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 thenceforth considers that particular meat his yât-tūb, 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 yat-tub, 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 Pūluga would punish severely any person who might be guilty of eating his yat-tub, either by causing his skin to peel off, or by turning his hair white, and flaying him alive.1 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. The members of a totem clan are commonly forbidden to eat the particular animal or plant whose name they bear. 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.1 Yet, however general, prohibitions 5 of this kind cannot be said to be a universal characteristic of totemism. The South Australian Narrinyeri, for instance, do not abstain from eating their totem animals 1 Man, Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 354. 2 Turner, Samoa, p. 17 sq. 3 Frazer, Totemism, p. 7 sqq. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 467. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 53. Dorsey, 'Omaha Sociology,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. iii. 225, 231. Idem, Siouan Folk-Lore,' in American Antiquarian, vii. 107. 5 Frazer, Totemism, p. 19. if these are good for food; though it may be that this and kindred cases represent totemism in a state of decay. 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.2 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; but this explanation is hardly relevant to harmless reptiles, which are likewise in some cases forbidden food.* 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.5 The Navahoes of New Mexico "must never touch fish, and nothing will induce them to taste one." The Mongols consider them unclean animals. The South Siberian Kachinzes are said to refrain from them because they believe that "the evil principle lives in the water and eats fish."8 The Kafirs on the North-Western frontier of India "detest fish, though their rivers abound in them." The same aversion is common in the South 17. 9 1 Taplin, in Woods, op. cit. p. 63. 3 Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 130 (Berembun). Schurtz, op. cit. p. 22. 4 Leviticus, xi. 29 sq. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 83. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 430, 432. 6 3 Stephen, Navajo,' in American Anthropologist, vi. 357. 7 der Prejevalsky, op. cit. i. 56. 8 von Strümpell, Der Volksstamm Katschinzen,' in Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Leipzig, 1875, P. 23. Fosberry, 'Some of the Mountain Tribes of the N.W. Frontier of India,' in Jour. Ethn. Soc. London, N. S. i. 2 1 3 African tribes and among most Hamitic peoples of East Africa; 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; 3 and the Hebrews were prohibited from eating all fish that have not fins and scales. It is curious to note that various peoples who detest fish also abstain from fowl.5 The Navahoes are strictly forbidden to eat the wild turkey with which their forests abound; and the Mongols' dislike of fowl is so great that one of Prejevalsky's guides nearly turned sick on seeing him eat boiled duck. Some peoples have a great aversion to eggs, which are said to be excrements, and therefore unfit for food. There may be a similar reason for the abstinence from milk among peoples who have domesticated animals able to supply them with it. The Dravidian aborigines of the hills of Central 10 1 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). 2 Hildebrandt, Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. x. 378. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, i. 155 (Somals, Gallas). Schurtz, op. cit. p. 23. Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 15. Plutarch, De superstitione, 10. Leviticus, xi. 10 sqq. 5 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, 8 6 p. 179 (Danakil); Skeat and Blagden, 6 Stephen, in American Anthropologist, vi. 357. 7 Prejevalsky, op. cit. i. 56. 8 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. Reichard, Die Wanjamuesi,' in Zeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, xxiv. 321. Hildebrandt, 'Wakamba und ihre Nachbarn,' in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. x. 378. 10 See Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 484. India, who never use milk, are expressly said to regard it as an excrement.' The ancient Caribs had a horror of eggs and never drank milk. The Ashantees are "forbidden eggs by the fetish, and cannot be persuaded to taste milk." 3 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. The Dyaks of Borneo, the Javanese, and the Malays abstain from milk. To the Chinese milk and butter are insupportably odious. 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 eaglehawks, and the reason assigned for it is that this bird feeds on the bodies of dead natives. 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. In some districts of Madagascar, according to Drury, the eating of pork was accounted a very contemptible thing." It is, or was, abstained from by the Jakuts of Siberia, the Votyaks of the Government of Vologda, and the Lapps." The disgust for pork has likewise been met with in many American tribes. The Koniagas will eat almost any digestible substance except pork. The Navahoes of New Mexico abominate it "as if they were the devoutest of Hebrews"; 13 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 12 10 1 Crooke, Things Indian, p. 92. 2 Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles, ii. 389. 3 Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 319. Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika, i. 303, 321. 5 Low, op. cit. p. 267. 6 Huc, Travels in Tartary, i. 281. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 484. 7 Spencer and Gillen, Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612. Northern 8 Fritsch, Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika, P. 339. Kropf, op. cit. p. 102 (Kafirs). 9 Drury, Madagascar, p. 143. 10 Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, i. 363. 11 Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 501. 12 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 75. 13 Stephen, in American Anthropologist, vi. 357. In its habits, because it is the scavenger of the town.' 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 Shúkapa, ‘swine eater,' is the most opprobrious epithet that they can use to brand us with; they commonly subjoin Akanggàpa, 'eater of dunghill fowls.' Both together signify filthy, helpless animals.' 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. 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.' 3 1 Matthews, 'Study of Ethics among the Lower Races,' in Jour. American Folk-Lore, xii. 5. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 132 sqq. 3 Schomburgk, in Jour. Roy. Geograph. Soc. London, xv. 29 sq. > 4 The Kafirs, also, abstain 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. |
