XXXVII. RESTRICTIONS IN DIET…

XXXVII. RESTRICTIONS IN DIET

TRAVELLERS have often noticed with astonishment the immense quantities of food which uncivilised people are able to consume. Sir George Grey has described the orgies which follow the stranding of a whale in Australia, when the natives remain by the carcase for many days, fairly eating their way into it.[1] The Rocky Mountain Indians, though they often subsist for a great length of time on a very little food, will at their feasts "gorge down an incredible quantity."[2] A Mongol "will eat more than ten pounds of meat at one sitting, but some have been known to devour an average-sized sheep in the course of twenty-four hours."[3] The Waganda in Central Africa "sometimes gorge themselves to such an extent that they are unable to move, and appear just as if intoxicated."[4] It has been justly observed that what would among ourselves be condemned as disgusting gluttony is, under the conditions to which certain races of men are exposed, quite normal and in fact necessary. As Mr. Spencer observes, "where the habitat is such as at one time to supply very little food and at another time food in great abundance, survival depends on the ability to consume immense quantities when the opportunities occur."[5] When this is the case gluttony can hardly be {291} stigmatised as a vice; and I find no direct evidence that it is so even among savages who are described as generally moderate in their diet. The lack of foresight, which is a characteristic of uncivilised peoples, must prevent them from attaching much moral value to temperance. On the other hand, gluttony is sometimes said to be regarded with admiration. Mr. Torday informs me that the Bambala in South-Western Congo, when praising a man for his strength, are in the habit of saying, "He eats a whole goat with its skin."

[Footnote 1: Grey, _Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia_, ii. 277 sqq.]

[Footnote 2: Harmon, Journal of Voyages in the Interior of North America, p. 329.]

[Footnote 3: Prejevalsky, Mongolia, i. 55.]

[Footnote 4: Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, i. 185.]

[Footnote 5: Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 436.]

At higher stages of culture intemperance is often subject to censure--because it is detrimental to health or prosperity, or because it calls forth an instinctive feeling of disgust, or because indulgence in sensual pleasures is considered degrading, or, generally, because it is inconsistent with an ascetic ideal of life. It is said in the Proverbs that "the glutton shall come to poverty."[6] According to the Laws of Manu, "excessive eating is prejudicial to health, to fame, and to bliss in heaven; it prevents the acquisition of spiritual merit, and is odious among men; one ought, for these reasons, to avoid it carefully."[7] Aristotle maintains that the pleasure with which intemperance is concerned is justly held in disgrace, "since it belongs to us in that we are animals, not in that we are men."[8] Cicero observes that, as mere corporeal pleasure is unworthy the excellency of man's nature, the nourishment of our bodies "should be with a view not to our pleasure, but to our health and our strength."[9] The same opinion is at least nominally shared by many among ourselves; whereas others, though denying that the gratification of appetite is to be sought for its own sake, admit as legitimate ends for it not only the maintenance of health and strength but also "cheerfulness and the cultivation of the social affections."[10] But most of us are undoubtedly less exacting, if not in theory at least in practice, and really find nothing blamable in pleasures of the {292} table which neither impair health, nor involve a perceptible loss of some greater gratification, nor interfere with duties towards neighbours.[11]

[Footnote 6: Proverbs, xxiii. 21.]

[Footnote 7: Laws of Manu, ii. 57.]

[Footnote 8: Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, iii. 10. 10.]

[Footnote 9: Cicero, De officiis, i. 30.]

[Footnote 10: Whewell, Elements of Morality, p. 124 sq.]

[Footnote 11: See Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, p. 328 sq.]

Sometimes temperance has been inculcated on grounds which in other cases lead to the duty of fasting, that is, abstinence from all food and drink, or at least (in a looser sense of the word) from certain kinds of food, for a determined period. The custom of fasting is wide-spread, and deserves special attention in a study of moral ideas.

Fasting is practised or enjoined for a variety of purposes. It is frequently adopted as a means of having supernatural converse, or acquiring supernatural powers.[12] He who fasts sees in dreams or visions things that no ordinary eye can see. The Hudson Bay Eskimo "discovered that a period of fasting and abstinence from contact with other people endowed a person with supernatural powers and enabled him to learn the secrets of Tung ak [the great spirit]. This is accomplished by repairing to some lonely spot, where, for a greater or less period, the hermit abstains from food or water until the imagination is so worked upon that he believes himself imbued with the power to heal the sick and control all the destinies of life. Tung ak is supposed to stand near and reveal those things while the person is undergoing the test."[13] The Naudowessies totally abstain from every kind of either victuals or drink before a hunting expedition, because they think that "it enables them freely to dream, in which dreams they are informed where they shall find the greatest plenty of game."[14] The Tsimshian of British Columbia, if a special object is to be attained, {293} believe they can compel the deity to grant it by a rigid fasting.[15] The Amazulu have a saying that "the continually stuffed body cannot see secret things," and, in accordance with this belief, put no faith in a fat diviner.[16] A Tungus shaman, who is summoned to treat a sick person, will for several days abstain from food and maintain silence till he becomes inspired.[17] Among the Santals the person or persons who have to offer sacrifices at their feasts prepare themselves for this duty by fasting and prayer and by placing themselves for some time in a position of apparent mental absorption.[18] The savage, as Sir E. B. Tylor remarks, has many a time, for days and weeks together, to try involuntarily the effects of fasting, accompanied with other privations and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or the forest. Under these circumstances he soon comes to see and talk with phantoms, which are to him visible personal spirits, and, having thus learnt the secret of spiritual intercourse, he thenceforth reproduces the cause in order to renew the effects.[19] The Hindus believe that a fasting person will ascend to the heaven of that god in whose name he observes the fast.[20] The Hebrews associated fasting with divine revelations.[21] St. Chrysostom says that fasting "makes the soul brighter, and gives it wings to mount up and soar on high."[22]

[Footnote 12: Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 410 sqq. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 261. Avebury, _Origin of Civilisation_, p. 266 sqq. Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, pp. 118-123, 158 sqq. Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, pp. 285, 651. Dorsey, 'Siouan Cults,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 390. Mooney, 'Myths of the Cherokee,' ibid. xix. 480. Herrera, General History of the West Indies, 1. 165 (ancient natives of Hispaniola). Niebuhr, _Travels through Arabia_, ii. 282.]

[Footnote 13: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 195.]

[Footnote 14: Carver, _Travels through the Interior Parts of North America_, p. 285.]

[Footnote 15: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 50.]

[Footnote 16: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 387, n. 41.]

[Footnote 17: Krivoshapkin, quoted by Landtman, op. cit. p. 159.]

[Footnote 18: Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 213. See also Rowney, Wild Tribes of India, p. 77.]

[Footnote 19: Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 410.]

[Footnote 20: Ward, View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 77.]

[Footnote 21: Exodus, xxxiv. 28. Deuteronomy, ix. 9. Daniel, ix. 3.]

[Footnote 22: St. Chrysostom, In Cap. I. Genes. Homil. X. (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, Ser. Graeca, liii. 83). Cf. Tertullian, De jejuniis, 6 sqq. (Migne, ii. 960, 961, 963); Haug, Alterthümmer der Christen, pp. 476, 482.]

Ideas of this kind partly underlie the common practice of abstaining from food before or in connection with the performance of a magical or religious ceremony;[23] but there {294} is yet another ground for this practice. The effect attributed to fasting is not merely psychical, but it also prevents pollution. Food may cause defilement, and, like other polluting matter, be detrimental to sanctity. Among the Maoris "no food is permitted to touch the head or hair of a chief, which is sacred; and if food is mentioned in connection with anything sacred (or 'tapu') it is considered as an insult, and revenged as such."[24] So also a full stomach may be polluting.[25] This is obviously the reason why in Morocco and elsewhere[26] certain magical practices, in order to be efficacious, have to be performed before breakfast. The Masai use strong purges before they venture to eat holy meat.[27] The Caribs purified their bodies by purging, bloodletting, and fasting; and the natives of the Antilles, at certain religious festivals, cleansed themselves by vomiting before they approached the sanctuary.[28] The true object of fasting often appears from the fact that it is practised hand in hand with other ceremonies of a purificatory character. A Lappish noaide, or wizard, prepares himself for the offering of a sacrifice by abstinence from food and ablutions.[29] Herodotus tells us that the ancient Egyptians fasted before making a sacrifice to Isis, and beat their bodies while the victims were burnt.[30] When a Hindu resolves to visit a sacred place, he has his head shaved two days preceding the commencement of his journey, and fasts the next day; on the last day of his journey he fasts again, and on his {295} arrival at the sacred spot he has his whole body shaved, after which he bathes.[31] In Christianity we likewise meet with fasting as a rite of purification. At least as early as the time of Tertullian it was usual for communicants to prepare themselves by fasting for receiving the Eucharist;[32] and to this day Roman Catholicism regards it as unlawful to consecrate or partake of it after food or drink.[33] The Lent fast itself was partly interpreted as a purifying preparation for the holy table.[34] And in the early Church catechumens were accustomed to fast before baptism.[35]

[Footnote 23: Bossu, Travels through Louisiana, i. 38 (Natchez). Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 285 sq.; Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 440 sq. (ancient Mexicans). Landa, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan, p. 156. Junghuhn, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 311 sq. (natives of Tjumba). Beauchamp, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 56 (Hindus of Southern India). Ward, op. cit. ii. 76 sq. (Hindus). Wassiljew, quoted by Haberland, 'Gebräuche und Aberglauben beim Essen,' in Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, xviii. 30 (Buddhists). Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, ii. 44; Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, ii. 560, 576; Hermann-Stark, Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen, p. 381; Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen, p. 25; Diels, 'Ein orphischer Demeterhymnus,' in Festschrift Theodor Gomperz dargebracht, p. 6 sqq. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 23, 74.]

[Footnote 24: Angas, Polynesia, p. 149.]

[Footnote 25: See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 434 sq.; Westermarck, The Moorish Conception of Holiness, p. 127.]

[Footnote 26: Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der gegenwart, § 219, p. 161.]

[Footnote 27: Thomson, Masai Land, p. 430.]

[Footnote 28: Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv. 330; iii. 384.]

[Footnote 29: von Düben, Lappland, p. 256. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, p. 145 sq.]

[Footnote 30: Herodotus, ii. 40.]

[Footnote 31: Ward, op. cit. ii. 130 sq. Cf. Institutes of Vishnu, xlvi. 17, 24 sq.]

[Footnote 32: Tertullian, De oratione, 19 (Migne, op. cit. i. 1182).]

[Footnote 33: Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii. 4. 6.]

[Footnote 34: St. Jerome, In Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1140).]

[Footnote 35: Justin Martyr, Apologia I. pro Christianis, 61 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, vi. 420). St. Augustine, De fide et operibus, vi. 8 (Migne, xl. 202).]

In the case of a sacrifice it is considered necessary not only that he who offers it, but that the victim also, should be free from pollution. In ancient Egypt a sacrificial animal had to be perfectly clean.[36] According to Hindu notions the gods enjoy pure sacrifices only.[37] In the Kalika-Purana, a work supposed to have been written under the direction of Siva, it is said that if a man is offered he must be free from corporal defect and unstained with great crimes, and that if an animal is offered it must have exceeded its third year and be without blemish or disease; and in no case must the victim be a woman or a she animal, because, as it seems, females are regarded as naturally unclean.[38] According to the religious law of the Hebrews, no leaven or honey should be used in connection with vegetable offerings, on the ground that these articles have the effect of producing fermentation and tend to acidify and spoil anything with which they are mixed;[39] and the animal which was intended for sacrifice should be absolutely free from blemish[40] and at least eight days old,[41] that is, untainted with the impurity of birth. Quite in harmony with these prescriptions is the notion that human or {296} animal victims have to abstain from food for some time before they are offered up. Among the Kandhs the man who was destined to be sacrificed was kept fasting from the preceding evening, but on the day of the sacrifice he was refreshed with a little milk and palm-sago; and before he was led forth from the village in solemn procession he was carefully washed and dressed in a new garment.[42] In Morocco it is not only considered meritorious for the people to fast on the day previous to the celebration of the yearly sacrificial feast, l-[(][)a]îd l-kbîr, but in several parts of the country the sheep which is going to be sacrificed has to fast on that day or at least on the following morning, till some food is given it immediately before it is slaughtered. The Jewish custom which compels the firstborn to fast on the eve of Passover[43] may also perhaps be a survival from a time when all the firstborn belonged to the Lord.[44]

[Footnote 36: Herodotus, ii. 38.]

[Footnote 37: Baudhâyana, i. 6. 13. 1 sq.]

[Footnote 38: Dubois, _Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India_, p. 491.]

[Footnote 39: Keil, Manual of Biblical Archæology, i. 262.]

[Footnote 40: Leviticus, xxii. 19 sqq.]

[Footnote 41: Ibid. xxii. 27.]

[Footnote 42: Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 118.]

[Footnote 43: Greenstone, 'Fasting,' in Jewish Encyclopedia, v. 348. Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 394.]

[Footnote 44: Supra, i. 459.]

In some cases the custom of fasting before the performance of a sacrifice may be due to the idea that it is dangerous or improper for the worshipper to partake of food before the god has had his share.[45] In India a regular performance of two half-monthly sacrifices is enjoined on the Brahmanical householder for a period of thirty years from the time when he has set up a fire of his own--according to some authorities even for the rest of his life. The ceremony usually occupies two consecutive days, the first of which is chiefly taken up with preparatory rites and the vow of abstinence (vrata) by the sacrificer and his wife, whilst the second day is reserved for the main performance of the sacrifice. The vrata includes the abstention from certain kinds of food, especially meat, which will be offered to the gods on the following day, as also from other carnal pleasures. The Satapatha-Brâhmana gives the following explanation of it:--"The gods see through the mind of man; they know that, when {297} he enters on this vow, he means to sacrifice to them the next morning. Therefore all the gods betake themselves to his house, and abide by him or the fires (upa-vas) in his house; whence this day is called upa-vasatha. Now, as it would even be unbecoming for him to take food before men who are staying with him as his guests have eaten; how much more would it be so, if he were to take food before the gods who are staying with him have eaten: let him therefore take no food at all."[46] It is hardly probable, however, that this is the original meaning of the abstinence in question. It occurs about the time of new moon and full moon; according to some native authorities the abstinence and sacrifice take place on the last two days of each half of the lunar month, whilst the generality of ritualistic writers consider the first day of the half-month that is, the first and sixteenth days of the month to be the proper time for the sacrifice.[47] We shall presently see how frequently fasting is observed on these occasions, presumably for fear of eating food which is supposed to have been polluted by the moon; hence it seems to me by no means improbable that the vrata has a similar origin, instead of being merely a rite preparatory to the sacrifice which follows it. But at the same time the idea that spirits or gods should have the first share of a meal is certainly very ancient, and may lead to actual fasting in case the offering for some reason or other is to be delayed. A Polynesian legend tells us that a man by name Maui once caught an immense fish. Then he left his brothers, saying to them:--"After I am gone, be courageous and patient; do not eat food until I return, and do not let our fish be cut up, but rather leave it until I have carried an offering to the gods from this great haul of fish, and until I have found a priest, that fitting prayers and sacrifices may be offered to the god, and the necessary rites be completed in order. We shall thus all be purified. I will then {298} return, and we can cut up this fish in safety, and it shall be fairly portioned out to this one, and to that one, and to that other." But as soon as Maui had gone, his brothers began at once to eat food, and to cut up the fish. Had Maui previously reached the sacred place, the heart of the deity would have been appeased with the offering of a portion of the fish which had been caught by his disciples, and all the male and female deities would have partaken of their portions of the sacrifice. But now the gods turned with wrath upon them, on account of the fish which they had thus cut up without having made a fitting sacrifice.[48]

[Footnote 45: Cf. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 414.]

[Footnote 46: Satapatha-Brâhmana, i. 1. 1. 7 sq. Eggeling, in Sacred Books of the East, xii. 1 sq. Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 413, n. 1.]

[Footnote 47: Eggeling, in Sacred Books of the East, xii. 1.]

[Footnote 48: Grey, Polynesian Mythology, p. 26 sq.]

Among many peoples custom prescribes fasting after a death. Lucian says that at the funeral feast the parents of the deceased are prevailed upon by their relatives to take food, being almost prostrated by a three days' fast.[49] We are told that among the Hindus children fast three days after the death of a parent, and a wife the same period after the death of her husband;[50] but according to a more recent statement, to be quoted presently, they do not altogether abstain from food. In one of the sacred books of India it is said that mourners shall fast during three days, and that, if they are unable to do so, they shall subsist on food bought in the market or given unasked.[51] Among the Nay[=a]dis of Malabar "from the time of death until the funeral is over, all the relations must fast."[52] Among the Irulas of the Neilgherries "the relatives of the deceased fast during the first day, that is, if . . . . the death occur after the morning meal, they refrain from the evening one, and eat nothing till the next morning. If it occur during the night, or before the morning meal, they refrain from all food till the evening. Similar fasting is observed on every return of the same day of the week, till the obsequies take place."[53] Among {299} the Bogos of Eastern Africa a son must fast three days after the death of his father.[54] On the Gold Coast it is the custom for the near relatives of the deceased to perform a long and painful fast, and sometimes they can only with difficulty be induced to have recourse to food again.[55] So also in Dahomey they must fast during the "corpse time," or mourning.[56] Among the Brazilian Paressí the relatives of a dead person remain for six days at his grave, carefully refraining from taking food.[57] Among the aborigines of the Antilles children used to fast after the death of a parent, a husband after the death of his wife, and a wife after the death of her husband.[58] In some Indian tribes of North America it is the custom for the relatives of the deceased to fast till the funeral is over.[59] Among the Snanaimuq, a tribe of the Coast Salish, after the death of a husband or wife the surviving partner must not eat anything for three or four days.[60] In one of the interior divisions of the Salish of British Columbia, the Stlatlumh, the next four days after a funeral feast are spent by the members of the household of the deceased person in fasting, lamenting and ceremonial ablutions.[61] Among the Upper Thompson Indians in British Columbia, again, those who handled the dead body and who dug the grave had to fast until the corpse was buried.[62]

[Footnote 49: Lucian, De luctu, 24.]

[Footnote 50: Ward, View of the History, &c. of the Hindoos, ii. 76 sq.]

[Footnote 51: Vasishtha, iv. 14 sq. Cf. _Institutes of Vishnu_, xix. 14.]

[Footnote 52: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 76.]

[Footnote 53: Harkness, Description of a Singular Race inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, p. 97.]

[Footnote 54: Munzinger, Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 29.]

[Footnote 55: Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast, ii. 218.]

[Footnote 56: Burton, Mission to Gelele, ii. 163.]

[Footnote 57: von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 435. Cf. ibid. p. 339 (Bakaïri).]

[Footnote 58: Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles, ii. 371.]

[Footnote 59: Charlevoix, Voyage to North-America, ii. 187.]

[Footnote 60: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 45.]

[Footnote 61: Tout, 'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 138.]

[Footnote 62: Teit, 'Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' in Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Anthropology, i. 331.]

In several instances fasting after a death is observed only in the daytime.

David and his people fasted for Saul and Jonathan until even on the day when the news of their death arrived.[63] Among the Arabs of Morocco it is the custom that if a death takes place in the morning everyone in the village refrains from food until {300} the deceased is buried in the afternoon or evening; but if a person dies so late that he cannot be buried till the next morning the people eat at night. In the Pelew Islands, as long as the dead is unburied, fasting is observed in the daytime but not in the evening.[64] In Fiji after a burial the kana-bogi, or fasting till evening, is practised for ten or twenty days.[65] In Samoa it was common for those who attended the deceased to eat nothing during the day, but to have a meal at night.[66] In the Tuhoe tribe of the Maoris, "when a chief of distinction died his widow and children would remain for some time within the whare potae [that is, mourning house], eating food during the night time only, never during the day."[67] The Sacs and Foxes in Nebraska formerly required that children should fast for three months after the death of a parent, except that they every day about sunset were allowed to partake of a meal made entirely of hominy.[68] Among the Kansas a man who loses his wife must fast from sunrise to sunset for a year and a half, and a woman who loses her husband must observe a similar fast for a year.[69] In some tribes of British Columbia and among the Thlinkets, until the dead body is buried the relatives of the deceased may eat a little at night but have to fast during the day.[70] Among the Upper Thompson Indians a different custom prevailed: "nobody was allowed to eat, drink, or smoke in the open air after sunset (others say after dusk) before the burial, else the ghost would harm them."[71]

[Footnote 63: 2 Samuel, i. 12. Cf. ibid. iii. 35.]

[Footnote 64: Waitz, op. cit. v. 153.]

[Footnote 65: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 169.]

[Footnote 66: Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228. Idem, Samoa, p. 145.]

[Footnote 67: Best, 'Tuhoe Land,' in _Trans. and Proceed. of the New Zealand Institute_, xxx. 38.]

[Footnote 68: Yarrow, 'Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. i. 95.]

[Footnote 69: Dorsey, 'Mourning and War Customs of the Kansas,' in American Naturalist, xix. 679 sq.]

[Footnote 70: Boas, loc. cit. p. 41.]

[Footnote 71: Teit, loc. cit. p. 328.]

Very frequently mourners have to abstain from certain victuals only, especially flesh or fish, or some other staple or favourite food.

In Greenland everybody who had lived in the same house with the dead, or who had touched his corpse, was for some time forbidden to partake of certain kinds of food.[72] Among the Upper Thompson Indians "parents bereft of a child did not eat fresh meat for several months."[73] Among the Stlatlumh of {301} British Columbia a widow might eat no fresh food for a whole year, whilst the other members of the deceased person's family abstained from such food for a period of from four days to as many months. A widower was likewise forbidden to eat fresh meats for a certain period, the length of which varied with the age of the person--the younger the man, the longer his abstention.[74] In some of the Goajiro clans of Colombia a person is prohibited from eating flesh during the mourning time, which lasts nine days.[75] Among the Abipones, when a chief died, the whole tribe abstained for a month from eating fish, their principal dainty.[76] While in mourning, the Northern Queensland aborigines carefully avoid certain victuals, believing that the forbidden food, if eaten, would burn up their bowels.[77] In Easter Island the nearest relatives of the dead are for a year or even longer obliged to abstain from eating potatoes, their chief article of food, or some other victuals of which they are particularly fond.[78] Certain Papuans and various tribes in the Malay Archipelago prohibit persons in mourning from eating rice or sago.[79] In the Andaman Islands mourners refuse to partake of their favourite viands.[80] After the death of a relative the Tipperahs abstain from flesh for a week.[81] The same is the case with the Arakh, a tribe in Oudh, during the fifteen days in the month of Kuâr which are sacred to the worship of the dead.[82] Among the Nay[=a]dis of Malabar the relatives of the deceased are not allowed to eat meat for ten days after his death.[83] According to Toda custom the near relatives must not eat rice, milk, honey, or gram until the funeral is over.[84] Among the Hindus described by Mr. Chunder Bose a widow is restricted to one scanty meal a day, and this is of the coarsest description and always devoid of fish, the most esteemed article of food in a Hindu lady's bill of fare. The son, again, from {302} the hour of his father's death to the conclusion of the funeral ceremony, is allowed to take only a meal consisting of atab rice, a sort of inferior pulse, milk, ghee, sugar, and a few fruits, and at night a little milk, sugar, and fruits--a régime which lasts ten days in the case of a Brahmin and thirty-one days in the case of a Sûdra.[85] In some of the sacred books of India it is said that, during the period of impurity, all the mourners shall abstain from eating meat.[86] In China "meat, must, and spirits were forbidden even in the last month of the deepest mourning, when other sorts of food had long been allowed already."[87]

[Footnote 72: Egede, Description of Greenland, p. 149 sq. Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 218.]

[Footnote 73: Teit, loc. cit. p. 332.]

[Footnote 74: Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 138 sq.]

[Footnote 75: Candelier, Rio-Hacha, p. 220.]

[Footnote 76: Charlevoix, History of Paraguay, i. 405.]

[Footnote 77: Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 203.]

[Footnote 78: Geiseler, Die Oster-Insel, pp. 28, 30.]

[Footnote 79: Wilken, 'Ueber das Haaropfer, und einige andere Trauergebräuche bei den Völkern Indonesien's,' in Revue coloniale internationale, iv. 348 sq.]

[Footnote 80: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 142**, 353.]

[Footnote 81: Browne, quoted by Dalton, op. cit. p. 110.]

[Footnote 82: Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, i. 84.]

[Footnote 83: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 76.]

[Footnote 84: Idem, ibid. i. 174. Dr. Rivers says (Todas, p. 370) that, among the Todas, a widower is not allowed to eat rice nor drink milk, and that on every return of the day of the week on which his wife died he takes no food in the morning but only has his evening meal. The same holds good for a widow.]

[Footnote 85: Bose, The Hindoos as they are, pp. 244, 254 sq.]

[Footnote 86: Gautama, xiv. 39. Institutes of Vishnu, xix. 15.]

[Footnote 87: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 651.]

The custom of fasting after a death has been ascribed to different causes by different writers. Mr. Spencer believes that it has resulted from the habit of making excessive provision for the dead.[88] But although among some peoples the funeral offerings no doubt are so extensive as to reduce the survivors to poverty and starvation,[89] I have met with no statement to the effect that they are anxious to give to the deceased all the eatables which they possess, or that the mourning fast is a matter of actual necessity. It is always restricted to some fixed period, often to a few days only, and it prevails among many peoples who have never been known to be profuse in their sacrifices to the dead. With reference to the Chinese, Dr. de Groot maintains that the mourners originally fasted with a view to being able to sacrifice so much the more at the tomb; and he bases this conclusion on the fact that the articles of food which were forbidden till the end of the deepest mourning were the very same as those which in ancient China played the principal part at every burial sacrifice.[90] But this prohibition may also perhaps be due to a belief that the offering of certain victuals to the dead pollutes all food belonging to the same species.

[Footnote 88: Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 261 sqq.]

[Footnote 89: Ibid. i. 262.]

[Footnote 90: de Groot, op. cit., (vol. ii. book) i. 652.]

Professor Wilken, again, suggests that the mourners abstain from food till they have given the dead his due, in {303} order to show that they do not wish to keep him waiting longer than is necessary and thus make him kindly disposed towards them.[91] This explanation presupposes that the fast is immediately followed by offerings or a feast for the dead. In some instances this is expressly said to be the case;[92] the ancient Chinese, for instance, observed a special fast as an introductory rite to the sacrifices which they offered to the manes at regular periods after the demise and even after the close of the mourning.[93] But generally there is no indication of the mourning fast being an essential preliminary to a sacrifice to the dead, and in an instance mentioned above the funeral feast regularly precedes it.[94]

[Footnote 91: Wilken, in Revue colonials internationale, iv. 347, 348, 350 sq. n. 32.]

[Footnote 92: Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. 90 (Dyaks). Black, 'Fasting,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, ix. 44.]

[Footnote 93: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 656.]

[Footnote 94: Supra, ii. 299.]

It seems that Sir J. G. Frazer comes much nearer the truth when he observes that people originally fasted after a death "just in those circumstances in which they considered that they might possibly in eating devour a ghost."[95] Yet I think it would generally be more correct to say that they were afraid of swallowing, not the ghost, but food polluted with the contagion of death. The dead body is regarded as a seat of infection, which defiles anything in its immediate neighbourhood, and this infection is of course considered particularly dangerous if it is allowed to enter into the bowels. In certain cases the length of the mourning fast is obviously determined by the belief in the polluting presence of the ghost. The six days' fast of the Paressí coincides with the period after which the dead is supposed to have arrived in heaven no longer to return; and they say that anybody who should fail to observe this fast would "eat the mouth of the dead" and die himself.[96] Frequently the fasting lasts till the corpse is buried; and burial is a common safeguard against the return of the ghost.[97] The custom {304} of restricting the fast to the daytime probably springs from the idea that a ghost cannot see in the dark, and is consequently unable to come and pollute the food at night. That the object of the fast is to prevent pollution is also suggested by its resemblance to some other practices, which are evidently intended to serve this purpose. The Maoris were not allowed to eat on or near any spot where a dead body had been buried, or to take a meal in a canoe while passing opposite to such a place.[98] In Samoa, while a dead body is in the house, no food is eaten under the same roof; hence the family have their meals outside, or in another house.[99] The Todas, who fast on the day when a death has taken place, have on the following day their meals served in another hut.[100] In one of the sacred books of India it is said that a Brâhmana "shall not eat in the house of a relation within six degrees where a person has died, before the ten days of impurity have elapsed"; in a house "where a lying-in woman has not yet come out of the lying-in chamber"; nor in a house where a corpse lies;[101] and in connection with this last injunction we are told that, when a person who is not a relation has died, it is customary to place at the distance of "one hundred bows" a lamp and water-vessel, and to eat beyond that distance.[102] In one of the Zoroastrian books Ormuzd is represented as saying, "In a house when a person shall die, until three nights are completed . . . nothing whatever of meat is to be eaten by his relations";[103] and the obvious reason for this rule was the belief that the soul of the dead was hovering about the body for the first three nights after death.[104] Closely related to this custom is that of the modern Parsis, which forbids for three days all cooking under a roof where a death has occurred, but allows the inmates to obtain food from their neighbours {305} and friends.[105] Among the Agariya, a Dravidian tribe in the hilly parts of Mirzápur, no fire is lit and no cooking is done in the house of a dead person on the day when he is cremated, the food being cooked in the house of the brother-in-law of the deceased.[106] In Mykonos, one of the Cyclades, it is considered wrong to cook in the house of mourning; hence friends and relatives come laden with food, and lay the "bitter table."[107] Among the Albanians there is no cooking in the house for three days after a death, and the family are fed by friends.[108] So also the Maronites of Syria "dress no victuals for some time in the house of the deceased, but their relations and friends supply them."[109] When a Jew dies all the water in the same and adjoining houses is instantly thrown away;[110] nobody may eat in the same room with the corpse, unless there is only one room in the house, in which case the inhabitants may take food in it if they interpose a screen, so that in eating they do not see the corpse; they must abstain from flesh and wine so long as the dead body is in the house;[111] and on the evening of mourning the members of the family may not eat their own food, but are supplied with food by their friends.[112] Among the Arabs of Morocco, if a person has died in the morning, no fire is made in the whole village until he is buried, and in some parts of the country the inmates of a house or tent where a death has occurred, abstain from making fire for two or three days. In Algeria "dès que quelqu'un est mort, on ne doit pas allumer de feu dans la maison pendant trois jours, et il est défendu de toucher à de la viande rôtie, grillée ou bouillie, à moins qu'elle ne vienne de quelqu'un de dehors."[113] In China, for seven days after a death "no food is cooked in the house, and friends {306} and neighbours are trusted to supply the common necessaries of life."[114] There is no sufficient reason to assume that this practice of abstaining from cooking food after a death is a survival of a previous mourning fast, but the two customs seem partly to have a similar origin. The cooking may contaminate the food if done in a polluted house, or by a polluted individual. The relatives of the dead, or persons who have handled the corpse, are regarded as defiled; hence they have to abstain from cooking food, as they have to abstain from any kind of work,[115] and from sexual intercourse.[116] Hence, also, they are often prohibited from touching food; and this may in some cases have led to fasting, whilst in other instances they have to be fed by their neighbours.[117]

[Footnote 95: Frazer, 'Certain Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 94. See also Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, pp. 270, 590.]

[Footnote 96: von den Steinen, op. cit. p. 434 sq.]

[Footnote 97: Infra, on Regard for the Dead.]

[Footnote 98: Polack, _Manners ani Customs of the New Zealanders_, i. 239.]

[Footnote 99: Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228. Idem, Samoa, p. 145.]

[Footnote 100: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, i. 174.]

[Footnote 101: Âpastamba, i. 5. 16. 18 sqq.]

[Footnote 102: Haradatta, quoted by Bühler, in Sacred Books of the East, ii. 59, n. 20.]

[Footnote 103: Shâyast Lâ-Shâyast, xvii. 2.]

[Footnote 104: West, in Sacred Books of the East, v. 382, n. 3.]

[Footnote 105: West, ibid. v. 382, n. 2.]

[Footnote 106: Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, i. 7.]

[Footnote 107: Bent, Cyclades, p. 221.]

[Footnote 108: von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, p. 151.]

[Footnote 109: Dandini, 'Voyage to Mount Libanus,' in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages, x. 290.]

[Footnote 110: Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 435.]

[Footnote 111: Bodenschatz, Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, iv. 177.]

[Footnote 112: Buxtorf, Synagoga Judaica, p. 707.]

[Footnote 113: Certeux and Carnoy, L'Algérie traditionelle, p. 220.]

[Footnote 114: Gray, China, i. 287 sq.]

[Footnote 115: Supra, ii. 283 sq.]

[Footnote 116: Teit, loc. cit. p. 331 (Upper Thompson Indians). Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 139 (Stlatlumh of British Columbia). Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, pp. 578, 590; Caland, Die Altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche, p. 81. de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 609 (Chinese). Wilken, in Revue internationale coloniale, iv. 352, n. 41.]

[Footnote 117: Turner, Samoa, p. 145; Idem, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228 (Samoans). Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 403 (Tahitians). Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 323 (Maoris). Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 169. Among the Upper Thompson Indians the persons who handled the dead body would not touch the food with their hands, but must put it into their mouths with sharp-pointed sticks (Teit, loc. cit. p. 331).]

However, an unclean individual may be supposed to pollute a piece of food not only by touching it with his hand, but in some cases by eating it; and, in accordance with the principle of pars pro toto, the pollution may then spread to all victuals belonging to the same species. Ideas of this kind are sometimes conspicuous in connection with the restrictions in diet after a death. Thus the Siciatl of British Columbia believe that a dead body, or anything connected with the dead, is inimical to the salmon, and therefore the relatives of a deceased person must abstain from eating salmon in the early stages of the run, as also from entering a creek where salmon are found.[118] Among the Stlatlumh, a neighbouring people, not even elderly widowers, for whom the period of abstention is comparatively {307} short, are allowed to eat fresh salmon till the first of the run is over and the fish have arrived in such numbers that there is no danger of their being driven away.[119] It is not unlikely that if the motives for the restrictions in diet after a death were sufficiently known in each case, a similar fear lest the unclean mourner should pollute the whole species by polluting some individual member of it would be found to be a common cause of those rules which prohibit the eating of staple or favourite food.[120] But it would seem that such rules also may spring from the idea that this kind of food is particularly sought for by the dead and therefore defiled.

[Footnote 118: Tout, 'Ethnology of the Siciatl of British Columbia,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxiv. 33.]

[Footnote 119: Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 139.]

[Footnote 120: In the Arunta tribe, Central Australia, no menstruous woman is allowed to gather the Irriakura bulbs, which form a staple article of diet for both men and women, the idea being that any infringement of the restriction would result in the failure of the supply of the bulb (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 615).]

Moreover, unclean individuals are not only a danger to others, but are themselves in danger. As Sir J. G. Frazer has shown, they are supposed to be in a delicate condition, which imposes upon them various precautions;[121] and one of these may be restrictions in their diet. Among the Thlinkets and some peoples in British Columbia the relatives of the deceased not only fast till the body is buried, but have their faces blackened, cover their heads with ragged mats, and must speak but little, confining themselves to answering questions, as it is believed that they would else become chatterboxes.[122] According to early ideas, mourners are in a state very similar to that of girls at puberty, who also, among various peoples, are obliged to fast or abstain from certain kinds of food on account of their uncleanness.[123] Among the Stlatlumh, for instance, {308} when a girl reaches puberty, she fasts for the first four days and abstains from fresh meats of any kind throughout the whole period of her seclusion. "There was a two-fold object in this abstention. First, the girl, it was thought, would be harmed by the fresh meat in her peculiar condition; and second, the game animals would take offence if she partook of their meat in these circumstances," and would not permit her father to kill them.[124]

[Footnote 121: Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 343, &c.]

[Footnote 122: Boas, loc. cit. p. 41.]

[Footnote 123: Boas, loc. cit. p. 40 sqq. (various tribes in British Columbia). Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxiv. 33 (Siciatl). Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 93 sq. (Ahts). Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 501. Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles, ii. 371. Schomburgk, 'Natives of Guiana,' in _Jour. Ethn. Soc. London_, i. 269 sq. von Martius, _Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's_, i. 644 (Macusis). Seligmann, in _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, v. 200 sqq. (Western Islanders). Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 94. See Frazer, op. cit. iii. 205 sqq.]

[Footnote 124: Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 136.]

It should finally be noticed that, though the custom of fasting after a death in the main has a superstitious origin, there may at the same time be a physiological motive for it.[125] Even the rudest savage feels afflicted at the death of a friend, and grief is accompanied by a loss of appetite. This natural disinclination to partake of food may, combined with superstitious fear, have given rise to prohibitory rules, nay, may even in the first instance have suggested the idea that there is danger in taking food. The mourning observances so commonly coincide with the natural expressions of sorrow, that we are almost bound to assume the existence of some connection between them, even though in their developed forms the superstitious motive be the most prominent.

[Footnote 125: Cf. Mallery, 'Manners and Meals,' in _American Anthropologist_, i. 202; Brinton, _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 213; Schurtz, Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 587.]

An important survival of the mourning fast is the Lent fast. It originally lasted for forty hours only, that is, the time when Christ lay in the grave.[126] Irenaeus speaks of the fast of forty hours before Easter,[127] and Tertullian, when a Montanist disputing against the Catholics, says that the only legitimate days for Christian fasting were those in which the Bridegroom was taken away.[128] Subsequently, however, the forty hours were extended to forty {309} days, in imitation of the forty days' fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ.[129]

[Footnote 126: Cf. St. Matthew, ix. 15; St. Mark, ii. 20; St. Luke, v. 35.]

[Footnote 127: Irenaeus, quoted by Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, v. 24 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, Ser. Graeca, xx. 501). Cf. Funk, 'Die Entwicklung des Osterfastens,' in Theologische Quartalschrift, lxxv. 181 sqq.; Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 241.]

[Footnote 128: Tertullian, De jejuniis, 2 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 956).]

[Footnote 129: St. Jerome, Commentarii in Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1140). St. Augustine, Epistola LV (alias CXIX), 'Ad inquisitiones Januarii,' 15 (Migne, xxxiii. 217 sq.). Funk, loc. cit. p. 209.]

Not only on a death, but on certain other occasions, food is supposed to pollute or injure him who partakes of it, and is therefore to be avoided. In Pfalz the people maintain that no food should be taken at an eclipse of the sun;[130] and all over Germany there is a popular belief that anybody who eats during a thunderstorm will be struck by the lightning.[131] When the Todas know that there is going to be an eclipse of the sun or the moon, they abstain from food.[132] Among the Hindus, while an eclipse is going on, "drinking water, eating food, and all household business, as well as the worship of the gods, are all prohibited"; high-caste Hindus do not even eat food which has remained in the house during an eclipse, but give it away, and all earthen vessels in use in their houses at the time must be broken.[133] Among the rules laid down for Snâtakas, that is, Brâhmanas who have completed their studentship, there is one which forbids them to eat, travel, and sleep during the twilight;[134] and in one of the Zoroastrian Pahlavi texts it is said that "in the dark it is not allowable to eat food, for the demons and fiends seize upon one-third of the wisdom and glory of him who eats food in the dark."[135] Many Hindus who revere the sun do not break their fast in the morning till they catch a clear view of it, and do not eat at all on days when it is obscured by clouds[136]--a custom to which there is a parallel among some North American sun-worshippers, the Snanaimuq Indians belonging to the Coast Salish, who must not partake of any food until the sun is well up in the sky.[137] Brahmins {310} fast at the equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, and on the days of the new and full moon.[138] The Buddhist Sabbath, or Uposatha, which, as we have noticed above, occurs on the day of full moon, on the day when there is no moon, and on the two days which are eighth from the full and new moon, is not only a day of rest, but has also from ancient times been a fast-day. He who keeps the Sabbath rigorously abstains from all food between sunrise and sunset, and, as no cooking must be done during the Uposatha, he prepares his evening meal in the early morning before the rise of the sun.[139]

[Footnote 130: Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz, iii. 55.]

[Footnote 131: Haberland, in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xviii. 258.]

[Footnote 132: Rivers, op. cit. p. 592 sq.]

[Footnote 133: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 21 sq.]

[Footnote 134: Laws of Manu, iv. 55.]

[Footnote 135: Shâyast Lâ-Shâyast, ix. 8.]

[Footnote 136: Wilson, Works, i. 266. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, ii. 285. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 214.]

[Footnote 137: Boas, loc. cit. p. 51.]

[Footnote 138: Dubois, Description of the People of India, p. 160. See also supra, ii. 297.]

[Footnote 139: Childers, Dictionary of the Pali Language, p. 535. Kern, Der Buddhismus, ii. 258.]

Among the Jews there are many who abstain from food on the day of an eclipse of the moon, which they regard as an evil omen.[140] We have also reason to believe that the Jews were once in the habit of observing the new moons and Sabbaths not only as days of rest, but as fast-days; and the Hebrew Sabbath, as we have seen, in all probability owes its origin to superstitious fear of the changes in the moon.[141] Or how shall we explain the curious rule which forbids fasting on a new moon and on the seventh day,[142] if not as a protest against a fast once in vogue among the Jews on these occasions, but afterwards regarded as an illegitimate rite?[143] This theory is not new, for Hooker in his 'Ecclesiastical Polity' observes that "it may be a question, whether in some sort they did not always fast on the Sabbath." He refers to a statement of Josephus, according to which the sixth hour "was wont on the Sabbath always to call them home unto meat," and to certain pagan writers who upbraided them with fasting on that day.[144] In Nehemiah there is an indication that it was a custom to fast on the first day of the seventh month,[145] {311} which is "holy unto the Lord";[146] and on the tenth day of the same month there was the great fast of atonement, combined with abstinence from every kind of work.[147] I venture to think that all these fasts may be ultimately traced to a belief that the changes in the moon not only are unfavourable for work, but also make it dangerous to partake of food. The fact of the seventh day being a day of rest established the number seven as a sabbatical number. In the seventh month there are several days, besides Saturdays, which are to be observed as days of rest,[148] and in the seventh year there shall be "a sabbath of rest unto the land."[149] In these Sabbatarian regulations the day of atonement plays a particularly prominent part. The severest punishment is prescribed for him who does not rest and fast on that day "from even unto even";[150] and it is on the same day that, after the lapse of seven times seven years, the trumpet of the jubilee shall be caused to sound throughout the land.[151] Most of the rules concerning the day of atonement are undoubtedly post-exilic. But the fact that no other regular days of fasting but those mentioned by Zechariah are referred to by the prophets or in earlier books, hardly justifies the conclusion drawn by many scholars that no such fast existed. It is extremely probable that the fast of the tenth day of the seventh month as a fast of atonement is of a comparatively modern date; but it is perhaps not too bold to suggest that the idea of atonement is a later interpretation of a previously existing fast, which was originally observed for fear of the dangerous quality attributed to the number seven. Why this fast was enjoined on the tenth day of the seventh month remains obscure; but it seems that the order of the month was considered more important than that of the day. Nehemiah speaks of a fast which {312} was kept on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month.[152]

[Footnote 140: Buxtorf, op. cit. p. 477.]

[Footnote 141: Supra, ii. 286 sq.]

[Footnote 142: Judith, viii. 6. Schulchan Aruch, i. 91, 117.]

[Footnote 143: See Jastrow, 'Original Character of the Hebrew Sabbath,' in American Journal of Theology, ii. 325.]

[Footnote 144: Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 72, vol. ii. 338.]

[Footnote 145: Nehemiah, viii. 2, 10:--"Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared."]

[Footnote 146: Nehemiah, viii. 9 sqq. See also Leviticus, xxiii. 24 sq.; Numbers, xxix. 1. Among the Babylonians, too, the seventh month had a sacred character (]astrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 681, 683, 686).]

[Footnote 147: Leviticus, xvi. 29, 31; xxiii. 27 sqq. Numbers, xxix. 7.]

[Footnote 148: Leviticus, xxiii. 24, 25, 35, 36, 39. Numbers, xxix. 1, 12, 35.]

[Footnote 149: Leviticus, xxv. 4. See also Exodus, xxiii. 10 sq.]

[Footnote 150: Leviticus, xxiii. 29 sq.]

[Footnote 151: Ibid. xxv. 9.]

[Footnote 152: Nehemiah, ix. 1.]

In other Semitic religions we meet with various fasts which are in some way or other connected with astronomical changes. According to En-Nedîm, the Harranians, or "Sabians," observed a thirty days' fast in honour of the moon, commencing on the eighth day after the new moon of Adsâr (March); a nine days' fast in honour of "the Lord of Good Luck" (probably Jupiter),[153] commencing on the ninth day before the new moon of the first Kânûn (December); and a seven days' fast in honour of the sun, commencing on the eighth or ninth day after the new moon of Shobâth (February).[154] The thirty days' fast seems to have implied abstinence from every kind of food and drink between sunrise and sunset,[155] whereas the seven days' fast is expressly said to have consisted in abstinence from fat and wine.[156] In Manichæism--which is essentially based upon the ancient nature religion of Babylonia, though modified by Christian and Persian elements and elevated into a gnosis[157]--we meet with a great number of fasts. There is a continuous fast for two days when the sun is in Sagittarius (which it enters about the 22nd November) and the moon has its full light; another fast when the sun has entered Capricornus (which it does about the 21st December) and the moon first becomes visible; and a thirty days' fast between sunrise and sunset commencing on the day "when the new moon begins to shine, the sun is in Aquarius (where it is from about the 20th January), and eight days of the month have passed," which seems to imply that the fast cannot begin until eight days after the sun has entered Aquarius and that consequently, if the new moon {313} appears during that period, the commencement of the fast has to be postponed till the following new moon. The Manichaeans also fasted for two days at every new moon; and our chief authority on the subject, En-Nedîm, states that they had seven fast-days in each month. They fasted on Sundays, and some of them, the electi or "perfect ones," on Mondays also.[158] We are told by Leo the Great that they observed these weekly fasts in honour of the sun and the moon;[159] but according to the Armenian Bishop Ebedjesu their abstinence on Sunday was occasioned by their belief that the destruction of the world was going to take place on that day.[160] There can be little doubt that the Harranian and Manichæan fasts were originally due, not to reverence, but to fear of evil influences; reverence can never be the primitive motive for a customary rite of fasting. The thirty days' fast which the Harranians observed in the month of Adsâr finds perhaps its explanation in the fact that, according to Babylonian beliefs, the month Adar was presided over by the seven evil spirits, who knew neither compassion nor mercy, who heard no prayer or supplication, and to whose baneful influence the popular faith attributed the eclipse of the moon.[161] But it may also be worth noticing that the Harranian fast took place about the vernal equinox--a time at which, as we have seen, the Brahmins of India are wont to fast, though only for a day or two.

[Footnote 153: Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, ii. 226, n. 247.]

[Footnote 154: En-Nedîm, Fihrist, (book ix. ch. i.) i. 4; v. 8, 11 sq. (Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 6, 7, 32, 35 sq.). See also Chwolsohn, i. 533 sqq.; ii. 75 sq.]

[Footnote 155: Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 71 sq. Cf. Abûlfedâ, 6 (ibid. ii. 500).]

[Footnote 156: En-Nedîm, op. cit. v. 11 (Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 36).]

[Footnote 157: Kessler, 'Mani, Manichäer,' in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopädie f. protestantische Theologie, xii. 198 sq. Harnack, History of Dogma, iii. 330. Idem, 'Manichæism,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, xv. 485.]

[Footnote 158: En-Nedîm, Fihrist, in Flügel, Mani, pp. 95, 97. Flügel, p. 311 sqq. Kessler, loc. cit. p. 212 sq.]

[Footnote 159: Leo the Great, Sermo XLII. (al. XLI.) 5 (Migne, op. cit. liv. 279).]

[Footnote 160: Flügel, op. cit. p. 312 sq.]

[Footnote 161: Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 263, 276, 463.]

It is highly probable that the thirty days' fast of the Harranians and Manichæans is the prototype of the Muhammedan fast of Rama[d.]ân. During the whole ninth month of the Muhammedan year the complete abstinence from food, drink and cohabitation from sunrise till sunset is enjoined upon every Moslem, with the exception of young children and idiots, as also sick persons and travellers, who are allowed to postpone the {314} fast to another time.[162] This fast is said to be a fourth part of Faith, the other cardinal duties of religious practice being prayer, almsgiving, and pilgrimage. But, as a matter of fact, modern Muhammedans regard the fast of Rama[d.]ân as of more importance than any other religious observance;[163] many of them neglect their prayers, but anybody who should openly disregard the rule of fasting would be subject to a very severe punishment.[164] Even the privilege granted to travellers and sick persons is not readily taken advantage of. During their marches in the middle of summer nothing but the apprehension of death can induce the Aeneze to interrupt the fast;[165] and when Burton, in the disguise of a Muhammedan doctor, was in Cairo making preparations for his pilgrimage to Mecca, he found among all those who suffered severely from such total abstinence only one patient who would eat even to save his life.[166] There is no evidence that the fast of Rama[d.]ân was an ancient, pre-Muhammedan custom.[167] On the other hand, its similarity with the Harranian and Manichæan fasts is so striking that we are almost compelled to regard them all as fundamentally the same institution; and if this assumption is correct, Muhammed must have borrowed his fast from the Harranians or Manichæans or both. {315} Indeed, Dr. Jacob has shown that in the year 623, when this fast seems to have been instituted, Rama[d.]ân exactly coincided with the Harranian fast-month.[168] In its Muhammedan form the fast extending over a whole month is looked upon as a means of expiation. It is said that by the observance of it a person will be pardoned all his past venial sins, and that only those who keep it will be allowed to enter through the gate of heaven called Rayyân.[169] But this is only another instance of the common fact that customs often for an incalculable period survive the motives from which they sprang.

[Footnote 162: Koran, ii. 180, 181, 183.]

[Footnote 163: Cf. Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 106.]

[Footnote 164: von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients, i. 460.]

[Footnote 165: Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 57.]

[Footnote 166: Burton, Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, i. 74.]

[Footnote 167: We can hardly regard as such the passage in the Koran (ii. 179) where it is said, "O ye who believe! There is prescribed for you the fast as it was prescribed for those before you; haply ye may fear." The traditionists say that Muhammed was in the habit of spending the month of Rama[d.]ân every year in the cave at Hirâ, meditating and feeding all the poor who resorted to him, and that he did so in accordance with a religious practice which the Koreish used to perform in the days of their heathenism. Others add that [(]Abd al-Mu[t.][t.]alib commenced the practice, saying "that it was the worship of God which that patriarch used to begin with the new moon of Rama[d.]ân, and continue during the whole of the month" (Muir, Life of Mahomet, ii. 56, n.* Sell, Faith of Islám, p. 316). But, as Muir remarks (op. cit. ii. 56, n.*), it is the tendency of the traditionists to foreshadow the customs and precepts of Islam as if some of them had existed prior to Muhammed, and constituted part of "the religion of Abraham." See Jacob, 'Der muslimische Fastenmonat Rama[d.]ân,' in VI. Jahresbericht der Geographischen Gesellsch. zu Greifswald, pt. i. 1893-96, p. 2, sqq.]

[Footnote 168: Jacob, loc. cit. p. 5.]

[Footnote 169: Sell, op. cit. p. 317.]

In various religions we meet with fasting as a form of penance, as a means of appeasing an angry or indignant God, as an expiation for sin.[170] The voluntary suffering involved in it is regarded as an expression of sorrow and repentance pleasing to God, as a substitute for the punishment which He otherwise would inflict upon the sinner; and at the same time it may be thought to excite His compassion, an idea noticeable in many Jewish fasts.[171] Among the Jews individuals fasted in cases of private distress or danger: Ahab, for instance, when Elijah predicted his downfall,[172] Ezra and his companions before their journey to Palestine,[173] the pious Israelite when his friends were sick.[174] Moreover, fasts were instituted for the whole community when it believed itself to be under divine displeasure, when danger threatened, when a great calamity befell the land, when pestilence raged or drought set in, or there was a reverse in war.[175] Four {316} regular fast-days were established in commemoration of various sad events that had befallen Israel during the captivity;[176] and in the course of time many other fasts were added, in memory of certain national troubles, though they were not regarded as obligatory.[177] The law itself enjoined fasting for the great day of atonement only.

[Footnote 170: Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, passim (Christianity). Koran, ii. 192; iv. 94; v. 91, 96; lviii. 5. Jolly, 'Recht und Sitte,' in Bühler, Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, p. 117; Dubois, Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India, p. 160 (Brahmanism). Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 285. On the occasion of any public calamity the Mexican high-priest retired to a wood, where he constructed a hut for himself, and shut up in this hut he passed nine or ten months in constant prayer and frequent effusions of blood, eating only raw maize and water (Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, ix. 25, vol. ii. 212 sq.).]

[Footnote 171: Cf. Benzinger, 'Fasting,' in _Encyclopædia Biblica_, ii. 1508; Schwally, _Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alten Israel_, p. 26.]

[Footnote 172: 1 Kings, xxi. 27.]

[Footnote 173: Ezra, viii. 21.]

[Footnote 174: Psalms, xxxv. 13.]

[Footnote 175: Judges, xx. 26. 1 Samuel, vii. 6. _2 Chronicles_, xx. 3. Nehemiah, ix. 1. Jeremiah, xxxvi. 9. Joel, i. 14; ii. 12.]

[Footnote 176: Zechariah, viii. 19.]

[Footnote 177: Greenstone, in Jewish Encyclopedia, v. 347.]

It may be asked why this particular kind of self-mortification became such a frequent and popular form of penance as it did both in Judaism and in several other religions. One reason is, no doubt, that fasting is a natural expression of contrition, owing to the depressing effect which sorrow has upon the appetite. Another reason is that the idea of penitence, as we have just observed, may be a later interpretation put upon a fast which originally sprang from fear of contamination. Nay, even when fasting is resorted to as a cure in the case of distress or danger, as also when it is practised in commemoration of a calamity, there may be a vague belief that the food is polluted and should therefore be avoided. But in several cases fasting is distinctly a survival of an expiatory sacrifice. The sacrifice of food offered to the deity was changed into the "sacrifice" involved in the abstinence from food on the part of the worshipper. We find that among the Jews the decay of sacrifice was accompanied by a greater frequency of fasts. It was only in the period immediately before the exile that fasting began to acquire special importance; and the popular estimation of it went on increasing during and after the exile, partly at least from a feeling of the need of religious exercises to take the place of the suspended temple services.[178] Like sacrifice, fasting was a regular appendage to prayer, as a means of giving special efficacy to the supplication;[179] fasting and praying became in fact a constant combination of words.[180] And equally close is the {317} connection between fasting and almsgiving--a circumstance which deserves special notice where almsgiving is regarded as a form of sacrifice or has taken the place of it.[181] In the penitential regulations of Brahmanism we repeatedly meet with the combination "sacrifice, fasting, giving gifts";[182] or also fasting and giving gifts, without mention being made of sacrifice.[183] Among the Jews each fast-day was virtually an occasion for almsgiving,[184] in accordance with the rabbinic saying that "the reward of the fast-day is in the amount of charity distributed";[185] but fasting was sometimes declared to be even more meritorious than charity, because the former affects the body and the latter the purse only.[186] And from Judaism this combination of fasting and almsgiving passed over into Christianity and Muhammedanism. According to Islam, it is a religious duty to give alms after a fast;[187] if a person through the infirmity of old age is not able to keep the fast, he must feed a poor person;[188] and the violation of an inconsiderate oath may be expiated either by once feeding or clothing ten poor men, or liberating a Muhammedan slave or captive, or fasting three days.[189] In the Christian Church fasting was not only looked upon as a necessary accompaniment of prayer, but whatever a person saved by means of it was to be given to the poor.[190] St. Augustine says that man's righteousness in this life consists in fasting, alms, and prayer, that alms and fasting are the two wings which enable his prayer to fly upward to God.[191] But fasting without almsgiving "is not {318} so much as counted for fasting";[192] that which is gained by the fast at dinner ought not to be turned into a feast at supper, but should be expended on the bellies of the poor.[193] And if a person was too weak to fast without injuring his health he was admonished to give the more plentiful alms.[194] Tertullian expressly calls fastings "sacrifices which are acceptable to God."[195] They assumed the character of reverence offerings, they were said to be works of reverence towards God.[196] But fasting, as well as temperance, has also from early times been advocated by Christian writers on the ground that it is "the beginning of chastity,"[197] whereas "through love of eating love of impurity finds passage."[198]

[Footnote 178: Benzinger, in Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1508. Nowack, Lehrbuch der hebräischen Archäologie, ii. 271.]

[Footnote 179: Löw, Gesammelte Schriften, i. 108. Nowack, op. cit. ii. 271. Benzinger, in Encyclopædia Biblica, ii. 1507.]

[Footnote 180: Judith, iv. 9, 11. Tobit, xii. 8. Ecclesiasticus, xxxiv. 26. St. Luke, ii. 37.]

[Footnote 181: Supra, i. 565 sqq.]

[Footnote 182: Gautama, xix. 11. Vasishtha, xxii. 8. Baudhâyana, iii. 10. 9.]

[Footnote 183: Vasishtha, xx. 47.]

[Footnote 184: Kohler, 'Alms,' in Jewish Encyclopedia, i. 435. Löw, op. cit. i. 108. Cf. Tobit, xii. 8; Katz, _Der wahre Talmudjude_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 185: Ibid. fol. 6 b, quoted by Greenstone, in Jewish Encyclopedia, v. 349.]

[Footnote 186: Berakhoth, fol. 32 b, quoted by Hershon, Treasures of the Talmud, p. 124.]

[Footnote 187: Sell, op. cit. p. 251.]

[Footnote 188: Ibid. p. 281. This opinion is based on a sentence in the Koran (ii. 180) which has caused a great deal of dispute. It is said there that "those who are fit to fast may redeem it by feeding a poor man." But the expression "those who are fit to fast" has been understood to mean those who can do so only with great difficulty.]

[Footnote 189: Koran, v. 91. Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 313 sq. See also Koran, ii. 192; iv. 94; v. 96; lviii. 5.]

[Footnote 190: Harnack, History of Dogma, i. 205, n. 5. Löw, op. cit. i. 108.]

[Footnote 191: St. Augustine, Enarratio in Psalmum XLII. 8 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, xxxvi. 482).]

[Footnote 192: St. Chrysostom, _In Matthæum Homil. LXXVII. (al. LXXVIII.)_ 6 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, lviii. 710). St. Augustine, Sermones supposititii, cxlii. 2, 6 (Migne, xxxix. 2023 sq.).]

[Footnote 193: St. Augustine, Sermones supposititii, cxli. 4 (Migne, op. cit. xxxix. 2021). See also _Canons enacted under King Edgar_, 'Of Powerful Men,' 3 (Ancient Laws of England, p. 415); Ecclesiastical Institutes, 38 (ibid. p. 486).]

[Footnote 194: St. Chrysostom, In Cap. I. Genes. Homil. X. 2 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, liii. 83). St. Augustine, Sermones supposititii, cxlii. 1 (Migne, xxxix. 2022 sq.).]

[Footnote 195: Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, 8 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 806).]

[Footnote 196: Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 72, vol. ii. 334.]

[Footnote 197: St. Chrysostom, In Epist. II. ad Thessal. Cap. I. Homil. I. 2 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Gr. lxii. 470).]

[Footnote 198: Tertullian, De jejuniis, 1 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 953). See also Manzoni, Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, p. 175.]

XXXVIII. RESTRICTIONS IN DIET (concluded)

BESIDES the occasional abstinence from certain victuals, which was noticed in the last chapter, there are restrictions in diet of a more durable character.

Thus among the Australian aborigines the younger members of a tribe are, as it seems universally, subject to a variety of such restrictions, from which they are only gradually released as they grow older.[1] In the Wotjobaluk tribe in South-Eastern Australia, for instance, boys are forbidden to eat of the kangaroo and the padi-melon, being told that if they transgress these rules they will fall sick, break out all over with eruptions, and perhaps die. If a man under forty eats the tail part of the emu or bustard, he will turn grey, and if he eats the freshwater turtle he will be killed by lightning. If young men or women of the Wakelbura tribe eat emu, black-headed snake, or porcupine, they will become sick and probably die, uttering the sounds peculiar to the creature in question, the spirit of which is believed to have entered into their bodies.[2] In the Warramunga tribe in Central Australia a man is usually well in the middle age before he {320} is allowed to eat wild turkey, rabbit-bandicoot, and emu.[3] According to certain writers, the object of these restrictions is to reserve the best things for the use of the elders, and, more especially, of the older men;[4] but, on the other hand, it has been remarked that, in looking over the list of animals prohibited, one fails to see any good reasons for the selection, unless they may be assumed to have chiefly sprung from superstitious beliefs.[5] Among the Land Dyaks the young men and warriors are debarred from venison for fear it should render them as timid as the hind.[6] The Moors believe that if a young person before the age of puberty eats wolf's flesh he will have troubles afterwards.

[Footnote 1: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 81. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 53. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 769 sq. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. p. xxxv. Taplin, 'Narrinyeri,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 137. Jung, 'Die Mündungsgegend des Murray und ihre Bewohner,' in _Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Halle_, 1877, p. 32. Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 470 sqq. Iidem, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 611 sq. Eyre, _Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia_, ii. 293.]

[Footnote 2: Howitt, op. cit. p. 769.]

[Footnote 3: Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612.]

[Footnote 4: Iidem, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 470 sq. Iidem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 613. Jung, in Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Halle, 1877, p. 32.]

[Footnote 5: Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. 234.]

[Footnote 6: St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 186.]

There are, further, numerous instances of certain kinds of food being permanently forbidden to certain individuals. In Unyamwezi, south of Victoria Nyanza, women are not permitted to eat fowl, a food which is reserved for the men.[7] Among the Mandingoes of Teesee no woman is allowed to eat an egg, and this prohibition is so rigidly adhered to that "nothing will more affront a woman of Teesee than to offer her an egg"; the men, on the other hand, eat eggs without scruple, even in the presence of their wives.[8] Among the Bayaka, a Bantu people in the Congo Free State, both fowls and eggs are forbidden to women; "if a woman eats an egg she is supposed to become mad, tear off her clothes and run away into the bush."[9] The Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, allow men to eat beef and the meat of certain antelopes and of buffalo, whereas women are generally allowed to eat beef only.[10] The people of Darfur, in Central Africa, prohibit their women from eating an animal's liver, because they think {321} that a person may increase his soul by partaking of it, and women are believed to have no souls.[11] The Miris of Northern India prize tiger's flesh as food for men, but consider it unsuitable for women, as "it would make them too strong-minded."[12] In the Australian tribes some articles of food are entirely interdicted to females.[13] The natives inhabiting the neighbourhood of Cape York forbid women to eat various kinds of fish, including some of the best, "on the pretence of causing disease in women, although not injurious to the men."[14] In the Sandwich Islands, again, women were not allowed to eat hog's flesh, turtle, and certain kinds of fruit, as cocoa and banana.[15] Many of these prohibitions have been represented as signs of the low condition of the female sex; but a more intimate knowledge of the facts connected with them would perhaps show that they have some other foundation than the mere selfishness of the men. For sometimes the latter also are subject to very similar restrictions. Among the Bahuana, in the Congo Free State, "women are forbidden to eat owls or other birds of prey, but are permitted to eat frogs, from which men are obliged to abstain under penalty of becoming ill."[16] With reference to the natives of New Britain, Mr. Powell states that, whilst in one place the women are prohibited from eating pigs or tortoises, the men are, in another place, prohibited from eating anything but human flesh, fowls, or fish.[17] In the Caroline Islands the men are forbidden to eat a common blackbird, Lamprothornis--which is a favourite food of the women--because it is believed that anyone who did so, and afterwards climbed a cocoa-tree, would fall down and perish.[18] In some Dyak tribes on the Western branch {322} of the river of Sarawak, goats, fowls, and the fine kind of fern (paku), which forms an excellent vegetable, are forbidden food to the men, though the women and boys are allowed to partake of them.[19]

[Footnote 7: Reichard, 'Die Wanjamuesi,' in _Zeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin_, xxiv. 321.]

[Footnote 8: Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, i. 114.]

[Footnote 9: Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 41, 42, 51.]

[Footnote 10: Roscoe, 'Bahima,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvii. 101.]

[Footnote 11: Felkin, 'Notes on the For Tribe,' in _Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 218.]

[Footnote 12: Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 33.]

[Footnote 13: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 81. Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. xxxv.]

[Footnote 14: Macgillivray, Voyage of Rattlesnake, ii. 10.]

[Footnote 15: von Kotzebue, _Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea_, iii. 249, note. Cook, quoted by Buckle, _Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works_, iii. 355.]

[Footnote 16: Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Huana,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 279.]

[Footnote 17: Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 173.]

[Footnote 18: von Kittlitz, _Reise nach dem russischen Amerika, &c._ ii. 103 sq.]

[Footnote 19: Low, 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,[20] nor to meddle with the esculent or potable substances which were produced out of Egypt;[21] and, 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.[22] The lamas of Mongolia will touch no meat of goats, horses, or camels.[23] Among the Semang of the Malay Peninsula the medicine-men will not eat goat or buffalo flesh and but rarely that of fowl.[24] The dairymen of the Todas may drink milk from certain buffaloes only, and are altogether forbidden to eat chillies.[25] These 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.[26] Schomburgk 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.[27] And the Ulád Bu [(]Azîz 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.

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

[Footnote 21: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 7.]

[Footnote 22: Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 5.]

[Footnote 23: Prejevalsky, Mongolia, i. 56.]

[Footnote 24: Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, ii. 226.]

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

[Footnote 26: Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 391.]

[Footnote 27: Schomburgk, 'Expedition to the Upper Corentyne,' in Jour. 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 some {323} one (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 his yât-t[=u]b, 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 own yât-t[=u]b, 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 P[=u]luga would punish severely any person who might be guilty of eating his yât-t[=u]b, either by causing his skin to peel off, or by turning his hair white, and flaying him alive.[28] In 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.[29] The members of a totem clan are usually forbidden to eat the particular animal or plant whose name they bear.[30] Thus 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.[31] Yet, however general, prohibitions of this kind cannot be said to be a universal characteristic of totemism.[32] Sir J. G. Frazer even suggests that the original custom was perhaps to eat the totem and the {324} latter custom to abstain from it.[33] But this is hardly more than a guess.

[Footnote 28: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands.' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 354.]

[Footnote 29: Turner, Samoa, p. 17 sq.]

[Footnote 30: Frazer, Totemism, p. 7 sqq. Idem, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6.]

[Footnote 31: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 225, 231. Idem, 'Siouan Folk-Lore,' in _American Antiquarian_, vii. 107.]

[Footnote 32: Frazer, Totemism, p. 19. Idem, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6. sq.]

[Footnote 33: Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6 sq.]

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.[34] Certain 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;[35] but this explanation is hardly relevant to harmless reptiles, which are likewise in some cases forbidden food.[36] The 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.[37] The Navahoes of New Mexico "must never touch fish, and nothing will induce them to taste one."[38] The Mongols consider them unclean animals.[39] The South Siberian Kachinzes are said to refrain from them because they believe that "the evil principle lives in the water and eats fish."[40] The Káfirs on the North-Western frontier of India "detest fish, though their rivers abound in them."[41] The same aversion is common in the South {325} African tribes[42] and among most Hamitic peoples of East Africa;[43] when 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;[44] and the Hebrews were prohibited from eating all fish that have not fins and scales.[45] It is curious to note that various peoples who detest fish also abstain from fowl.[46] The Navahoes are strictly forbidden to eat the wild turkey with which their forests abound;[47] and the Mongols dislike of fowl is so great that one of Prejevalsky's guides nearly turned sick on seeing him eat boiled duck.[48] Some peoples have a great aversion to eggs,[49] which are said to be excrements, and therefore unfit for food.[50] There may be a similar reason for the abstinence from milk among peoples who have domesticated animals able to supply them with it.[51] The Dravidian aborigines of the hills of {326} Central India, who never use milk, are expressly said to regard it as an excrement.[52] The ancient Caribs had a horror of eggs and never drank milk.[53] The Ashantees are "forbidden eggs by the fetish, and cannot be persuaded to taste milk."[54] The 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.[55] The Dyaks of Borneo, the Javanese, and the Malays abstain from milk.[56] To the Chinese milk and butter are insupportably odious.[57]

[Footnote 34: Cf. Schurtz, Die Speiseverbote, p. 17.]

[Footnote 35: Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i. 130 (Berembun). Schurtz, op. cit. p. 22.]

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

[Footnote 37: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 430, 432.]

[Footnote 38: Stephen, 'Navajo,' in American Anthropologist, vi. 357.]

[Footnote 39: Prejevalsky, op. cit. i. 56.]

[Footnote 40: von Strümpell, 'Der Volksstamm der Katschinzen,' in Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Leipzig, 1875, p. 23.]

[Footnote 41: Fosberry, 'Some of the Mountain Tribes of the N.W. Frontier of India,' in Jour. Ethn. Soc. London, N.S. i. 192.]

[Footnote 42: Fritsch, 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).]

[Footnote 43: Hildebrandt, 'Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. x. 378. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, i. 155 (Somals, Gallas). Schurtz, op. cit. p. 23.]

[Footnote 44: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 15. Plutarch, De superstitione, 10.]

[Footnote 45: Leviticus, xi. 10 sqq.]

[Footnote 46: Hildebrandt, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. x. 378 (Gallas, Wadshagga, Waikuyu, &c.). Paulitschke, op. cit. i. 153 sqq. (Gallas, Somals). Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 95 (Somals). Meldon, 'Bahima of Ankole,' in Jour. 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).]

[Footnote 47: Stephen, in American Anthropologist, vi. 357.]

[Footnote 48: Prejevalsky, op. cit. i. 56.]

[Footnote 49: The 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,' in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 716; Ashe, p. 303). See also Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 126 sq.; Schurtz, op. cit. p. 23 sq.]

[Footnote 50: Reichard, 'Die Wanjamuesi,' in _Zeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin_, xxiv. 321. Hildebrandt, 'Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. x. 378.]

[Footnote 51: See Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 484.]

[Footnote 52: Crooke, Things Indian, p. 92.]

[Footnote 53: Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles, ii. 389.]

[Footnote 54: Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 319.]

[Footnote 55: Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika, i. 303, 321.]

[Footnote 56: Low, op. cit. p. 267.]

[Footnote 57: Huc, 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.[58] It 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.[59] In some districts of Madagascar, according to Drury, the eating of pork was accounted a very contemptible thing.[60] It is, or was, abstained from by the Jakuts of Siberia, the Votyaks of the Government of Vologda,[61] and the Lapps.[62] The disgust for pork has likewise been met with in many American tribes. The Koniagas will eat almost any digestible substance except pork.[63] The Navahoes of New Mexico abominate it "as if they were the devoutest of Hebrews";[64] it is not forbidden by their religion, but "they say they will not eat the flesh of the hog simply because the animal is filthy in {327} its habits, because it is the scavenger of the town."[65] In 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 that Shúkàpa, 'swine eater,' is the most opprobrious epithet that they can use to brand us with; they commonly subjoin Akang-gàpa, 'eater of dunghill fowls.' Both together signify 'filthy, helpless animals.'"[66] So 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.[67] This 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."[68] The Kafirs, also, abstain {328} from the domestic swine, though they eat the wild hog.[69] Some writers maintain that pork has been prohibited on the ground that it is prejudicial to health in hot countries;[70] but, 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.[71] In Greece the pig was used in purificatory ceremonies.[72] Lucian 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.[73] The heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine's flesh once a year.[74] According 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;[75] but 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]

[Footnote 58: Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612.]

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

[Footnote 60: Drury, Madagascar, p. 143.]

[Footnote 61: Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, i. 363.]

[Footnote 62: Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 501.]

[Footnote 63: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 75.]

[Footnote 64: Stephen, in American Anthropologist, vi. 357.]

[Footnote 65: Matthews, 'Study of Ethics among the Lower Races,' in Jour. American Folk-Lore, xii. 5.]

[Footnote 66: Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 132 sqq.]

[Footnote 67: Schomburgk, in Jour. Roy. Geograph. Soc. London, xv. 29 sq.]

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

[Footnote 69: Müller, Allgemeine Ethnographie, p. 189.]

[Footnote 70: Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor, p. 32. Wiener, 'Die alttestamentarischen Speiseverbote,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. viii. 103. See also Buckle, Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, iii. 354 sq.]

[Footnote 71: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 304 sqq. Idem, Pausanias's Description of Greece, iv. 137 sq.]

[Footnote 72: Ramsay, op. cit. p. 31 sq. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece, iii. 277, 593.]

[Footnote 73: Lucian, De dea Syria, 54.]

[Footnote 74: Robertson 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.]

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

[Footnote 76: Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 8.]

Of the abhorrence of cannibalism I shall speak in a separate chapter, 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 ancestors[77] or on account of their resemblance to men. Various peoples refrain from {329} monkey's flesh;[78] and European travellers mention their own instinctive repugnance to it and their aversion to shooting monkeys.[79] The Indians of Lower California will eat any animal, except men and monkeys, "the latter because they so much resemble the former."[80] According to an ancient writer quoted by Porphyry, the Egyptian priests rejected those animals which "verged to a similitude to the human form."[81] The Kafirs say that elephants are forbidden food because their intelligence resembles that of men.[82]

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

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

[Footnote 79: Schurtz, op. cit. p. 28. Infra, on Regard for the Lower Animals.]

[Footnote 80: Bancroft, op. cit. i. 560.]

[Footnote 81: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 7.]

[Footnote 82: Müller, 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."[83] Among 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."[84] The 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.[85] In the {330} sacred 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.[86] Among the Bechuanas in South Africa dogs and tame cats are not eaten, though wild cats are.[87] The 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.[88] Herodotus says that the Libyans would not taste the flesh of the cow, though they ate oxen;[89] and the same rule prevailed among the Egyptians and Ph[oe]nicians, who would sooner have partaken of human flesh than of the meat of a cow.[90] The eating of cow's flesh is prohibited by the law of Brahmanism.[91] According 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."[92] In 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."[93] It is said in the 'Divine Panorama' that he who partakes of beef or dog's flesh will be punished by the deity.[94] In Japan neither cattle nor sheep were in former days killed for food;[95] and in the rural districts many people still think it wrong to eat beef.[96] In Rome the slaughter of {331} a labouring ox was in olden days punished with excommunication;[97] and at Athens and in Peloponnesus it was prohibited even on penalty of death.[98] Indeed, 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.[99] These prohibitions are no doubt to some extent expressions of kindly feelings towards the animals to which they refer.[100] A Dinka is said to be fonder of his cattle than of his wife and children;[101] and 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.[102] But 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;[103] and agricultural races are naturally anxious to preserve the animal which is used for work on the field. With reference to the Egyptian and Ph[oe]nician 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.[104] Until 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.[105] Moreover, domestic animals are frequently regarded as sacred in consequence of their utility, and for that reason also abstained from. The Dinka pay a {332} kind of reverence to their cattle.[106] In Egypt, according to Herodotus, the cow was sacred to Isis.[107] In India she has been the object of a special worship.[108]

[Footnote 83: Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, p. 188.]

[Footnote 84: Mencius, i. 1. 7. 8.]

[Footnote 85: von den Steinen, Durch Central-Brasilien, p. 262. See also Juan and Ulloa, Voyage to South America, i. 426 (Indians of Quito).]

[Footnote 86: Institutes of Vishnu, li. 3. Laws of Manu, v. 19.]

[Footnote 87: Campbell, Second Journey in the Interior of South Africa, ii. 203.]

[Footnote 88: Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 163 sq.]

[Footnote 89: Herodotus, iv. 186.]

[Footnote 90: Ibid. ii. 41. Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 11.]

[Footnote 91: Institutes of Vishnu, li. 3.]

[Footnote 92: Rájendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, i. 354.]

[Footnote 93: Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, ii. 187.]

[Footnote 94: Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 376.]

[Footnote 95: Reed, Japan, i. 61.]

[Footnote 96: Griffis, Mikado's Empire, p. 472.]

[Footnote 97: Pliny, Historia naturalis, viii. 70.]

[Footnote 98: Varro, De re rustica, ii. 5. 3. sq. Aelian, Varia historia, v. 14.]

[Footnote 99: Mariti, Travels through Cyprus, i. 35.]

[Footnote 100: See infra, on Regard for the Lower Animals.]

[Footnote 101: Schweinfurth, op. cit. i. 164.]

[Footnote 102: Aelian, Varia historia, v. 14. Varro, De re rustica, ii. 5. 3.]

[Footnote 103: Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, p. 86; Kropf, op. cit. p. 102 (Kafirs). Merker, Die Masai, p. 169. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, i. 153. Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 411 (pastoral races of Africa). Erman, Reise um die Erde, i. 515 (Kirghiz). Andree, _Ethnographische Parallelen_, p. 122 sq. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 297. Schurtz, op. cit. p. 30 sq.]

[Footnote 104: Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 11.]

[Footnote 105: Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, ii. 72 sq. n. 7.]

[Footnote 106: Schweinfurth, op. cit. i. 163.]

[Footnote 107: Herodotus, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 108: Barth, Religions of India, p. 264.]

Certain foods, then, are generally abjured, not merely because they excite disgust, or as the case may be, because they have a disagreeable taste, but also from utilitarian considerations. To the instances just mentioned may be added the custom prevalent among the Tonga Islanders of setting a temporary prohibition or taboo on certain eatables in order to prevent them from growing scarce.[109] But the most important prudential motive underlying the general restrictions in diet is no doubt fear lest the food should have an injurious effect upon him who partakes of it. The harm caused by it may only be imaginary; indeed, forbidden food is commonly regarded as unwholesome, whatever be the original ground on which it was prohibited.[110] The Negroes of the Loango Coast say that they abstain from goat-flesh because otherwise their skin would scale off, and from fowl so as not to lose their hair.[111] Some tribes of the Malay Peninsula refuse to eat the flesh of elephants under the pretext that it would occasion sickness.[112] The tribes inhabiting the hills of Assam think that "the penalty for eating the flesh of a cat is loss of speech, while those who infringe a special rule forbidding the flesh of a dog are believed to die of boils."[113] The worshippers of the Syrian goddess maintained that the eating of sprats or anchovies would fill the body with ulcers and wither up the liver.[114] In Russia veal is considered by many to be very unwholesome food, and is entirely rejected by pious people.[115] It is not probable that these ideas are in the first instance derived from experience; but there can be no doubt that fear of evil consequences is in many cases a {333} primary motive for the abstinence from a certain kind of food. Mr. Im Thurn supposes that the Guiana Indian avoids eating the flesh of various animals because he thinks they are particularly malignant.[116] Animals that present some unusual or uncanny peculiarity are rejected because they are objects of superstitious fear. The Egyptian priests, we are told, did not eat oxen which were twins or which were speckled, nor animals that had only one eye.[117] The North American Indians of the South-Eastern States abstained from all birds of night, believing that if they ate them they would fall ill.[118] Another cause of rejecting the flesh of certain animals is the idea that anybody who partook of it would at the same time acquire some undesirable quality inherent in the animal.[119] The Záparo Indians of Ecuador "will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any heavy meats such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, &c., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them also unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility and unfitting them for the chase."[120] For a similar reason the ancient Caribs are said to have refrained from turtles;[121] and some North American Indians state that in former days their greatest chieftains "seldom ate of any animal of gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dullness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves with proper vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties."[122] The Namaquas of South Africa, again, pretend not to eat the flesh of the hare, because they think it would make them as faint-hearted as that animal.[123] Among the Kafirs only children may eat hares, whereas the men partake of the flesh of the {334} leopard in order to get its strength.[124] Among some other peoples the hare is forbidden food,[125] possibly owing to a similar superstition. The blood of an animal is avoided because it is believed to contain its life or soul. We meet with this custom in several North American tribes,[126] as well as in the Old Testament;[127] and from the Jews it passed into early Christianity.[128]

[Footnote 109: Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 233.]

[Footnote 110: Cf. Schurtz, op. cit. p. 23.]

[Footnote 111: Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, i. 185.]

[Footnote 112: Skeat and Blagden, op. cit. i. 132.]

[Footnote 113: Hodson, 'The "Genna" amongst the Tribes of Assam,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 98.]

[Footnote 114: Plutarch, De superstitione, 10.]

[Footnote 115: Erman, Reise um die Erde, i. 515.]

[Footnote 116: Im Thurn, op. cit. p. 368.]

[Footnote 117: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 7.]

[Footnote 118: Adair, op. cit. p. 130 sq.]

[Footnote 119: See Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 353 sqq.]

[Footnote 120: Simson, Travels in the Wilds of Ecuador, p. 168.]

[Footnote 121: Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 384.]

[Footnote 122: Adair, op. cit. p. 133.]

[Footnote 123: Hahn, Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, p. 106.]

[Footnote 124: Kropf, op. cit. p. 102.]

[Footnote 125: Leviticus, xi. 6, 8. Cæsar, De bello Gallico, v. 12 (ancient Britons). The Chinese have a deep-rooted prejudice against eating the flesh of the hare, which they have always regarded as an animal endowed with mysterious properties (Dennis, Folk-Lore of China, p. 64). With reference to the Biblical prohibition of eating camel's flesh, old exegetes observed that the camel is a very revengeful animal, and that its vindictiveness would be transferred to him who partook of its meat (Wiener, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. viii. 104); but whether the prohibition in question originated in such a belief is open to doubt.]

[Footnote 126: Adair, op. cit. p. 134. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 353.]

[Footnote 127: Leviticus, iii. 17; vii. 25 sqq.; xvii. 10 sqq.; xix. 26. Deuteronomy, xii. 16, 23 sqq.; xv. 23.]

[Footnote 128: Haberland, 'Gebräuche und Aberglauben beim Essen,' in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xvii. 363 sq.]

The general abstinence from certain kinds of food has thus sprung from a great variety of causes. Of these I have been able to point out only some of the more general and obvious. As Sir J. G. Frazer justly remarks, to explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess.[129] Even explanations given by the natives themselves may be misleading, since the original motive for a custom may have been forgotten, while the custom itself is still preserved. But I think that, broadly speaking, the general avoidance of a certain food may be traced to one or several of the following sources: its disagreeable taste; disgust caused, in the case of animal food, either by the external appearance of the animal, or by its unclean habits, or by sympathy, or by associations of some kind or other, or even by the mere fact that it is commonly abstained from; the disinclination to kill an animal for food, or, generally, to reduce the supply of a certain kind of victuals; the idea, whether correct or false, that the food would injure {335} him who partook of it. From what has been said in previous chapters it is obvious that any of these factors, if influencing the manners of a whole community and especially when supported by the force of habit, may lead not only to actual abstinence but to prohibitory rules the transgression of which is apt to call forth moral disapproval. This is particularly the case at the earlier stages of culture, where a people's tastes and habits are most uniform, where the sway of custom is most powerful, where instinctive aversion most readily develops into moral indignation, and where man in almost every branch of action thinks he has to be on his guard against supernatural dangers. And in this, as in other cases of moral concern, the prohibition may easily be sanctioned by religion, especially when the abstinence is due to fear of some mysterious force or quality in the thing avoided. The religious aspect assumed particular prominence in Hebrewism and Brahmanism. It is said in the 'Institutes of Vishnu' that the eating of pure food is more essential than all external means of purification; "he who eats pure food only is truly pure, not he who is only purified with earth and water."[130] The Koran forbids the eating of "what is dead, and blood, and flesh of swine, and whatsoever has been consecrated to other than God."[131] Mediæval Christianity prohibited the eating of various animals, especially horses, which were not used as food in the South of Europe, but which the pagan Teutons sacrificed and ate at their religious feasts.[132] The idea that it is "unchristian" to eat horseflesh has survived even to the present day, and has, together with the aversion to feeding on a pet animal, been responsible for the loss of enormous quantities of nourishing food. Among ourselves the only eatable thing the partaking of which is generally condemned as immoral is human flesh. But there are a considerable number of people who think {336} that we ought to abstain from all animal meat, not only for sanitary reasons, but because man is held to have no right to subject any living being to suffering and death for the purpose of gratifying his appetite.

[Footnote 129: Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 391 sq.]

[Footnote 130: Institutes of Vishnu, xxii. 89.]

[Footnote 131: Koran, ii. 168.]

[Footnote 132: Langkavel, 'Pferde und Naturvölker,' in Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, i. 53. Schurtz, op. cit. p. 32 sq. Maurer, Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume, ii. 198.]

On similar grounds vegetarianism has been advocated as a moral duty among Eastern races, as also in classical antiquity. The regard for life in general, which is characteristic of Taouism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism,[133] led to the condemnation of the use of animals as food. It is a very common feeling among the Chinese of all classes that the eating of flesh is sensual and sinful, or at least quite incompatible with the highest degree of sincerity and purity.[134] In Japan many persons abstain from meat, owing to Buddhistic influence.[135] In India animal food was not avoided in early times; the epic characters shoot deer and eat cows.[136] Even in the sacred law-books the eating of meat is permitted in certain circumstances:--"On offering the honey-mixture to a guest, at a sacrifice and at the rites in honour of the manes, but on these occasions only, may an animal be slain."[137] Nay, some particular animals are expressly declared eatable.[138] The total abstinence from meat is in fact represented as something meritorious rather than as a strict duty;[139] it is said that "by avoiding the use of flesh one gains a greater reward than by subsisting on pure fruit and roots, and by eating food fit for ascetics in the forest."[140] But on the other hand we also read that "there is no greater sinner than that man who, though not worshipping the gods or the manes, seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings."[141] As a matter of fact, meat is nowadays commonly, though by no means universally, abstained from by high caste Hindus, whereas {337} most low caste natives are only vegetarian when flesh food is not within their reach;[142] and we are told that the views which many Hindus entertain of people who indulge in such food are not very unlike the opinions which Europeans have about cannibals.[143] The immediate origin of these restrictions seems obvious enough. They were not introduced--as has been supposed--either as mere sumptuary measures,[144] or because meat was found to be an aliment too rich and heavy in a warm climate,[145] but they were the natural outcome of a system which enjoins regard for life in general and kindness towards all living beings. In the 'Laws of Manu' it is expressly said that the use of meat should be shunned for the reason that "meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss."[146] That the prohibition of eating animals resulted from the prohibition of killing them is also suggested by other facts. If Hindu Pariahs eat the flesh of animals which have died naturally, it "is not visited upon them as a crime, but they are considered to be wretches as filthy and disgusting as their food is revolting."[147] Buddhism allows the eating of fish and meat if it is pure in three respects, to wit--if one has not seen, nor heard, nor suspected that it has been procured for the purpose;[148] and among the Buddhists of Burma even the most strictly religious have no scruples in eating the flesh of an animal killed by another person, "as then, they consider, the sin of its destruction does not rest upon them, but on the person who actually caused it."[149]

[Footnote 133: See infra, on Regard for the Lower Animals.]

[Footnote 134: Doolittle, op. cit. ii. 183.]

[Footnote 135: Chamberlain, Things Japanese, p. 175 sq.]

[Footnote 136: Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 200.]

[Footnote 137: Laws of Manu, v. 41. See also Vasishtha, iv. 5.]

[Footnote 138: Institutes of Vishnu, li. 6. Laws of Manu, v. 18.]

[Footnote 139: See Jolly, 'Recht und Sitte,' in Bühler, Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, ii. 157.]

[Footnote 140: Laws of Manu, v. 54. See also ibid. v. 53, 56.]

[Footnote 141: Ibid. v. 52.]

[Footnote 142: Kipling, Beast and Man in India, p. 6. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 228.]

[Footnote 143: Percival, Land of the Veda, p. 272.]

[Footnote 144: Hopkins, op. cit. p. 200.]

[Footnote 145: Dubois, Description of the Character, &c. of the People of India, p. 120.]

[Footnote 146: Laws of Manu, v. 48. See also ibid. v. 45, 49.]

[Footnote 147: Dubois, op. cit. p. 121.]

[Footnote 148: Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 71, n. 5.]

[Footnote 149: Fytche, Burma Past and Present, ii. 78.]

Vegetarianism is, further, said to have been practised by the first and most learned class of the Persian Magi, who, according to Eubulus, neither slew nor ate anything {338} animated;[150] and many of the Egyptian priests are reported to have abstained entirely from animal food.[151] In ancient legends we are told that the earliest men, who were pure and free from sin, killed no animal but lived exclusively on the fruits of the earth.[152] In Greece the Pythagoreans opposed the killing and eating of animals, "as having a right to live in common with mankind,"[153] or in consequence of their theory that the souls of men after death transmigrate into animals.[154] According to Porphyry, a fleshless diet not only contributes to the health of the body and to the preservation of the power and purity of the mind, but is required by justice. Animals, he said, are allied to men, and he must be considered an impious person who does not abstain from acting unjustly towards his kindred.[155]

[Footnote 150: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 16.]

[Footnote 151: Ibid. iv. 7.]

[Footnote 152: Genesis, i. 29. Bundahis, xv. 6 sqq.; cf. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 212. Hesiod, Opera et dies, 109 sqq. Plato, Politicus, p. 272. Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 2.]

[Footnote 153: Diogenes Laertius, Vitæ philosophorum, viii. 1. 12 (13). Plutarch, De carnium esu oratio I. 1.]

[Footnote 154: Seneca, Epistulæ, cviii. 19.]

[Footnote 155: Porphyry, op. cit. i. 2; iii. 26 sq.]

* * * * *

There still remains a group of restrictions in diet which call for our consideration, namely, such as refer to the use of intoxicating drinks, either only prohibiting immoderation or also demanding total abstinence.

Among a large number of peoples drunkenness is so common that it can hardly be looked upon as a vice by the community; on the contrary, it is sometimes an object of pride, or is regarded almost as a religious duty. An old traveller on the West African Gold Coast says that the natives teach their children drunkenness at the age of three or four years, "as if it were a virtue."[156] The Negroes of Accra, according to Monrad, take a pride in getting drunk, and praise the happiness of a person who is so intoxicated that he can hardly walk.[157] In ancient Yucatan he who dropped down senseless from drink in a banquet was allowed to remain where he fell, {339} and was regarded by his companions with feelings of envy.[158] Among the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, who are otherwise a sober people, drunkenness forms a part of their religious festivals.[159] So also in the hill tribes of the Central Provinces of India a large quantity of liquor is an essential element in their religious rites, and their acts of worship invariably end in intoxication.[160] Of the Ainu in Japan we are told that "to drink for the god" is their chief act of worship; the more saké they drink the more devout they are, whereas the gods will be angry with a person who abstains from the intoxicating drink.[161] The ancient Scandinavians regularly concluded their religious ceremonies with filling and emptying stoops in honour of their gods; and even after their conversion to Christianity they were allowed to continue this practice at the end of their services, with the difference that they were now required in their toast-drinking to substitute for the names of their false deities those of the true God and his saints.[162] Of the Germans Tacitus states that "to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one";[163] and this habit of intoxication the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, where it was nourished by a damp climate and a marshy soil. In the seventh and eighth centuries some efforts were made to check drunkenness on the initiative of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, archbishop of York, and these exertions were supported by the kings from a political desire to prevent riots and bloodshed.[164] The Penitentials tell us the tale of universal intemperance more effectively than any description of it could do. A bishop who was so drunk as to vomit while administering the holy sacrament was condemned to eighty or ninety days penance, a presbyter to {340} seventy, a deacon or monk to sixty, a clerk to forty;[165] and if a person was so intoxicated that, pending the rite, he dropped the sacred elements into the fire or into a river, he was required to chant a hundred psalms.[166] A bishop or priest who persevered in the habit of drunkenness was to be degraded from his office;[167] whilst single cases of intoxication, if accompanied by vomiting, incurred penance for a certain number of days--forty for a presbyter or deacon,[168] thirty for a monk,[169] fifteen for a layman.[170] However, these rules admitted of exceptions: if anybody in joy and glory of our Saviour's natal day, or of Easter, or in honour of any saint, vomited through being drunk, and in so doing had taken no more than he was ordered by his elders, it mattered nothing; and if a bishop had commanded him to be drunk he was likewise innocent, unless indeed the bishop was in the same state himself.[171] If these attempts to encourage soberness produced any change for the better, it could only have been temporary; for some time afterwards intemperance was carried to its greatest excess through the practice and example of the Danes.[172] Under the influence of the Normans, who were a more temperate race, drunkenness, for a time decreased in England; but after a few reigns the Saxons seem rather to have corrupted their conquerors than to have been benefited by their example.[173] As late as the eighteenth century drunkenness was universal among all classes in England. It was then as uncommon for a party to separate while any member of it remained sober {341} as it is now for any one in such a party to degrade himself through intoxication. No loss of character was incurred by habitual excess. Men in the position of gentlemen congratulated each other upon the number of bottles emptied; and it would have been considered a very frivolous objection to a citizen who aspired to the dignity of Alderman or Mayor that he was an habitual drunkard.[174]

[Footnote 156: Bosman, Description of the Coast of Guinea, p. 107.]

[Footnote 157: Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 242.]

[Footnote 158: Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 725.]

[Footnote 159: Ibid. i. 555.]

[Footnote 160: Hislop, _Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces_, p. 1. Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 164 sq. (Kandhs).]

[Footnote 161: Bird, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, ii. 68, 96. Cf. Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 31.]

[Footnote 162: Maurer, op. cit. ii. 200. Bartholinus, Antiquitates Danicæ, i. 8, p. 128 sqq. Mallet, _Northern Antiquities_, p. 196.]

[Footnote 163: Tacitus, Germania, 22.]

[Footnote 164: Laws of Hlothhære and Eadric, 12 sq. Thrupp, The Anglo-Saxon Home, p. 297.]

[Footnote 165: P[oe]nitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, xxvi. 4 (Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, p. 594). P[oe]nitentiale Egberti, xi. 7 (Wasserschleben, p. 242).]

[Footnote 166: P[oe]nitentiale Pseudo-Theodori, xxvi. 5 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 594). P[oe]nitentiale Egberti, xi. 9 (Wasserschleben, p. 242).]

[Footnote 167: P[oe]nitentiale Theodori, i. 1. 1 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 184). P[oe]nitentiale Egberti, xi. 1 (Wasserschleben, p. 242).]

[Footnote 168: P[oe]nitentiale Theodori, i. 1. 3 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 184). P[oe]nitentiale Egberti, xi. 3 (Wasserschleben, p. 242).]

[Footnote 169: P[oe]nitentiale Theodori, i. 1. 2 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 184). P[oe]nitentiale Egberti, xi. 2 (Wasserschleben, p. 242).]

[Footnote 170: P[oe]nitentiale Theodori, i. 1. 5 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 184).]

[Footnote 171: P[oe]nitentiale Theodori, i. 1. 4 (Wasserschleben, op. cit. p. 184).]

[Footnote 172: Thrupp, op. cit. p. 299 sqq.]

[Footnote 173: Ibid. p. 301 sq.]

[Footnote 174: Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 239. Pike, History of Crime in England, ii. 587. Massey, _History of England during the Reign of George III._ ii. 60.]

Though of late years drunkenness has been decreasing among those European nations who have been most addicted to it, and is nowadays generally recognised as a vice, our civilisation is still, as it has always been, the great source from which the poison of intoxication is pouring over the earth in all directions, infecting or killing races who previously knew nothing of alcohol or looked upon it with abhorrence. Eastern religions have emphatically insisted upon sobriety or even total abstinence from intoxicating liquors. In the sacred law-books of Brahmanism thirteen different kinds of alcoholic drinks are mentioned, all of which are forbidden to Brâhmanas and three to Kshatriyas and Vaisyas;[175] yet, though there be no sin in drinking spirituous liquor, "abstention brings greater reward."[176] A twice-born man who drinks the liquor called Surâ commits a mortal sin, which will be punished both in this life and in the life to come;[177] the most proper penalty for such a person is to drink that liquor boiling-hot, and only when his body has been completely scalded by it is he freed from his guilt.[178] Among the modern Hindus drunkenness is said to be detested by all but the very lowest castes in the agricultural districts and some high caste people residing in the great towns, who have learned it from Europeans; it is supposed to be destructive of caste purity; hence a notorious drunkard is, or at least {342} used to be, expelled from his caste.[179] Buddhism interdicts altogether the use of alcohol;[180] "of the five crimes, the taking of life, theft, adultery, lying, and drinking, the last is the worst."[181] Taouism condemns the love of wine.[182] In Zoroastrianism the holy Sraosha is represented as fighting against the demon of drunkenness,[183] and it is said that the sacred beings are not pleased with him who drinks wine more than moderately;[184] but it seems that the ancient Persians nevertheless were much addicted to intoxication.[185] According to classical writers, some of the Egyptian priests abstained entirely from wine, whilst others drank very little of it;[186] and before the reign of Psammetichus the kings neither drank wine, nor made libation of it as a thing acceptable to the gods.[187] The use of wine and other inebriating drinks is forbidden by Islam,[188] and was punished by Muhammed with flogging.[189] It may also be said of his followers that they for the most part have obeyed this command, at least in country districts,[190] and that the exceptions to the rule are directly or indirectly attributable to the influence of Christians.

[Footnote 175: Institutes of Vishnu, xxii. 82, 84. Gautama, ii. 20. Laws of Manu, xi. 94 sq.]

[Footnote 176: Laws of Manu, v. 56.]

[Footnote 177: Ibid. ix. 235, 237; xi. 49, 55; xii. 56.]

[Footnote 178: Ibid. xi. 91.]

[Footnote 179: Caldwell, Tinnevelly Shanars, p. 38. Dubois, op. cit. p. 116. Samuelson, History of Drink, p. 46.]

[Footnote 180: Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 290. Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 126.]

[Footnote 181: Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 491.]

[Footnote 182: Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 266.]

[Footnote 183: Vendîdâd, xix. 41.]

[Footnote 184: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xvi. 62.]

[Footnote 185: Herodotus, i. 133.]

[Footnote 186: Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 6. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 6.]

[Footnote 187: Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 6.]

[Footnote 188: Koran, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 189: Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 122.]

[Footnote 190: Burton, Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, ii. 118. Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 213. Polak, Persien, ii. 268. Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 298 sq. Pool, Studies in Mohammedanism, p. 283.]

The condemnation of drunkenness is, of course, in the first place due to its injurious consequences. The Basutos of South Africa say that "there is blood in the dregs"--that is, intoxication ends in bloody quarrels.[191] The Omaha Indians made drunkenness a crime punishable with flogging and loss of property, because it often led to murders.[192] Sahagun tells us of a Mexican king who severely admonished his people to abstain from intoxication, as being the cause of troubles and disorders in villages and {343} kingdoms, of misery, sorrow, and poverty.[193] Of him who drinks immoderately it is said in one of the Pahlavi texts that infamy comes to his body and wickedness to his soul.[194] According to Ecclesiasticus, "drunkenness increaseth the rage of a fool till he offend: it diminisheth strength and maketh wounds."[195] We read in the Talmud, "Drink not, and you will not sin."[196] Muhammed said that in wine there is both sin and profit, but that the sin is greater than the profit.[197] Buddhism stigmatises drinking as the worst of crimes because it leads to all other sins; from the continued use of intoxicating drink six evil consequences are said to follow--namely, the loss of wealth; the arising of disputes that lead to blows and battles; the production of various diseases, as soreness of the eyes and others; the bringing of disgrace, from the rebuke of parents and superiors; the exposure to shame, from going hither and thither unclothed; the loss of the judgment required for the carrying on of the affairs of the world.[198] That drunkenness, in spite of the evils resulting from it, nevertheless so frequently escapes censure, is due partly to the pleasures connected with it, partly to lack of foresight,[199] and in a large measure to the influence of intemperate habits. Why such habits should have grown up in one country and not in another we are often unable to tell. The climate has no doubt something to do with it, although it is impossible to agree with the statement made by Montesquieu that the prevalence of intoxication in different parts of the earth is proportionate to the coldness and humidity of the air.[200] A gloomy temperament and a cheerless life are apt to induce people to resort to the artificial pleasures produced by drink. The dreariness of the Puritan Sunday has much to answer for; the evidence given by a spirit merchant before the Commission on the Forbes Mackenzie Act was "that there is a great {344} demand for drink on Sunday," and that "this demand must be supplied."[201] Ennui was probably a cause of the prevailing inebriety in Europe in former days, when there was difficulty in passing the time not occupied in fighting or hunting;[202] and the monotony of life in the lower ranks of an industrial community still tends to produce a similar effect. Other causes of drunkenness are miserable homes and wretched cooking. Mr. Lecky is of opinion that if the wives of the poor in Great Britain and Ireland could cook as they can cook in France and in Holland, a much smaller proportion of the husbands would seek a refuge in the public-house.[203]

[Footnote 191: Casalis, Basutos, p. 307.]

[Footnote 192: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ iii. 370.]

[Footnote 193: Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, ii. 94 sqq.]

[Footnote 194: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xvi. 63.]

[Footnote 195: Ecclesiasticus, xxxi. 30.]

[Footnote 196: Deutsch, Literary Remains, p. 58.]

[Footnote 197: Koran, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 198: Hardy, op. cit. p. 491 sq.]

[Footnote 199: Cf. supra, i. 281, 309 sq.]

[Footnote 200: Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, xiv. 10 ([OE]uvres, p. 303 sq.).]

[Footnote 201: Hessey, Sunday, p. 378.]

[Footnote 202: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 445.]

[Footnote 203: Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, ii. 138.]

The evil consequences of intoxication have led not only to the condemnation of an immoderate use of alcoholic drink, but also to the demand for total abstinence, in consideration of the difficulty many people have in avoiding excess. But this hardly accounts in full for the religious prohibition of drink which we meet with in the East. Wine or spirituous liquor inspires mysterious fear. The abnormal mental state which it produces suggests the idea that there is something supernatural in it, that it contains a spirit, or is perhaps itself a spirit.[204] Moreover, the juice of the grape is conceived as the blood of the vine[205]--in Ecclesiasticus the wine which was poured out at the foot of the altar is even called "the blood of the grape";[206] and in the blood is the soul. The law of Brahmanism not only prohibits the drinking of wine, but also commands that "one should carefully avoid red exudations from trees and juices flowing from incisions."[207] That spirituous liquor is believed to contain baneful mysterious energy is obvious from the statement that if the Brahman (the Veda) which dwells in the body of a Brâhmana is even once deluged with it, his Brahmanhood forsakes him, and he becomes a Sûdra;[208] holy persons are, of {345} course, most easily affected by the mysterious drink, owing to the delicate nature of holiness. Muhammedans likewise regard wine as "unclean" and polluting;[209] some of them dread it so much that if a single drop were to fall upon a clean garment it would be rendered unfit to wear until washed.[210] In Morocco it is said that by drinking alcohol a Muhammedan loses the baraka, or holiness, of "the faith" and a scribe the memory of the Koran, and that if a person who drinks alcohol has a charm on him, its baraka is spoiled. The fact that wine was forbidden by the Prophet might perhaps by itself be a sufficient reason for the notion that it is unclean. But already in pre-Muhammedan times it seems to have been scrupulously avoided by some of the Arabs,[211] though among others it was much in use and was highly praised by their poets.[212]

[Footnote 204: See supra, i. 278, 281; infra, on the Belief in Supernatural Beings; Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 359.]

[Footnote 205: Frazer, op. cit. i. 358 sq.]

[Footnote 206: Ecclesiasticus, l. 15.]

[Footnote 207: Laws of Manu, v. 6.]

[Footnote 208: Ibid. xi. 98.]

[Footnote 209: Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 299.]

[Footnote 210: Winterbottom, _Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone_, i. 72.]

[Footnote 211: Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, xix. 94. 3. Zöckler, Askese und Mönchtum, i. 93.]

[Footnote 212: Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, i. 21 sqq.]

As for the Muhammedan prohibition of wine, the suggestion has been made by Palgrave that it mainly arose from the Prophet's antipathy to Christianity and his desire to broaden the line of demarcation between his followers and those of Christ. Wine was raised by the founder of Christianity to a dignity of the highest religious import. It became well-nigh typical of Christianity and in a manner its badge. To declare it "unclean," an "abomination," and "the work of the devil," was to set up for the Faithful a counter-badge.[213] This view derives much probability from the fact that there are several unequivocal indications of the same bent of policy in Muhammed's system, showing a distinct tendency to oppose Islam to other religions. But at the same time both a desire to prevent intoxication and the notion that wine is polluting may very well have been co-operating motives for the prohibition.

[Footnote 213: Palgrave, _Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia_, i. 428 sqq.]

XXXIX. CLEANLINESS AND UNCLEANLINESS--ASCETICISM IN GENERAL

IT seems that man, like many other animals, is naturally endowed with a certain tendency to cleanliness or aversion to filth. Of Caspar Hauser--the boy who had been kept in a dungeon separated from all communication with the world from early childhood to about the age of seventeen--Feuerbach tells us that "uncleanliness, or whatever he considered as such, whether in his own person or in others, was an abomination to him."[1] And the savage boy of Aveyron, though filthy at first, soon became so scrupulously clean in his habits that "he constantly threw away, in a pet, the contents of his plate, if any particle of dirt or dust had fallen upon it; and, after he had broken his walnuts under his feet, he took pains to clean them in the nicest and most delicate manner."[2]

[Footnote 1: Feuerbach, Caspar Hauser, p. 62.]

[Footnote 2: Itard, Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man, p. 58.]

Many savages are praised for their cleanliness.[3] The Veddahs of Ceylon wash their bodies every few days, as opportunity occurs.[4] Among the South Sea Islanders {347} bathing is a very common practice; the Tahitians bathe in fresh water once or twice a day,[5] and the natives of Ni-afu, in the Tonga Islands, are said to spend half their life in the water.[6] So, also, many Indian tribes both in North, Central, and South America are very fond of bathing.[7] The Omahas generally bathe every day in warm weather, early in the morning and at night, and some of them also at noon.[8] Among the Guiana Indians it is a custom for men and women to troop down together to the nearest water early in the morning and many times during the day.[9] The Tehuelches of Patagonia not only make morning ablutions and, when encamped near a river, enjoy bathing for hours, but are also scrupulously careful as to the cleanliness of their houses and utensils, and will, if they can obtain soap, wash up everything they may be possessed of.[10] The Moquis and Pueblos of New Mexico are remarkable both for their personal cleanliness and the neatness of their dwellings.[11] Cleanliness is a common characteristic of many natives of Africa.[12] The Negroes of the Gold Coast wash their whole persons once, if not oftener, during the day.[13] The Megé, a people subject to the Monbuttu, wash two or three times a day, and when engaged in work constantly adjourn to a neighbouring stream to cleanse themselves.[14] The Marutse-Mabundas, rather than lose their bath, are always ready {348} to run the risk of being snapped up by crocodiles, and they are in the habit of keeping their materials in well-washed wooden or earthenware bowls or in suitable baskets or calabashes.[15] The cleanliness of the Dinka in every thing that concerns the preparation of food is said to be absolutely exemplary.[16] Among the Bari tribes the dwellings "are the perfection of cleanliness."[17] So also the Bachapins, a Bechuana tribe, are remarkable for the cleanliness of their dwellings, showing the greatest carefulness to remove all rubbish and everything unsightly; but at the same time they are lacking in personal cleanliness.[18]

[Footnote 3: Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 298 sq. Man, Sonthalia and the Sonthals, p. 84. Foreman, Philippine Islands, p. 189 (domesticated natives). Boyle, Dyaks of Borneo, p. 242. Erskine, Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, pp. 110 (Samoans; cf. Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 205), 262, 264 (Fijians). Percy Smith, 'Futuna,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. i. 35. Markham, Cruise of the "Rosario," p. 136 (Polynesians).]

[Footnote 4: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 187.]

[Footnote 5: Ellis, Polynesian Researches (ed. 1829), ii. 113 sq.]

[Footnote 6: Romilly, Western Pacific, p. 145.]

[Footnote 7: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 83, 696, 722, 760. Domenech, Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 337. von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, iii. 237 (Chaymas). von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 600 (Uaupés), 643 (Macusís). Molina, History of Chili, ii. 118; Smith, Araucanians, p. 184. Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 53.]

[Footnote 8: Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. iii. 269.]

[Footnote 9: Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 191.]

[Footnote 10: Musters, At Home with the Patagonians, p. 173.]

[Footnote 11: Bancroft, op. cit. i. 540. See also ibid. i. 267 (some Inland Columbians).]

[Footnote 12: Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. 86 (Negroes of Accra, Krus), 464 (Western Fulahs). Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Huana,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 292. Rowley, Africa Unveiled, p. 153. Ashe, _Two Kings of Uganda_, p. 305; Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, i. 184. Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 122 (Monbuttu). Holub, _Seven Years in South Africa_, ii. 208 (Manansas).]

[Footnote 13: Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast, ii. 283 sq.]

[Footnote 14: Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 119.]

[Footnote 15: Holub, op. cit. ii. 309.]

[Footnote 16: Casati, op. cit. i. 44.]

[Footnote 17: Baker, Albert N'yanza, i. 89.]

[Footnote 18: Burchell, _Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa_, ii. 521, 553.]

We commonly find that savages who are clean in certain respects are dirty in others. The Wanyoro bathe frequently and always wash their hands before and after eating, but their dwellings are very filthy and swarm with vermin.[19] The Nagas of India[20] and the natives of the interior of Sumatra,[21] though cleanly in their persons, are very dirty in their apparel. The Mayas of Central America make frequent use of cold water, but neither in their persons nor in their dwellings do they present an appearance of cleanliness.[22] So also the Californian Indians, whilst exceedingly fond of bathing, are unclean about their lodges and clothing.[23] The Aleuts, though they wash daily, allow dirt to be piled up close to their dwellings, prepare their food very carelessly, and never wash their household utensils.[24] The New Zealander, again, whilst not over-clean in his person, is very particular respecting his food and also keeps his dwelling in as much order as possible.[25] On the other hand there are very many uncivilised peoples who are described as generally filthy in their habits--for instance, the Fuegians,[26] many {349} Indian tribes in the Pacific States,[27] several Eskimo tribes,[28] various Siberian peoples,[29] the Ainu of Japan,[30] most hill tribes in India,[31] many Australian tribes,[32] the Bushmans,[33] and, generally, the dwarf races of Africa.[34] But although these peoples never or hardly ever wash their bodies, or do not change their dress until it is worn to pieces, or eat out of the same vessels as their dogs without cleaning them, or feed on disgusting substances, or regard vermin as a delicacy--we may assume that their toleration of filth is not absolutely boundless.

[Footnote 19: Wilson and Felkin, op. cit. ii. 46. Baker, Albert N'yanza, ii. 58.]

[Footnote 20: Stewart, 'Northern Cachar,' in Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xxiv. 616.]

[Footnote 21: Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 209**.]

[Footnote 22: Bancroft, op. cit. i. 654.]

[Footnote 23: Powers, Tribes of California, p. 403. Bancroft, op. cit. i. 377, 407.]

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

[Footnote 25: Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 58.]

[Footnote 26: Snow, Two Years' Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, i. 345.]

[Footnote 27: Bancroft, op. cit. i. 83, 102, 184, 231, 492, 626.]

[Footnote 28: Ibid. i. 51. Seemann, Voyage of "Herald," ii. 61 sq. (Western Eskimo). Kane, Arctic Explorations, ii. 116 (Eskimo of Etah). Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 155.]

[Footnote 29: Sarytschew, 'Voyage of Discovery to the North-East of Siberia,' in Collection 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, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. i. 401; Bergmann, Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken, ii. 102, 123 sq.; Pallas, quoted in Spencer's Descriptive Sociology, 'Asiatic Races,' p. 29 (Kalmucks).]

[Footnote 30: Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 24 sqq. Mac Ritchie, Ainos, p. 12 sq.]

[Footnote 31: Spencer, Descriptive Sociology, 'Asiatic Races,' p. 29. Grange, 'Expedition into the Naga Hills,' in Jour. 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).]

[Footnote 32: Breton, 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).]

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

[Footnote 34: Stuhlmann, 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 of {350} reindeer are not.[35] It has been observed that the inland negro is clean when he dwells in the neighbourhood of rivers.[36] In West Australia those tribes only which live by large rivers or near the sea are said to have an idea of cleanliness.[37] Concerning 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.[38] Dr. 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.[39] Their 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.[40] A cold climate, moreover, leads to uncleanliness because it makes garments necessary;[41] and among some savages the practice of greasing their bodies to protect the skin from the effects of a parching air produces a similar result.[42] Lord 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.[43] Kolben says that the general laziness of the Hottentots accounts for the fact that "they are in the matter of diet {351} the filthiest people in the world."[44] Of the Siberian Burats Georgi writes that "from their laziness they are as dirty as swine";[45] and the Kamchadales are described as a "dirty, lazy race."[46] Poverty, 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."[48] Very commonly cleanliness is a class distinction.[49] Thus 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.[50] Dr. 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.[51] But 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]

[Footnote 35: Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar, i. 319 sq.]

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

[Footnote 37: Chauncy, quoted by Brough Smyth, op. cit. ii. 284.]

[Footnote 38: Butler, Travels in Assam, p. 98 sq. Cf. Stewart, in Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, xxiv. 616.]

[Footnote 39: Kane, Arctic Explorations, ii. 116.]

[Footnote 40: Murdoch, 'Ethnol. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 421. Dall, op. cit. p. 20.]

[Footnote 41: Cf. von Humboldt, op. cit. iii. 237.]

[Footnote 42: Burchell, op. cit. ii. 553 (Bachapins of Litakun).]

[Footnote 43: Kames, Sketches of the History of Man, i. 323, 327 sqq.]

[Footnote 44: Kolben, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 47.]

[Footnote 45: Georgi, op. cit. iv. 134.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid. iii. 152. See also Sarytschew, in Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, v. 67.]

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

[Footnote 48: St. John, Village Life in Egypt, i. 187.]

[Footnote 49: Tickell, 'Memoir on the Hodésum,' in _Jour. 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.]

[Footnote 50: Murdoch, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 421.]

[Footnote 51: Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 156.]

[Footnote 52: Kames, 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 soon {352} people 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 Lappish noaide, or wizard, had to wash all his body before he offered a sacrifice.[53] The 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.[54] The Shinto priests in Japan bathed and put on clean garments before making the sacred offerings or chanting the liturgies.[55] Herodotus speaks of the cleanliness observed by the Egyptian priests when engaged in the service of the gods.[56] As a preliminary to an act of worship the ancient Greeks washed their hands or bathed and put on clean clothes.[57] One of the legal maxims of the Romans required that men should approach the deity in a state of purity.[58] According 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.[59] For 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;[60] and not only Brahmins but most Hindus regard {353} it as a religious duty to bathe daily if this is at all convenient.[61] Lamaism 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.[62] Jewish Rabbis are compelled to wash their hands before they begin to pray.[63] Tertullian mentions that a similar ablution was practised by the Christians before prayer.[64] According 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.[65] But 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.

[Footnote 53: Friis, Lappisk Mythologie, p. 145 sq. von Düben, Lappland, p. 256.]

[Footnote 54: Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 88.]

[Footnote 55: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 85.]

[Footnote 56: Herodotus, ii. 37. Cf. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 154.]

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

[Footnote 58: Cicero, De legibus, ii. 10.]

[Footnote 59: Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. p. lxxii. sqq.]

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

[Footnote 61: Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, p. 201.]

[Footnote 62: Waddell, Buddhism of Tibet, p. 423.]

[Footnote 63: Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, ii. 71.]

[Footnote 64: Tertullian, De Oratione, 13 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, ii. 1167 sq.).]

[Footnote 65: Sell, Faith of Islam, p. 252 sqq. Lane, Modern Egyptians, i. 84 sqq.]

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.[66] We have also seen that ablutions and other purificatory ceremonies {354} are performed for the purpose of removing sins and misfortunes.[67] And 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]

[Footnote 66: Supra, i. 375 sqq.]

[Footnote 67: Supra, i. 54 sqq.]

[Footnote 68: Teit, 'Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' in Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, 'Anthropology,' i. 331. Cruickshank, op. cit. ii. 218 (Negroes of the Gold Coast). Ellis, E[(w]e-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,' in Asiatick Researches, vii. 437 (Sinhalese). Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 71; Thurston, ibid. iv. 76 sq. (Nay[=a]dis). 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. 108 sq.; Bose, Hindoos as they are, p. 257. Caland, Die Altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche, p. 79 sq.]

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.[69] The 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.[70] The 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."[71] A similar custom prevails among the Kirghiz[72] and 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."[73] They, moreover, abstain from washing their {355} clothes; and so did the Huns and Mongols.[74] The 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.[75] Among 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."[76] The 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 the [(]â[s.]ar, because all such water is then supposed to be haunted by jnûn, 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.[77] In 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, intolerable {356} to the bystanders, exhaled from his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and they filled his bed."[78] In 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.

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

[Footnote 70: Baker, Albert N'yanza, i. 381.]

[Footnote 71: Sauer, op. cit. p. 125.]

[Footnote 72: Valikhanof, &c., Russians in Central Asia, p. 80.]

[Footnote 73: Georgi, op. cit. iv. 37. Bergmann, op. cit. ii. 123.]

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

[Footnote 75: Castrén, op. cit. iv. 61.]

[Footnote 76: Roscoe, 'Bahima,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvii. 111.]

[Footnote 77: Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 75.]

[Footnote 78: Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 109 sqq.]

* * * * *

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.[79] Hindu 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.[80] Among 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 a {357} tropical sun blazing overhead.[81] Among 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.[82] According 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.[83] Herodotus 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.[84] Among 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."[85] Self-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]

[Footnote 79: Ibid. ii. 108 sq.]

[Footnote 80: Barth, Religions of India, p. 214 sq. Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 352. Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 395.]

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

[Footnote 82: Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 407.]

[Footnote 83: Yasts, x. 122. Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, xxiii. 151, n. 3.]

[Footnote 84: Herodotus, ii. 40, 61.]

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

[Footnote 86: Domenech, _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. 276 sqq. (Omahas). McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xv. 184.]

[Footnote 87: Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 149.]

The idea underlying religious asceticism has no doubt {358} been 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.[88] When 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.[89] This 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.[90] Among the Jews, before the commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, "some purify themselves by {359} ablutions."[91] And 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.[92] But it should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration;[93] and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

[Footnote 88: See infra, p. 420 sq.]

[Footnote 89: Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 217 sq.]

[Footnote 90: Herodotus, ii. 40.]

[Footnote 91: Allen, op. cit. p. 407.]

[Footnote 92: Yasts, x. 122.]

[Footnote 93: See Hirn, Origins of Art, p. 64.]

An ascetic practice may also be the survival of an earlier sacrifice. We have seen that this is frequently the case with fasting and almsgiving, and the same may hold true of other forms of asceticism.[94] The essence of the act then no longer lies in the benefit which the god derives from it, but in the self-denial or self-mortification which it costs the worshipper. In the sacred books of India "austerity" is mentioned as a means of expiation side by side with sacrifice, fasting, and giving gifts.[95]

[Footnote 94: Cf. Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, 8 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 806).]

[Footnote 95: Gautama, xix. 11. Vasishtha, xx. 47; xxii. 8. Baudháyana, iii. 10. 9.]

When an ascetic practice develops out of a previous custom of a different origin, it may be combined with an idea which by itself has been a frequent source of self-inflicted pain, to wit, the belief that such pain is an expiation for sin, that it may serve as a substitute for a punishment which would otherwise be inflicted by the offended god; and almost inseparably connected with this belief there may be that desire to suffer which is so often, vaguely or distinctly, involved in genuine repentance.[96] The idea of expiation very largely underlies the penitential discipline of the Christian Church and the asceticism of its saints. From the days of Tertullian and Cyprian the Latins were familiar with the notion that the Christian has to propitiate God, that cries of pain, sufferings, and deprivations are means of appeasing his anger, that God takes strict account of the quantity of {360} the atonement, and that, where there is no guilt to have blotted out, those very means are regarded as merits.[97] According to the doctrine of the Church, penance should in all grave cases be preceded by sorrow for the sin and also by confession, either public or private; repentance, as we have noticed above, is the only ground on which pardon can be given by a scrupulous judge.[98] But the notion was only too often adopted that the penitential practice itself was a compensation for sin, that a man was at liberty to do whatever he pleased provided he was prepared to do penance afterwards, and that a person who, conscious of his frailty, had laid in a large stock of vicarious penance in anticipation of future necessity, had a right "to work it out," and spend it in sins.[99] The idea that sins may be expiated by certain acts of self-mortification is familiar both to Muhammedans[100] and Jews.[101] According to Zoroastrian beliefs, it is possible to wipe out by peculiarly severe atonements not only the special sin on account of which the atonement is performed, but also other offences committed in former times or unconsciously.[102] In the sacred books of the Hindus we meet with a strong conviction that pain suffered in this life will redeem the sufferer from punishment in a future existence. It is said that "men who have committed crimes and have been punished by the king go to heaven, being pure like those who performed meritorious deeds";[103] and the same idea is at the bottom of their penitential system.[104] But in Brahmanism, as in Catholicism, the effect of ascetic practices is supposed to go beyond mere expiation. They are regarded as means of accumulating religious merit or attaining superhuman powers. Brahmanical poems tell of marvellous self-mortifications {361} by which sages of the past obtained influence over the gods themselves; nay, even the power wielded by certain archdemons over men and gods is supposed to have been acquired by the practice of religious austerities.[105] How largely ascetic practices are due to the idea of expiation is indicated by the fact that they hardly occur among nations who have no vivid sense of sin, like the Chinese before the introduction of Taouism and Buddhism,[106] and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians. In Greece, however, people sometimes voluntarily sacrificed a part of their happiness in order to avoid the envy of the gods, who would not allow to man more than a moderate share of good fortune.[107]

[Footnote 96: See supra, i. 105 sq.]

[Footnote 97: Tertullian, De jejuniis, 7 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 962). Idem, De resurrectione carnis, 8 (Migne, ii. 806 sq.). Harnack, History of Dogma, ii. 110, 132; iii. 311.]

[Footnote 98: Supra, i. 85.]

[Footnote 99: See Thrupp, The Anglo-Saxon Home, p. 259.]

[Footnote 100: Supra, ii. 315, 317. Pool, op. cit. p. 264.]

[Footnote 101: Supra, ii. 315 sqq. Allen, op. cit. p. 130.]

[Footnote 102: Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Ir[=a]nians, i. 163.]

[Footnote 103: Laws of Manu, viii. 318.]

[Footnote 104: Ibid. xi. 228.]

[Footnote 105: Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, pp. 231, 427. Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 302.]

[Footnote 106: Réville, La religion Chinoise, p. 221.]

[Footnote 107: Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1008 sqq. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, i. 82.]

Self-mortification is also sometimes resorted to not so much to appease the anger of a god as rather to excite his compassion. In some of the Jewish fasts, as we have seen before, these two objects are closely interwoven.[108] The Jewish custom of fasting in the case of a drought is in a way parallel to the Moorish practice of tying holy men and throwing them into a pond in order that their pitiful condition may induce God to send rain. Mr. Williams tells us of a Fijian priest who, "after supplicating his god for rain in the usual way without success, slept for several successive nights exposed on the top of a rock, without mat or pillow, hoping thus to move the obdurate deity to send a shower."[109]

[Footnote 108: Supra, ii. 315.]

[Footnote 109: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 196.]

Not only is suffering voluntarily sought as a means of wiping off sins committed, but it is also endured with a view to preventing the commission of sin. This is the second or, in importance, the first great idea upon which Christian asceticism rests. The gratification of every worldly desire is sinful, the flesh should be the abject slave of the spirit intent upon unearthly things. Man was created for a life in spiritual communion with God, {362} but he yielded to the seduction of evil demons, who availed themselves of the sensuous side of his nature to draw him away from the contemplation of the divine and lead him to the earthly. Moral goodness, therefore, consists in renouncing all sensuous pleasures, in separating from the world, in living solely after the spirit, in imitating the perfection and purity of God. The contrast between good and evil is the contrast between God and the world, and the conception of the world includes not only the objects of bodily appetites but all human institutions, as well as science and art.[110] And still more than any theoretical doctrine, the personal example of Christ led to the glorification of spiritual joy and bodily suffering.

[Footnote 110: Harnack, op. cit. ii. 214 sqq., iii. 258 sqq. von Eicken, _Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_, p. 313 sqq.]

The antithesis of spirit and body was not peculiar to Christianity. It was an old Platonic conception, which was regarded by the Fathers of the Church as the contrast between that which was precious and that which was to be mortified. The doctrine that bodily enjoyments are low and degrading was taught by many pagan philosophers; even a man like Cicero says that all corporeal pleasure is opposed to virtue and ought to be rejected.[111] And in the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean schools of Alexandria an ascetic ideal of life was the natural outcome of their theory that God alone is pure and good, and matter impure and evil. Renunciation of the world was taught and practised by the Jewish sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. In India, Professor Kern observes, "climate, institutions, the contemplative bent of the native mind, all tended to facilitate the growth of a persuasion that the highest aims of human life and real felicity cannot be obtained but by the seclusion from the busy world, by undisturbed pious exercises, and by a certain amount of mortification."[112] We read in the Hitopadesa, "Subjection to the senses has been called the road to ruin, and {363} their subjugation the path to fortune."[113] The Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful:--"What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life."[114] According to Buddhism, there are two causes of the misery with which life is inseparably bound up--lust and ignorance; and so there are two cures--the suppression of lust and desire and the removal of ignorance.[115] It is said in the Dhammapada, "There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of gold pieces; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause pain, he is wise."[116] Penances, as they were practised among the ascetics of India, were discarded by Buddha as vexatious, unworthy, unprofitable. "Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires."[117] Where all contact with the earthly ceases, there, and there only, are deliverance and freedom.

[Footnote 111: Cicero, De officiis, i. 30; iii. 33.]

[Footnote 112: Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 73.]

[Footnote 113: Hitopadesa, quoted by Monier-Williams, _Indian Wisdom_, p. 538.]

[Footnote 114: Hopkins, op. cit. p. 291.]

[Footnote 115: Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 212 sq. Monier-Williams, Buddhism, p. 99.]

[Footnote 116: Dhammapada, 186 sq.]

[Footnote 117: Ibid. 141. See also Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 301 sq.]

The idea that man ought to liberate himself from the bondage of earthly desires is the conclusion of a contemplative mind reflecting upon the short duration and emptiness of all bodily pleasures and the allurements by which they lead men into misery and sin. And separation from the material world is the ideal of the religious enthusiast whose highest aspiration is union with God conceived as an immaterial being, as pure spirit.