7


THE GOLDEN BOUGH

Sir James George Frazer



TABOOED PERSONS


§ 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 most not only be
guarded, he most 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 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 band with the
back of his own, then snaps his fingers; afterwards he lays the palm of his band 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 gel 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 band 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.’


§ 4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed.

 When we see that in primitive society the names of mere commoners, whether alive or dead, are
matters of such anxious care, we need not be surprised that great precautions should be taken to
guard from harm the names of sacred kings and priests. Thus the name of the king of Dahomey is
always kept secret, lest the knowledge of it should enable some evil-minded person to do him a
mischief. The appellations by which the different kings of Dahomey have been known to Europeans are
not their true names, but mere titles or what the natives call ‘strong names.’ Tile natives seem to
think that no harm comes of such titles being known, since they are not, like the birth-names,
vitally connected with their owners. In the Galla kingdom of Ghera the birth-name of the sovereign
may not be pronounced by a subject under pain of death, and common words which resemble it in sound
are changed for others. Among the Bahima of Central Africa, when the king dies, his name is
abolished from the language, and if his name was that of an animal, a new appellation must be found
for the creature at once. For example, the king is often called a lion; hence at the death of a
king named Lion a new name for lions in general has to be coined. In Siam it used to be difficult
to ascertain the king’s real name, since it was carefully kept secret from fear of sorcery; any one
who mentioned it was clapped into gaol. The king might only be referred to under certain
high-sounding titles, such as ‘the august,’ ‘the perfect,’ ‘the supreme,’ ‘the great emperor,’
‘descendant of the angels,’ and so on. In Burma it was accounted an impiety of the deepest dye to
mention the name of the reigning sovereign; Burmese subjects, even when they were far from their
country, could not be prevailed upon to do so; after his accession to the throne the king was known
by his royal titles only.

Among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his tribe or the names of the
progenitors of the chief, so far as he can remember them; nor will he utter common words which
coincide with or merely resemble in sound tabooed names. In the tribe of the Dwandwes there was a
chief called Langa, which means the sun; hence the name of the sun was changed from langa to gala,
and so remains to this day, though Langa died more than a hundred years ago. Again, in the Xnumayo
tribe the word meaning ‘to herd cattle’ was changed from alusa or ayusa to kagesa, because u-Mayusi
was the name of the chief. Besides these taboos, which were observed by each tribe separately, alt
the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the king who reigned over the whole nation. Hence,
for example, when Panda was king of Zululand, the word for ‘a root of a tree,’ which is impando,
was changed to nxabo. Again, the word for ‘lies’ or ‘slander’ was altered from amacebo to amakwata,
because amacebo contains a syllable of the name of the famous King Cetchwayo. These substitutions
are not, however, carried so far by the men as by the women, who omit every sound even remotely
resembling one that occurs in a tabooed name. At the king’s kraal, indeed, it is sometimes
difficult to understand the speech of the royal wives, as they treat in this fashion the names not
only of the king and his forefathers, but even of his and their brothers back for generations. When
to these tribal and national taboos we add those family taboos on the names of connexions by
marriage which have been already described, we can easily understand how it comes about that in
Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself, and that the women have a considerable
vocabulary of their own. Members, too, of one family may be debarred from using words employed by
those of another. The women of one kraal, for instance, may call a hyena by its ordinary name;
those of the next may use the common substitute; while in a third the substitute may also be
unlawful and another term may have to be invented to supply its place. Hence the Zulu language at
the present day almost presents the appearance of being a double one; indeed, for multitudes of
things it possesses three or four synonyms, which through the blending of tribes are known all over
Zululand.

In Madagascar a similar custom everywhere prevails and has resulted, as among the Zulus in
producing certain dialectic differences in the speech of the various tribes. There are no family
names in Madagascar, and almost every personal name is drawn from the language of daily life and
signifies some common object or action or quality, such as a bird, a beast, a tree, a plant, a
colour, and so on. Now, whenever one of these common words forms the name or part of the name of
the chief of the tribe, it becomes sacred and may no longer be used in its ordinary signification
as the name of a tree, an insect, or what not. Hence a new name for the object must be invented to
replace the one which has been discarded. It is easy to conceive what confusion and uncertainty may
thus be introduced into a language when it is spoken by many little local tribes each ruled by a
petty chief with his own sacred name. Yet there are tribes and people who submit to this tyranny of
words as their fathers did before them from time immemorial. The inconvenient results of the custom
are especially marked on the western coast of the island, where, on account of the large number of
independent chieftains, the names of things, places, and rivers have suffered so many changes that
confusion often arises, for when once common words have been banned by the chiefs the natives will
not acknowledge to have ever known them in their old sense.

But it is not merely the names of living kings and chiefs which are tabooed in Madagascar; the
names of dead sovereigns are equally under a ban, at least in some parts of the island. Thus among
the Sakalavas, when a king has died, the nobles and people meet in council round the dead body and
solemnly choose a new name by which the deceased monarch shall be henceforth known. After the new
name has been adopted, the old name by which the king was known during his life becomes sacred and
may not be pronounced under pain of death. Further, words in the common language which bear any
resemblance to the forbidden name also become sacred and have to be replaced by others. Persons who
uttered these forbidden words were looked on not only as grossly rude, but even as felons; they had
committed a capital crime. However, these changes of vocabulary are confined to the district over
which the deceased king reigned; in the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be
employed in the old sense.

The sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia naturally extended also to their
names, which on the primitive view are hardly separable from the personality of their owners. Hence
in Polynesia we find the same systematic prohibition to utter the names of chiefs or of common
words resembling them which we have already met with in Zululand and Madagascar. Thus in New
Zealand the name of a chief is held so sacred that, when it happens to be a common word, it may not
be used in the language, and another has to be found to replace it. For example, a chief to the
southward of East Cape bore the name of Maripi, which signified a knife, hence a new word (nekra)
for knife was introduced, and the old one became obsolete. Elsewhere the word for water (wai) had
to be changed, because it chanced to be the name of the chief, and would have been desecrated by
being applied to the vulgar fluid as well as to his sacred person. This taboo naturally produced a
plentiful crop of synonyms in the Maori language, and travellers newly arrived in the country were
sometimes puzzled at finding the same things called by quite different names in neighbouring
tribes. When a king comes to the throne in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name
in sound must be changed for others. In former times, if any man were so rash as to disregard this
custom and to use the forbidden words, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to
death. But the changes thus introduced were only temporary; on the death of the king the new words
fell into disuse, and the original ones were revived. In ancient Greece the names of the priests
and other, high officials who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might not
be uttered in their lifetime. To pronounce them was a legal offence. The pedant in Lucian tells how
he fell in with these august personages haling along to the police court a ribald fellow who had
dared to name them, though well he knew that ever since their consecration it was unlawful to do
so, because they had become anonymous, having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred
titles. From two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the names of the priests were
committed to the depths of the sea; probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, which
were then thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis. The intention doubtless was to keep the
names a profound secret; and how could that be done more surely than by sinking them in the sea?
what human vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim depths of the green water? A
clearer illustration of the confusion between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name
and its material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised Greece.


In: Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. London: MacMillan & Co
Ltd., 1960. 266-271, 338-342.