &c.) or divine (διος ˀΟδνσσενς, &c; ˀΟδνσσηος Θείοιο, Il. ii, 335, &c.; Θείων βασιλήων, Od., iv. 691); his chariot is sacred (Il., xvii. 464), and his house is divine (Od., iv. 43). An army is sacred (Od., xxiv. 81), and so are sentinels on duty (Il., x. 56; xxiv. 681). This resembles the war-taboo of the Polynesians; on a warlike expedition all Maori warriors are taboo, and the permanent personal taboo of the chiefs is increased twofold: they are "tabooed an inch thick". The Jews also seem to have had a war-taboo, for when out on the war-path they abstained from women (1 Sam. xxi. 4, 5), — a rule strictly observed by Maori warriors on a dangerous expedition. The Dards, who with the kindred Siah Posh Kâfirs on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush — tribes which probably of all Aryan peoples retain a social state most nearly approximating to that of the primitive Aryans — abstain from sexual intercourse during the whole of the fighting season, from May to September; and "victory to the chastest" is said to be a maxim of all the fighting tribes from the Hindu Kush to Albania. [1] The same rule of continence in war is observed by some Indian tribes of North America. [2] In Homer a fish is sacred (Il., xvi. 407), and Plato points out that during a campaign the Homeric warriors never ate fish (Rep., 404 B). Even in time of peace the men of Homer’s day only ate fish when reduced to the verge of starvation (Od., iv. 363 sq.; xii. 329 sq.). The Siah Posh Kâfirs refuse to eat fish, although their rivers abound in it. [3] The Hindus of Vedic times appear not to have eaten fish. [4] It is probable, therefore, that among the early Aryans, as among primitive peoples in various parts of the world, the eating of fish was tabooed. Again, the threshing-floor, the winnowing-fan, and meal are all sacred (Il., v. 499; H. Merc., 21, 63; Il., xi. 631). Similarly in New Zealand a taboo was commonly laid on places where farming operations were going on; and among the Basutos, before the corn on the threshing-floor can be touched, a religious ceremony has to be performed, and all "defiled" persons are carefully kept from seeing it.[5] Although the Homeric folk ate swine, the epithet "divine" commonly applied to a swineherd in Homer may point to a time when pigs were sacred or tabooed. In Crete pigs were certainly sacred and not eaten (Athenæus, 376a), and apparently at Pessinus also (Pausanias, vii. 17, 10). Amongst the Jews and Syrians, of course, pigs were tabooed; and it was a moot question with the Greeks whether the Jews abhorred or worshipped pigs (Plut., Quæst. Conv., iv. 5).- The pigs kept in the great temple at Hierapolis were neither sacrificed nor eaten; some people thought that they were sacred, others that they were unclean, ἐναγέας (Lucian, De Dea Syria, 54). Here we have an exact taboo, the ideas of sacredness and uncleanness being indistinguishable. Similarly by the Ojibways the dog is regarded as "unclean and yet as in some respects holy." [6] The divergence of the two conceptions is illustrated by the history of the cow among different branches of the Aryan race: the Hindus regard this animal as sacred; the Shin caste among the Dards hold it in abhorrence. [7] The general word for taboo in Greek is ἃγος, which occurs in the sense both of "sacredness" and of "pollution"; and the same is true of the adjective ἃγιος and of the rare adjective ἀναγής, "tabooed" (Bekker’s Anecdota Græca, 212, 32; Harpocration, s.v. ἀναγεις). Usually, however, the Greeks discriminated the two senses, ἀγνός being devoted to the sense of "sacred" and ἐναγής to that of "unclean" or "accursed." "To taboo" is ἀγίζειν; "to observe a taboo" is ἀγνεύειν; and the state or season of taboo is ἀγνεία or ἀγιστεία. The rules of the Greek ἀγνεία correspond closely to those of the Polynesian taboo, consisting in "purifications, washings, and sprinklings, and in abstaining from mourning for the dead, child-bed, and all pollutions, and in refraining from certain foods," &c. [8]
Amongst the Romans.Amongst the Romans, who preserved more traces of primitive barbarism than the Greeks, the flamen dialis was hedged in by a perfect network of taboos. He was not allowed to ride or even touch a horse, nor to look at an army under arms, nor to wear a ring which was not broken, nor to have a knot on any part of his garments; no fire, except a sacred fire, could be taken out of his house; he might not touch or even name a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans, and ivy; he might not walk under a vine; the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could be cut only by a freeman, and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree; he might not touch a corpse, &c. His wife, the flaminica, was also subject to taboos: at certain festivals she might not comb her hair; if she heard thunder, she was taboo (feriata) till she had offered an expiatory sacrifice. The similarity of some of these rules to the Polynesian taboo is obvious. The Roman feriæ were periods of taboo; no work might be done during them except works of necessity: e.g., an ox might be pulled out of a pit or a tottering roof supported. Any person who mentioned Salus, Semonia, Seia, Segetia, or Tutilina was tabooed (ferias observabat). [9] The Latin sacer is exactly "taboo"; for it means either "sacred" or "accursed."
Literature.—On the Polynesian taboo, see Cook, Voyages, vol. v. p. 427 sq., vol. vii. p. 146 sq. (ed. 1809); G. F. Angas, Savage Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, passim; W. Yate, New Zealand, p. 84 sq.; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 2d ed., vol. iv. p. 385 sq.; Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, i. p. 114 sq.; Mariner, Tonga Islands, i. p. 141 note, ii. pp. 82, 220 sq.; Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 294 sq.; Id., Samoa, p. 185 sq.; Klemm, Culturgeschichte, iv. p. 372 sq.; Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Natur-Völker, vi. pp. 343-363; Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 101 sq.; Id., Maori Religion and Mythology, p. 25 sq.; Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori, chapters vii. -xii.; Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, i. p. 275 sq.; Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. p. 100 sq.; R. Taylor, New Zealand, p. 163 sq. On the taboo in Micronesia, see Waitz-Gerland, op. cit., v. pt. ii. p. 147 sq.; among the Dyaks and Malays, see Id., vi. p. 354 sq.; Low, Sarawak, pp. 260-262; Bock, Head-Hunters of Borneo, pp. 214-230; Spencer St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. p. 184 sq.; A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, p. 196 ; in Melanesia, Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. p. 234 sq. (ed. 1860); J. E. Erskine, Western Pacific, p. 254; Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz, Iles Marquises, p. 259 sq.; Journ. Anthrop. Inst., x. pp. 279, 290; Ch. Lemire, Nouvelle Calédonie, Paris, 1884, p. 117; R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, Leipsic, 1887, p. 144. (j. g. fr.)
- ↑ Reclus, Nouv. Géog. Univ., viii. p. 126.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, iv. p. 63; Adair, Hist. of American Indians, p. 163. Cp. Morse, Report on Indian Affairs, p. 130 sq., and Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. p. 189.
- ↑ Elphinstone, Kingdom of Caubul, ii. 379, ed. 1839; Journ. Ethnol. Soc., i. p. 192.
- ↑ Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 271.
- ↑ Casalis, The Basutos, p. 251 sq.
- ↑ Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, p, 38, Eng. Trans.
- ↑ F. Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories, p. 428; Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 51.
- ↑ Diogenes Laertius, viii. 1, 33; cp. Plut., Quæst Conv., v. 10.
- ↑ Macrobius, Sat., i. 16, 8.
