The Golden Bough

1.  Chiefs and Kings tabooed

WE have seen that the Mikado’s food was cooked every day in new pots and served up in new dishes; both pots and dishes were of common clay, in order that they might be broken or laid aside after they had been once used.  They were generally broken, for it was believed that if any one else ate his food out of these sacred dishes, his mouth and throat would become swollen and inflamed.  The same ill effect was thought to be experienced by any one who should wear the Mikado’s clothes without his leave; he would have swellings and pains all over his body.  In Fiji there is a special name (kana lama) for the disease supposed to be caused by eating out of a chief’s dishes or wearing his clothes.  “The throat and body swell, and the impious person dies.  I had a fine mat given to me by a man who durst not use it because Thakombau’s eldest son had sat upon it.  There was always a family or clan of commoners who were exempt from this danger.  I was talking about this once to Thakombau.  ‘Oh yes,’ said he.  ‘Here, So-and-so! come and scratch my back.’  The man scratched; he was one of those who could do it with impunity.”  The name of the men thus highly privileged was Na nduka ni, or the dirt of the chief.

In the evil effects thus supposed to follow upon the use of the vessels or clothes of the Mikado and a Fijian chief we see that other side of the god-man’s character to which attention has been already called.  The divine person is a source of danger as well as of blessing; he must not only be guarded, he must also be guarded against.  His sacred organism, so delicate that a touch may disorder it, is also, as it were, electrically charged with a powerful magical or spiritual force which may discharge itself with fatal effect on whatever comes in contact with it.  Accordingly the isolation of the man-god is quite as necessary for the safety of others as for his own.  His magical virtue is in the strictest sense of the word contagious:  his divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings, but, if rashly touched or allowed to break bounds, burns and destroys what it touches.  Hence the disastrous effects supposed to attend a breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which shrivels up and consumes him on the spot.

The Nubas, for example, who inhabit the wooded and fertile range of Jebel Nuba in Eastern Africa, believe that they would die if they entered the house of their priestly king; however, they can evade the penalty of their intrusion by baring the left shoulder and getting the king to lay his hand on it.  And were any man to sit on a stone which the king has consecrated to his own use, the transgressor would die within the year.  The Cazembes of Angola regard their king as so holy that no one can touch him without being killed by the magical power which pervades his sacred person.  But since contact with him is sometimes unavoidable, they have devised a means whereby the sinner can escape with his life.  Kneeling down before the king he touches the back of the royal hand with the back of his own, then snaps his fingers; afterwards he lays the palm of his hand on the palm of the king’s hand, then snaps his fingers again.  This ceremony is repeated four or five times, and averts the imminent danger of death.  In Tonga it was believed that if any one fed himself with his own hands after touching the sacred person of a superior chief or anything that belonged to him, he would swell up and die; the sanctity of the chief, like a virulent poison, infected the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated through them to the food, proved fatal to the eater.  A commoner who had incurred this danger could disinfect himself by performing a certain ceremony, which consisted in touching the sole of a chief’s foot with the palm and back of each of his hands, and afterwards rinsing his hands in water.  If there was no water near, he rubbed his hands with the juicy stem of a plantain or banana.  After that he was free to feed himself with his own hands without danger of being attacked by the malady which would otherwise follow from eating with tabooed or sanctified hands.  But until the ceremony of expiation or disinfection had been performed, if he wished to eat he had either to get some one to feed him, or else to go down on his knees and pick up the food from the ground with his mouth like a beast.  He might not even use a toothpick himself, but might guide the hand of another person holding the toothpick.  The Tongans were subject to induration of the liver and certain forms of scrofula, which they often attributed to a failure to perform the requisite expiation after having inadvertently touched a chief or his belongings.  Hence they often went through the ceremony as a precaution, without knowing that they had done anything to call for it.  The king of Tonga could not refuse to play his part in the rite by presenting his foot to such as desired to touch it, even when they applied to him at an inconvenient time.  A fat unwieldy king, who perceived his subjects approaching with this intention, while he chanced to be taking his walks abroad, has been sometimes seen to waddle as fast as his legs could carry him out of their way, in order to escape the importunate and not wholly disinterested expression of their homage.  If any one fancied he might have already unwittingly eaten with tabooed hands, he sat down before the chief, and, taking the chief’s foot, pressed it against his own stomach, that the food in his belly might not injure him, and that he might not swell up and die.  Since scrofula was regarded by the Tongans as a result of eating with tabooed hands, we may conjecture that persons who suffered from it among them often resorted to the touch or pressure of the king’s foot as a cure for their malady.  The analogy of the custom with the old English practice of bringing scrofulous patients to the king to be healed by his touch is sufficiently obvious, and suggests, as I have already pointed out elsewhere, that among our own remote ancestors scrofula may have obtained its name of the King’s Evil, from a belief, like that of the Tongans, that it was caused as well as cured by contact with the divine majesty of kings.

In New Zealand the dread of the sanctity of chiefs was at least as great as in Tonga.  Their ghostly power, derived from an ancestral spirit, diffused itself by contagion over everything they touched, and could strike dead all who rashly or unwittingly meddled with it.  For instance, it once happened that a New Zealand chief of high rank and great sanctity had left the remains of his dinner by the wayside.  A slave, a stout, hungry fellow, coming up after the chief had gone, saw the unfinished dinner, and ate it up without asking questions.  Hardly had he finished when he was informed by a horror-stricken spectator that the food of which he had eaten was the chief’s.  “I knew the unfortunate delinquent well.  He was remarkable for courage, and had signalised himself in the wars of the tribe,” but “no sooner did he hear the fatal news than he was seized by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the stomach, which never ceased till he died, about sundown the same day.  He was a strong man, in the prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker should have said he was not killed by the tapu of the chief, which had been communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and direct evidence.”  This is not a solitary case.  A Maori woman having eaten of some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had been taken from a tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief, whose sanctity had been thus profaned, would kill her.  This was in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o’clock she was dead.  A Maori chief’s tinder-box was once the means of killing several persons; for, having been lost by him, and found by some men who used it to light their pipes, they died of fright on learning to whom it had belonged.  So, too, the garments of a high New Zealand chief will kill any one else who wears them.  A chief was observed by a missionary to throw down a precipice a blanket which he found too heavy to carry.  Being asked by the missionary why he did not leave it on a tree for the use of a future traveller, the chief replied that “it was the fear of its being taken by another which caused him to throw it where he did, for if it were worn, his tapu” (that is, his spiritual power communicated by contact to the blanket and through the blanket to the man) “would kill the person.”  For a similar reason a Maori chief would not blow a fire with his mouth; for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the fire, which would pass it on to the pot on the fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the pot, which would pass it on to the man who ate the meat, which was in the pot, which stood on the fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so that the eater, infected by the chief’s breath conveyed through these intermediaries, would surely die.

Thus in the Polynesian race, to which the Maoris belong, superstition erected round the persons of sacred chiefs a real, though at the same time purely imaginary barrier, to transgress which actually entailed the death of the transgressor whenever he became aware of what he had done.  This fatal power of the imagination working through superstitious terrors is by no means confined to one race; it appears to be common among savages.  For example, among the aborigines of Australia a native will die after the infliction of even the most superficial wound, if only he believes that the weapon which inflicted the wound had been sung over and thus endowed with magical virtue.  He simply lies down, refuses food, and pines away.  Similarly among some of the Indian tribes of Brazil, if the medicine-man predicted the death of any one who had offended him, “the wretch took to his hammock instantly in such full expectation of dying, that he would neither eat nor drink, and the prediction was a sentence which faith effectually executed.”

2.  Mourners tabooed

THUS regarding his sacred chiefs and kings as charged with a mysterious spiritual force which so to say explodes at contact, the savage naturally ranks them among the dangerous classes of society, and imposes upon them the same sort of restraints that he lays on manslayers, menstruous women, and other persons whom he looks upon with a certain fear and horror.  For example, sacred kings and priests in Polynesia were not allowed to touch food with their hands, and had therefore to be fed by others; and as we have just seen, their vessels, garments, and other property might not be used by others on pain of disease and death.  Now precisely the same observances are exacted by some savages from girls at their first menstruation, women after childbirth, homicides, mourners, and all persons who have come into contact with the dead.  Thus, for example, to begin with the last class of persons, among the Maoris any one who had handled a corpse, helped to convey it to the grave, or touched a dead man’s bones, was cut off from all intercourse and almost all communication with mankind.  He could not enter any house, or come into contact with any person or thing, without utterly bedevilling them.  He might not even touch food with his hands, which had become so frightfully tabooed or unclean as to be quite useless.  Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back, would gnaw at it as best he could.  In some cases he would be fed by another person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without touching the tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many severe restrictions, little less onerous than those which were imposed upon the other.  In almost every populous village there lived a degraded wretch, the lowest of the low, who earned a sorry pittance by thus waiting upon the defiled.  Clad in rags, daubed from head to foot with red ochre and stinking shark oil, always solitary and silent, generally old, haggard, and wizened, often half crazed, he might be seen sitting motionless all day apart from the common path or thoroughfare of the village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the busy doings in which he might never take a part.  Twice a day a dole of food would be thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day.  Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm’s length with one who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead.  And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows once more, all the dishes he had used in his seclusion were diligently smashed, and all the garments he had worn were carefully thrown away, lest they should spread the contagion of his defilement among others, just as the vessels and clothes of sacred kings and chiefs are destroyed or cast away for a similar reason.  So complete in these respects is the analogy which the savage traces between the spiritual influences that emanate from divinities and from the dead, between the odour of sanctity and the stench of corruption.

The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with the dead to touch food with their hands would seem to have been universal in Polynesia.  Thus in Samoa “those who attended the deceased were most careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants.  Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by the household god if they violated the rule.”  Again, in Tonga, “no person can touch a dead chief without being taboo’d for ten lunar months, except chiefs, who are only taboo’d for three, four, or five months, according to the superiority of the dead chief; except again it be the body of Tooitonga [the great divine chief], and then even the greatest chief would be taboo’d ten months. . . .  During the time a man is taboo’d he must not feed himself with his own hands, but must be fed by somebody else:  he must not even use a toothpick himself, but must guide another person’s hand holding the toothpick.  If he is hungry and there is no one to feed him, he must go down upon his hands and knees, and pick up his victuals with his mouth:  and if he infringes upon any of these rules, it is firmly expected that he will swell up and die.”

Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in mourning are secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the cups and cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else.  They must build a sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and bathe regularly, after which they must rub their bodies with branches of spruce.  The branches may not be used more than once, and when they have served their purpose they are stuck into the ground all round the hut.  No hunter would come near such mourners, for their presence is unlucky.  If their shadow were to fall on any one, he would be taken ill at once.  They employ thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in order to keep away the ghost of the deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid all around their beds.  This last precaution shows clearly what the spiritual danger is which leads to the exclusion of such persons from ordinary society; it is simply a fear of the ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them.  In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea a widower loses all his civil rights and becomes a social outcast, an object of fear and horror, shunned by all.  He may not cultivate a garden, nor show himself in public, nor traverse the village, nor walk on the roads and paths.  Like a wild beast he must skulk in the long grass and the bushes; and if he sees or hears any one coming, especially a woman, he must hide behind a tree or a thicket.  If he wishes to fish or hunt, he must do it alone and at night.  If he would consult any one, even the missionary, he does so by stealth and at night; he seems to have lost his voice and speaks only in whispers.  Were he to join a party of fishers or hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead wife would frighten away the fish or the game.  He goes about everywhere and at all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against wild boars in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the dead are malignant and their only delight is to harm the living.

3.  Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth

IN GENERAL, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels, garments, and so forth of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow an infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted.  As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous women.  An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.  Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a path that any man frequents.  They are also secluded at childbirth, and all vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned.  In Uganda the pots which a woman touches, while the impurity of childbirth or of menstruation is on her, should be destroyed; spears and shields defiled by her touch are not destroyed, but only purified.  “Among all the Déné and most other American tribes, hardly any other being was the object of so much dread as a menstruating woman.  As soon as signs of that condition made themselves apparent in a young girl she was carefully segregated from all but female company, and had to live by herself in a small hut away from the gaze of the villagers or of the male members of the roving band.  While in that awful state, she had to abstain from touching anything belonging to man, or the spoils of any venison or other animal, lest she would thereby pollute the same, and condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the anger of the game thus slighted.  Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water, absorbed through a drinking tube, was her only beverage.  Moreover, as the very sight of her was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes falling over her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even some time after she had recovered her normal state.”  Among the Bribri Indians of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean.  The only plates she may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she has done with them, she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a cow to find them and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish.  And she drinks out of a special vessel for a like reason; because if any one drank out of the same cup after her, he would surely die.

Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in childbed and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are supposed to be in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or thing they might touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the recovery of their health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed away.  Thus, in Tahiti a woman after childbirth was secluded for a fortnight or three weeks in a temporary hut erected on sacred ground; during the time of her seclusion she was debarred from touching provisions, and had to be fed by another.  Further, if any one else touched the child at this period, he was subjected to the same restrictions as the mother until the ceremony of her purification had been performed.  Similarly in the island of Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be delivered retires to a miserable low hovel built of reeds, where she must remain for twenty days after the birth of her child, whatever the season may be, and she is considered so unclean that no one will touch her, and food is reached to her on sticks.  The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed as much more dangerous even than that of menstruation.  When a woman feels her time approaching, she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut for her in a lonely spot.  There she must live alone, holding no converse with anybody save her mother or another woman.  After her delivery the medicine-man purifies her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what, upon her.  But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a state considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and for a full lunar month she must live apart from her housemates, observing the same rules with regard to eating and drinking as at her monthly periods.  The case is still worse, the pollution is still more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage or has been delivered of a stillborn child.  In that case she may not go near a living soul:  the mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly dangerous:  her food is handed to her at the end of a long stick.  This lasts generally for three weeks, after which she may go home, subject only to the restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement.

Some Bantu tribes entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has concealed it.  An experienced observer of these people tells us that the blood of childbirth “appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted with a pollution still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid.  The husband is excluded from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by this secretion.  He dare not take his child in his arms for the three first months after the birth.  But the secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the product of a miscarriage, especially a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not merely the man who is threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the sky itself which suffers.  By a curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic troubles!” As for the disastrous effect which a miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the words of a medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe:  “When a woman has had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to parch the country with heat.  The rain no longer falls, for the country is no longer in order.  When the rain approaches the place where the blood is, it will not dare to approach.  It will fear and remain at a distance.  That woman has committed a great fault.  She has spoiled the country of the chief, for she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to fashion a man.  That blood is taboo.  It should never drip on the road!  The chief will assemble his men and say to them, ‘Are you in order in your villages?’ Some one will answer, ’Such and such a woman was pregnant and we have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.’  Then they go and arrest the woman.  They say to her, ’Show us where you have hidden it.’  They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of two sorts of roots prepared in a special pot.  They take a little of the earth of this grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the river and sprinkle it where she shed her blood.  She herself must wash every day with the medicine.  Then the country will be moistened again (by rain).  Further, we (medicine-men), summon the women of the country; we tell them to prepare a ball of the earth which contains the blood.  They bring it to us one morning.  If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle the whole country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days we send little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women’s affairs and have not yet had relations with men.  We put the medicine in the horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of the country.  A little girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, ‘Rain! rain!’ So we remove the misfortune which the women have brought on the roads; the rain will be able to come.  The country is purified!”

4.  Warriors tabooed

ONCE more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say, in an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from those rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt against foes of flesh and blood.  The general effect of these observances is to place the warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state of seclusion or spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety, primitive man puts his human gods and other dangerous characters.  Thus when the Maoris went out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the highest degree, and they and their friends at home had to observe strictly many curious customs over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life.  They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the old fighting days, “tabooed an inch thick”; and as for the leader of the expedition, he was quite unapproachable.  Similarly, when the Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of ceremonial purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian blackfellows on the war-path.  The vessels they used were sacred, and they had to practise continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which the original motive, if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who conform to the same custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their destruction by magic.  Among some Indian tribes of North America a young warrior in his first campaign had to conform to certain customs, of which two were identical with the observances imposed by the same Indians on girls at their first menstruation:  the vessels he ate and drank out of might be touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could not help scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick.  The latter rule, like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we choose to call it, of the tabooed hands.  Moreover among these Indian tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the posture, they might not change it.  They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they had no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which they carried with them for the purpose.  No member of the party was permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything that belonged to him.  If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the duty of the member whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the other member down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked down peaceably and without resistance.  The vessels out of which the warriors ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark, with marks to distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians invariably drank out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out of the other.  When on their way home they came within a day’s march of the village, they hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on the prairie, doubtless to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being communicated with disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have seen that the vessels and clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at childbirth and menstruation, and of persons defiled by contact with the dead are destroyed or laid aside for a similar reason.  The first four times that an Apache Indian goes out on the war-path, he is bound to refrain from scratching his head with his fingers and from letting water touch his lips.  Hence he scratches his head with a stick, and drinks through a hollow reed or cane.  Stick and reed are attached to the warrior’s belt and to each other by a leathern thong.  The rule not to scratch their heads with their fingers, but to use a stick for the purpose instead, was regularly observed by Ojebways on the war-path.

With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred tribes we are told they “will not cohabit with women while they are out at war; they religiously abstain from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home, because they are to sanctify themselves.”  Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa not only have the warriors to abstain from women, but the people left behind in the villages are also bound to continence; they think that any incontinence on their part would cause thorns to grow on the ground traversed by the warriors, and that success would not attend the expedition.

Why exactly many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time of war, we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice.  Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons.  Indeed the Kayans of Central Borneo go so far as to hold that to touch a loom or women’s clothes would so weaken a man that he would have no success in hunting, fishing, and war.  Hence it is not merely sexual intercourse with women that the savage warrior sometimes shuns; he is careful to avoid the sex altogether.  Thus among the hill tribes of Assam, not only are men forbidden to cohabit with their wives during or after a raid, but they may not eat food cooked by a woman; nay, they should not address a word even to their own wives.  Once a woman, who unwittingly broke the rule by speaking to her husband while he was under the war taboo, sickened and died when she learned the awful crime she had committed.

5.  Manslayers tabooed

IF THE READER still doubts whether the rules of conduct which we have just been considering are based on superstitious fears or dictated by a rational prudence, his doubts will probably be dissipated when he learns that rules of the same sort are often imposed even more stringently on warriors after the victory has been won and when all fear of the living corporeal foe is at an end.  In such cases one motive for the inconvenient restrictions laid on the victors in their hour of triumph is probably a dread of the angry ghosts of the slain; and that the fear of the vengeful ghosts does influence the behaviour of the slayers is often expressly affirmed.  The general effect of the taboos laid on sacred chiefs, mourners, women at childbirth, men on the war-path, and so on, is to seclude or isolate the tabooed persons from ordinary society, this effect being attained by a variety of rules, which oblige the men or women to live in separate huts or in the open air, to shun the commerce of the sexes, to avoid the use of vessels employed by others, and so forth.  Now the same effect is produced by similar means in the case of victorious warriors, particularly such as have actually shed the blood of their enemies.  In the island of Timor, when a warlike expedition has returned in triumph bringing the heads of the vanquished foe, the leader of the expedition is forbidden by religion and custom to return at once to his own house.  A special hut is prepared for him, in which he has to reside for two months, undergoing bodily and spiritual purification.  During this time he may not go to his wife nor feed himself; the food must be put into his mouth by another person.  That these observances are dictated by fear of the ghosts of the slain seems certain; for from another account of the ceremonies performed on the return of a successful head-hunter in the same island we learn that sacrifices are offered on this occasion to appease the soul of the man whose head has been taken; the people think that some misfortune would befall the victor were such offerings omitted.  Moreover, a part of the ceremony consists of a dance accompanied by a song, in which the death of the slain man is lamented and his forgiveness is entreated.  “Be not angry,” they say, “because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might now have been exposed in your village.  We have offered the sacrifice to appease you.  Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace.  Why were you our enemy?  Would it not have been better that we should remain friends?  Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head would not have been cut off.”  The people of Paloo in Central Celebes take the heads of their enemies in war and afterwards propitiate the souls of the slain in the temple.

Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, “a man who has taken life is considered to be impure until he has undergone certain ceremonies:  as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses himself and his weapon.  This satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village and seats himself on the logs of sacrificial staging.  No one approaches him or takes any notice whatever of him.  A house is prepared for him which is put in charge of two or three small boys as servants.  He may eat only toasted bananas, and only the centre portion of them—­the ends being thrown away.  On the third day of his seclusion a small feast is prepared by his friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands for him.  This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully armed and parades the village.  The next day a hunt is organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game captured.  It is cut open and the spleen and liver rubbed over the back of the man.  He then walks solemnly down to the nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself.  All the young untried warriors swim between his legs.  This is supposed to impart courage and strength to them.  The following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, fully armed, and calls aloud the name of his victim.  Having satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to his house.  The beating of flooring-boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain method of scaring the ghost.  A day later his purification is finished.  He can then enter his wife’s house.”

In Windessi, Dutch New Guinea, when a party of head-hunters has been successful, and they are nearing home, they announce their approach and success by blowing on triton shells.  Their canoes are also decked with branches.  The faces of the men who have taken a head are blackened with charcoal.  If several have taken part in killing the same victim, his head is divided among them.  They always time their arrival so as to reach home in the early morning.  They come rowing to the village with a great noise, and the women stand ready to dance in the verandahs of the houses.  The canoes row past the room sram or house where the young men live; and as they pass, the murderers throw as many pointed sticks or bamboos at the wall or the roof as there were enemies killed.  The day is spent very quietly.  Now and then they drum or blow on the conch; at other times they beat the walls of the houses with loud shouts to drive away the ghosts of the slain.  So the Yabim of New Guinea believe that the spirit of a murdered man pursues his murderer and seeks to do him a mischief.  Hence they drive away the spirit with shouts and the beating of drums.  When the Fijians had buried a man alive, as they often did, they used at nightfall to make a great uproar by means of bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, for the purpose of frightening away his ghost, lest he should attempt to return to his old home.  And to render his house unattractive to him they dismantled it and clothed it with everything that to their ideas seemed most repulsive.  On the evening of the day on which they had tortured a prisoner to death, the American Indians were wont to run through the village with hideous yells, beating with sticks on the furniture, the walls, and the roofs of the huts to prevent the angry ghost of their victim from settling there and taking vengeance for the torments that his body had endured at their hands.  “Once,” says a traveller, “on approaching in the night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion:  they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind.  Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants from entering the village.”

Among the Basutos “ablution is specially performed on return from battle.  It is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers.  They go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream.  At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the current.  This is, however, not strictly necessary.  The javelins and battle-axes also undergo the process of washing.”  Among the Bageshu of East Africa a man who has killed another may not return to his own house on the same day, though he may enter the village and spend the night in a friend’s house.  He kills a sheep and smears his chest, his right arm, and his head with the contents of the animal’s stomach.  His children are brought to him and he smears them in like manner.  Then he smears each side of the doorway with the tripe and entrails, and finally throws the rest of the stomach on the roof of his house.  For a whole day he may not touch food with his hands, but picks it up with two sticks and so conveys it to his mouth.  His wife is not under any such restrictions.  She may even go to mourn for the man whom her husband has killed, if she wishes to do so.  Among the Angoni, to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, hang garments of their victims on their persons, and tie bark ropes round their necks, so that the ends hang down over their shoulders or breasts.  This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to drive away the ghosts of the slain, which, if they were not thus banished from the houses, might bring sickness and misfortune on the inmates.

In some of these accounts nothing is said of an enforced seclusion, at least after the ceremonial cleansing, but some South African tribes certainly require the slayer of a very gallant foe in war to keep apart from his wife and family for ten days after he has washed his body in running water.  He also receives from the tribal doctor a medicine which he chews with his food.  When a Nandi of East Africa has killed a member of another tribe, he paints one side of his body, spear, and sword red, and the other side white.  For four days after the slaughter he is considered unclean and may not go home.  He has to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he may not associate with his wife or sweetheart, and he may eat nothing but porridge, beef, and goat’s flesh.  At the end of the fourth day he must purify himself by taking a strong purge made from the bark of the segetet tree and by drinking goat’s milk mixed with blood.  Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, when a man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return home, and his friends rub a medicine, which generally consists of goat’s dung, over his body to prevent the spirit of the slain man from troubling him.  Exactly the same custom is practised for the same reason by the Wageia of East Africa.  With the Ja-Luo of Kavirondo the custom is somewhat different.  Three days after his return from the fight the warrior shaves his head.  But before he may enter his village he has to hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck; then the bird is decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck.  Soon after his return a feast is made for the slain man, in order that his ghost may not haunt his slayer.  In the Pelew Islands, when the men return from a warlike expedition in which they have taken a life, the young warriors who have been out fighting for the first time, and all who handled the slain, are shut up in the large council-house and become tabooed.  They may not quit the edifice, nor bathe, nor touch a woman, nor eat fish; their food is limited to coco-nuts and syrup.  They rub themselves with charmed leaves and chew charmed betel.  After three days they go together to bathe as near as possible to the spot where the man was killed.

Among the Natchez Indians of North America young braves who had taken their first scalps were obliged to observe certain rules of abstinence for six months.  They might not sleep with their wives nor eat flesh; their only food was fish and hasty-pudding.  If they broke these rules, they believed that the soul of the man they had killed would work their death by magic, that they would gain no more successes over the enemy, and that the least wound inflicted on them would prove mortal.  When a Choctaw had killed an enemy and taken his scalp, he went into mourning for a month, during which he might not comb his hair, and if his head itched he might not scratch it except with a little stick which he wore fastened to his wrist for the purpose.  This ceremonial mourning for the enemies they had slain was not uncommon among the North American Indians.

Thus we see that warriors who have taken the life of a foe in battle are temporarily cut off from free intercourse with their fellows, and especially with their wives, and must undergo certain rites of purification before they are readmitted to society.  Now if the purpose of their seclusion and of the expiatory rites which they have to perform is, as we have been led to believe, no other than to shake off, frighten, or appease the angry spirit of the slain man, we may safely conjecture that the similar purification of homicides and murderers, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of a fellow-tribesman, had at first the same significance, and that the idea of a moral or spiritual regeneration symbolised by the washing, the fasting, and so on, was merely a later interpretation put upon the old custom by men who had outgrown the primitive modes of thought in which the custom originated.  The conjecture will be confirmed if we can show that savages have actually imposed certain restrictions on the murderer of a fellow-tribesman from a definite fear that he is haunted by the ghost of his victim.  This we can do with regard to the Omahas of North America.  Among these Indians the kinsmen of a murdered man had the right to put the murderer to death, but sometimes they waived their right in consideration of presents which they consented to accept.  When the life of the murderer was spared, he had to observe certain stringent rules for a period which varied from two to four years.  He must walk barefoot, and he might eat no warm food, nor raise his voice, nor look around.  He was compelled to pull his robe about him and to have it tied at the neck even in hot weather; he might not let it hang loose or fly open.  He might not move his hands about, but had to keep them close to his body.  He might not comb his hair, and it might not be blown about by the wind.  When the tribe went out hunting, he was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of mile from the rest of the people “lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind, which might cause damage.”  Only one of his kindred was allowed to remain with him at his tent.  No one wished to eat with him, for they said, “If we eat with him whom Wakanda hates, Wakanda will hate us.”  Sometimes he wandered at night crying and lamenting his offence.  At the end of his long isolation the kinsmen of the murdered man heard his crying and said, “It is enough.  Begone, and walk among the crowd.  Put on moccasins and wear a good robe.”  Here the reason alleged for keeping the murderer at a considerable distance from the hunters gives the clue to all the other restrictions laid on him:  he was haunted and therefore dangerous.  The ancient Greeks believed that the soul of a man who had just been killed was wroth with his slayer and troubled him; wherefore it was needful even for the involuntary homicide to depart from his country for a year until the anger of the dead man had cooled down; nor might the slayer return until sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purification performed.  If his victim chanced to be a foreigner, the homicide had to shun the native country of the dead man as well as his own.  The legend of the matricide Orestes, how he roamed from place to place pursued by the Furies of his murdered mother, and none would sit at meat with him, or take him in, till he had been purified, reflects faithfully the real Greek dread of such as were still haunted by an angry ghost.

6.  Hunters and Fishers tabooed

IN SAVAGE society the hunter and the fisherman have often to observe rules of abstinence and to submit to ceremonies of purification of the same sort as those which are obligatory on the warrior and the manslayer; and though we cannot in all cases perceive the exact purpose which these rules and ceremonies are supposed to serve, we may with some probability assume that, just as the dread of the spirits of his enemies is the main motive for the seclusion and purification of the warrior who hopes to take or has already taken their lives, so the huntsman or fisherman who complies with similar customs is principally actuated by a fear of the spirits of the beasts, birds, or fish which he has killed or intends to kill.  For the savage commonly conceives animals to be endowed with souls and intelligences like his own, and hence he naturally treats them with similar respect.  Just as he attempts to appease the ghosts of the men he has slain, so he essays to propitiate the spirits of the animals he has killed.  These ceremonies of propitiation will be described later on in this work; here we have to deal, first, with the taboos observed by the hunter and the fisherman before or during the hunting and fishing seasons, and, second, with the ceremonies of purification which have to be practised by these men on returning with their booty from a successful chase.

While the savage respects, more or less, the souls of all animals, he treats with particular deference the spirits of such as are either especially useful to him or formidable on account of their size, strength, or ferocity.  Accordingly the hunting and killing of these valuable or dangerous beasts are subject to more elaborate rules and ceremonies than the slaughter of comparatively useless and insignificant creatures.  Thus the Indians of Nootka Sound prepared themselves for catching whales by observing a fast for a week, during which they ate very little, bathed in the water several times a day, sang, and rubbed their bodies, limbs, and faces with shells and bushes till they looked as if they had been severely torn with briars.  They were likewise required to abstain from any commerce with their women for the like period, this last condition being considered indispensable to their success.  A chief who failed to catch a whale has been known to attribute his failure to a breach of chastity on the part of his men.  It should be remarked that the conduct thus prescribed as a preparation for whaling is precisely that which in the same tribe of Indians was required of men about to go on the war-path.  Rules of the same sort are, or were formerly, observed by Malagasy whalers.  For eight days before they went to sea the crew of a whaler used to fast, abstaining from women and liquor, and confessing their most secret faults to each other; and if any man was found to have sinned deeply, he was forbidden to share in the expedition.  In the island of Mabuiag continence was imposed on the people both before they went to hunt the dugong and while the turtles were pairing.  The turtle-season lasts during parts of October and November; and if at that time unmarried persons had sexual intercourse with each other, it was believed that when the canoe approached the floating turtle, the male would separate from the female and both would dive down in different directions.  So at Mowat in New Guinea men have no relation with women when the turtles are coupling, though there is considerable laxity of morals at other times.  In the island of Uap, one of the Caroline group, every fisherman plying his craft lies under a most strict taboo during the whole of the fishing season, which lasts for six or eight weeks.  Whenever he is on shore he must spend all his time in the men’s clubhouse, and under no pretext whatever may he visit his own house or so much as look upon the faces of his wife and womenkind.  Were he but to steal a glance at them, they think that flying fish must inevitably bore out his eyes at night.  If his wife, mother, or daughter brings any gift for him or wishes to talk with him, she must stand down towards the shore with her back turned to the men’s clubhouse.  Then the fisherman may go out and speak to her, or with his back turned to her he may receive what she has brought him; after which he must return at once to his rigorous confinement.  Indeed the fishermen may not even join in dance and song with the other men of the clubhouse in the evening; they must keep to themselves and be silent.  In Mirzapur, when the seed of the silkworm is brought into the house, the Kol or Bhuiyar puts it in a place which has been carefully plastered with holy cowdung to bring good luck.  From that time the owner must be careful to avoid ceremonial impurity.  He must give up cohabitation with his wife; he may not sleep on a bed, nor shave himself, nor cut his nails, nor anoint himself with oil, nor eat food cooked with butter, nor tell lies, nor do anything else that he deems wrong.  He vows to Singarmati Devi that, if the worms are duly born, he will make her an offering.  When the cocoons open and the worms appear, he assembles the women of the house and they sing the same song as at the birth of a baby, and red lead is smeared on the parting of the hair of all the married women of the neighbourhood.  When the worms pair, rejoicings are made as at a marriage.  Thus the silkworms are treated as far as possible like human beings.  Hence the custom which prohibits the commerce of the sexes while the worms are hatching may be only an extension, by analogy, of the rule which is observed by many races, that the husband may not cohabit with his wife during pregnancy and lactation.

In the island of Nias the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them lightly over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game into them.  While they are engaged in digging the pits, they have to observe a number of taboos.  They may not spit, or the game would turn back in disgust from the pits.  They may not laugh, or the sides of the pit would fall in.  They may eat no salt, prepare no fodder for swine, and in the pit they may not scratch themselves, for if they did, the earth would be loosened and would collapse.  And the night after digging the pit they may have no intercourse with a woman, or all their labour would be in vain.

This practice of observing strict chastity as a condition of success in hunting and fishing is very common among rude races; and the instances of it which have been cited render it probable that the rule is always based on a superstition rather than on a consideration of the temporary weakness which a breach of the custom may entail on the hunter or fisherman.  In general it appears to be supposed that the evil effect of incontinence is not so much that it weakens him, as that, for some reason or other, it offends the animals, who in consequence will not suffer themselves to be caught.  A Carrier Indian of British Columbia used to separate from his wife for a full month before he set traps for bears, and during this time he might not drink from the same vessel as his wife, but had to use a special cup made of birch bark.  The neglect of these precautions would cause the game to escape after it had been snared.  But when he was about to snare martens, the period of continence was cut down to ten days.

An examination of all the many cases in which the savage bridles his passions and remains chaste from motives of superstition, would be instructive, but I cannot attempt it now.  I will only add a few miscellaneous examples of the custom before passing to the ceremonies of purification which are observed by the hunter and fisherman after the chase and the fishing are over.  The workers in the salt-pans near Siphoum, in Laos, must abstain from all sexual relations at the place where they are at work; and they may not cover their heads nor shelter themselves under an umbrella from the burning rays of the sun.  Among the Kachins of Burma the ferment used in making beer is prepared by two women, chosen by lot, who during the three days that the process lasts may eat nothing acid and may have no conjugal relations with their husbands; otherwise it is supposed that the beer would be sour.  Among the Masai honey-wine is brewed by a man and a woman who live in a hut set apart for them till the wine is ready for drinking.  But they are strictly forbidden to have sexual intercourse with each other during this time; it is deemed essential that they should be chaste for two days before they begin to brew and for the whole of the six days that the brewing lasts.  The Masai believe that were the couple to commit a breach of chastity, not only would the wine be undrinkable but the bees which made the honey would fly away.  Similarly they require that a man who is making poison should sleep alone and observe other taboos which render him almost an outcast.  The Wandorobbo, a tribe of the same region as the Masai, believe that the mere presence of a woman in the neighbourhood of a man who is brewing poison would deprive the poison of its venom, and that the same thing would happen if the wife of the poison-maker were to commit adultery while her husband was brewing the poison.  In this last case it is obvious that a rationalistic explanation of the taboo is impossible.  How could the loss of virtue in the poison be a physical consequence of the loss of virtue in the poison-maker’s wife?  Clearly the effect which the wife’s adultery is supposed to have on the poison is a case of sympathetic magic; her misconduct sympathetically affects her husband and his work at a distance.  We may, accordingly, infer with some confidence that the rule of continence imposed on the poison-maker himself is also a simple case of sympathetic magic, and not, as a civilised reader might be disposed to conjecture, a wise precaution designed to prevent him from accidentally poisoning his wife.

Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa, when the site of a new village has been chosen and the houses are building, all the married people are forbidden to have conjugal relations with each other.  If it were discovered that any couple had broken this rule, the work of building would immediately be stopped, and another site chosen for the village.  For they think that a breach of chastity would spoil the village which was growing up, that the chief would grow lean and perhaps die, and that the guilty woman would never bear another child.  Among the Chams of Cochin-China, when a dam is made or repaired on a river for the sake of irrigation, the chief who offers the traditional sacrifices and implores the protection of the deities on the work has to stay all the time in a wretched hovel of straw, taking no part in the labour, and observing the strictest continence; for the people believe that a breach of his chastity would entail a breach of the dam.  Here, it is plain, there can be no idea of maintaining the mere bodily vigour of the chief for the accomplishment of a task in which he does not even bear a hand.

If the taboos or abstinences observed by hunters and fishermen before and during the chase are dictated, as we have seen reason to believe, by superstitious motives, and chiefly by a dread of offending or frightening the spirits of the creatures whom it is proposed to kill, we may expect that the restraints imposed after the slaughter has been perpetrated will be at least as stringent, the slayer and his friends having now the added fear of the angry ghosts of his victims before their eyes.  Whereas on the hypothesis that the abstinences in question, including those from food, drink, and sleep, are merely salutary precautions for maintaining the men in health and strength to do their work, it is obvious that the observance of these abstinences or taboos after the work is done, that is, when the game is killed and the fish caught, must be wholly superfluous, absurd, and inexplicable.  But as I shall now show, these taboos often continue to be enforced or even increased in stringency after the death of the animals, in other words, after the hunter or fisher has accomplished his object by making his bag or landing his fish.  The rationalistic theory of them therefore breaks down entirely; the hypothesis of superstition is clearly the only one open to us.

Among the Inuit or Esquimaux of Bering Strait “the dead bodies of various animals must be treated very carefully by the hunter who obtains them, so that their shades may not be offended and bring bad luck or even death upon him or his people.”  Hence the Unalit hunter who has had a hand in the killing of a white whale, or even has helped to take one from the net, is not allowed to do any work for the next four days, that being the time during which the shade or ghost of the whale is supposed to stay with its body.  At the same time no one in the village may use any sharp or pointed instrument for fear of wounding the whale’s shade, which is believed to be hovering invisible in the neighbourhood; and no loud noise may be made lest it should frighten or offend the ghost.  Whoever cuts a whale’s body with an iron axe will die.  Indeed the use of all iron instruments is forbidden in the village during these four days.

These same Esquimaux celebrate a great annual festival in December when the bladders of all the seals, whales, walrus, and white bears that have been killed in the year are taken into the assembly-house of the village.  They remain there for several days, and so long as they do so the hunters avoid all intercourse with women, saying that if they failed in that respect the shades of the dead animals would be offended.  Similarly among the Aleuts of Alaska the hunter who had struck a whale with a charmed spear would not throw again, but returned at once to his home and separated himself from his people in a hut specially constructed for the purpose, where he stayed for three days without food or drink, and without touching or looking upon a woman.  During this time of seclusion he snorted occasionally in imitation of the wounded and dying whale, in order to prevent the whale which he had struck from leaving the coast.  On the fourth day he emerged from his seclusion and bathed in the sea, shrieking in a hoarse voice and beating the water with his hands.  Then, taking with him a companion, he repaired to that part of the shore where he expected to find the whale stranded.  If the beast was dead, he at once cut out the place where the death-wound had been inflicted.  If the whale was not dead, he again returned to his home and continued washing himself until the whale died.  Here the hunter’s imitation of the wounded whale is probably intended by means of homoeopathic magic to make the beast die in earnest.  Once more the soul of the grim polar bear is offended if the taboos which concern him are not observed.  His soul tarries for three days near the spot where it left his body, and during these days the Esquimaux are particularly careful to conform rigidly to the laws of taboo, because they believe that punishment overtakes the transgressor who sins against the soul of a bear far more speedily than him who sins against the souls of the sea-beasts.

When the Kayans have shot one of the dreaded Bornean panthers, they are very anxious about the safety of their souls, for they think that the soul of a panther is almost more powerful than their own.  Hence they step eight times over the carcase of the dead beast reciting the spell, “Panther, thy soul under my soul.”  On returning home they smear themselves, their dogs, and their weapons with the blood of fowls in order to calm their souls and hinder them from fleeing away; for, being themselves fond of the flesh of fowls, they ascribe the same taste to their souls.  For eight days afterwards they must bathe by day and by night before going out again to the chase.  Among the Hottentots, when a man has killed a lion, leopard, elephant, or rhinoceros, he is esteemed a great hero, but he has to remain at home quite idle for three days, during which his wife may not come near him; she is also enjoined to restrict herself to a poor diet and to eat no more than is barely necessary to keep her in health.  Similarly the Lapps deem it the height of glory to kill a bear, which they consider the king of beasts.  Nevertheless, all the men who take part in the slaughter are regarded as unclean, and must live by themselves for three days in a hut or tent made specially for them, where they cut up and cook the bear’s carcase.  The reindeer which brought in the carcase on a sledge may not be driven by a woman for a whole year; indeed, according to one account, it may not be used by anybody for that period.  Before the men go into the tent where they are to be secluded, they strip themselves of the garments they had worn in killing the bear, and their wives spit the red juice of alder bark in their faces.  They enter the tent not by the ordinary door but by an opening at the back.  When the bear’s flesh has been cooked, a portion of it is sent by the hands of two men to the women, who may not approach the men’s tent while the cooking is going on.  The men who convey the flesh to the women pretend to be strangers bringing presents from a foreign land; the women keep up the pretence and promise to tie red threads round the legs of the strangers.  The bear’s flesh may not be passed in to the women through the door of their tent, but must be thrust in at a special opening made by lifting up the hem of the tent-cover.  When the three days’ seclusion is over and the men are at liberty to return to their wives, they run, one after the other, round the fire, holding the chain by which pots are suspended over it.  This is regarded as a form of purification; they may now leave the tent by the ordinary door and rejoin the women.  But the leader of the party must still abstain from cohabitation with his wife for two days more.

Again, the Caffres are said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an enormous serpent resembling it; “and being influenced by certain superstitious notions they even fear to kill it.  The man who happened to put it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a running stream of water during the day for several weeks together; and no beast whatever was allowed to be slaughtered at the hamlet to which he belonged, until this duty had been fully performed.  The body of the snake was then taken and carefully buried in a trench, dug close to the cattle-fold, where its remains, like those of a chief, were henceforward kept perfectly undisturbed.  The period of penance, as in the case of mourning for the dead, is now happily reduced to a few days.”  In Madras it is considered a great sin to kill a cobra.  When this has happened, the people generally burn the body of the serpent, just as they burn the bodies of human beings.  The murderer deems himself polluted for three days.  On the second day milk is poured on the remains of the cobra.  On the third day the guilty wretch is free from pollution.

In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of superstition.  Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of customs are based may be assumed to be substantially the same.  Those ideas, if I am right, are the respect which the savage feels for the souls of beasts, especially valuable or formidable beasts, and the dread which he entertains of their vengeful ghosts.  Some confirmation of this view may be drawn from the ceremonies observed by fishermen of Annam when the carcase of a whale is washed ashore.  These fisherfolk, we are told, worship the whale on account of the benefits they derive from it.  There is hardly a village on the sea-shore which has not its small pagoda, containing the bones, more or less authentic, of a whale.  When a dead whale is washed ashore, the people accord it a solemn burial.  The man who first caught sight of it acts as chief mourner, performing the rites which as chief mourner and heir he would perform for a human kinsman.  He puts on all the garb of woe, the straw hat, the white robe with long sleeves turned inside out, and the other paraphernalia of full mourning.  As next of kin to the deceased he presides over the funeral rites.  Perfumes are burned, sticks of incense kindled, leaves of gold and silver scattered, crackers let off.  When the flesh has been cut off and the oil extracted, the remains of the carcase are buried in the sand.  After wards a shed is set up and offerings are made in it.  Usually some time after the burial the spirit of the dead whale takes possession of some person in the village and declares by his mouth whether he is a male or a female.