3 from the domestic swine, though they eat the wild hog.1 Some writers maintain that pork has been prohibited on the ground that it is prejudicial to health in hot countries;2 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. Dr. 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. In Greece the pig was used in purificatory ceremonies. 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. The heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine's flesh once a year." 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; 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. 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 or on account of their resemblance to men. Various peoples refrain from 277, 593. 5 Lucian, De dea Syria, 54. 6 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 290. Cf. Isaiah, Ixv. 4, and lxvi. 3, 17, where this sacrifice is alluded to as a heathen abomination. 7 Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 8. Aelian, De natura animalium, x. 16. 8 Herodotus, ii. 47. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 8. 9 Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 430 sqq. St. John, op. cit. i. 186 (Land Dyaks). 1 monkey's flesh; and European travellers mention their own instinctive repugnance to it and their aversion to shooting monkeys. The Indians of Lower California will eat any animal, except men and monkeys, "the latter because they so much resemble the former." 3 According to an ancient writer quoted by Porphyry, the Egyptian priests rejected those animals which "verged to a similitude to the human form." 4 The Kafirs say that elephants are forbidden food because their intelligence resembles that of men." 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." 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 slaughterhouse and cook-room."7 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. In the 4 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. Among the Bechuanas in South Africa dogs and tame cats are not eaten, though wild cats are. 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. Herodotus says that the Libyans would not taste the flesh of the cow, though they ate oxen; and the same rule prevailed among the Egyptians and Phoenicians, who would sooner have partaken of human flesh than of the meat of a cow." The eating of cow's flesh is prohibited by the law of Brahmanism. 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."7 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." It is said in the Divine Panorama' that he who partakes of beef or dog's flesh will be punished by the deity." In Japan neither cattle nor sheep were in former days killed for food; 10 and in the rural districts many people still think it wrong to eat beef." In Rome the slaughter of 6 Institutes of Vishnu, li. 3. 7 Rajendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, i. 354 8 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, ii. 187. Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, ii. 376. 10 Reed, Japan, i. 61. 11 Griffis, Mikado's Empire, p. 472. a labouring ox was in olden days punished with excommunication; and at Athens and in Peloponnesus it was prohibited even on penalty of death. 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. These prohibitions are no doubt to some extent expressions of kindly feelings towards the animals to which they refer." A Dinka is said to be fonder of his cattle than of his wife and children; 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. 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 ;7 and agricultural races are naturally anxious to preserve the animal which is used for work on the field. With reference to the Egyptian and Phoenician 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. 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. Moreover, domestic animals are frequently regarded as sacred in consequence of their utility, and for that reason also abstained from. The Dinka pay a 1 Pliny, Historia naturalis, viii. 70. 2 Varro, De re rustica, ii. 5. 3 sq. Aelian, Varia historia, v. 14. 3 Mariti, Travels through Cyprus, i. 35; Schweinfurth, op. cit. i. 164. 7 Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen SüdAfrika's, p. 86; Kropf, op. cit. p. 102 (Kafirs). Merker, Die Masai, p. 169. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 297. 8 Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 11. 9 Wilkinson, in Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, ii. 72 sq. n. 7. kind of reverence to their cattle.' In Egypt, according to Herodotus, the cow was sacred to Isis. In India she has been the object of a special worship.3 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.1 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. 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. Some tribes of the Malay Peninsula refuse to eat the flesh of elephants under the pretext that it would occasion sickness.7 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." 8 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. In Russia veal is considered by many to be very unwholesome food, and is entirely rejected by pious people.10 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 1 Schweinfurth, op. cit. i. 163. 2 Herodotus, ii. 41. 3 Barth, Keligions of India, p. 264. Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 233. 5 Cf. Schurtz, op. cit. p. 23. 6 Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, i. 185. 7 Skeat and Blagden, op. cit. i. 132. 8 Hodson, The "Genna" amongst the Tribes of Assam,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 98. 9 Plutarch, De superstitione, 10. 10 Erman, Reise um die Erde, i. 515. |
