The Laws of Taboo

The laws of taboo (tapu, in Melanesia tambu) have developed, especially in Polynesia, in so partial a fashion, that they have passed beyond the limits of a religious ban, and hamper all free movement as much as does caste among the Indian races. Only the law of taboo does not merely divide mankind by impassable gaps, it simply cuts the entire world in two, and that so sharply that the whole excluded portion of mankind was constantly in danger of missing the sacred boundary. Everything on earth, with the exception of men, falls into the two classes of moa or sacred, and noa or common. Everything upon which the power of the taboo is conceived as ipso facto resting belongs to the first, since it is the property of the gods and of privileged men, or always reserved for these. To the second belongs whatever is taboo-free, and so allowed to be used by all men.

But in addition to this, taboo can be transferred by mere external contact. It is nevertheless possible to enfranchise by certain ceremonies that which has been tabooed, and thus also to set men free from it. If, in consequence of this, the political and social importance of the notion of taboo disguises its religious nucleus, this exists none the less. We have here before us a conception which has grown out from the religious sphere, the use of which in the art of government early secured it an extension into the political domain, which is no less subtle than unscrupulous. Besides the gods, the forces of taboo are also at the disposal of men who are possessed of the god-like spirit, though, as it appears, not in the same degree. Every one else and almost all women were excluded from it. We may easily see that among these races who bring the divine and the human, into extremely close relations, the operations of taboo, originally a divine force, must penetrate intimately all earthly conditions; so intimately, indeed, that in unhistoric minds the idea might easily become established that taboo was in reality invented only for social and political objects. In any case it is very easy to be misled.

Samoan warrior in tapa-clothing. (From the Godeffroy Album).
[Click on image for higher resolution]

By means of taboo personal property is secured; at one time that which belongs to a noble, and therefore tabooed, person cannot be used by others; at another time he, as the conveyer of taboo, is in a position to taboo the property of others. It works beneficently if, under fear of a bad harvest, the crop is tabooed with a view of preventing famine, until such time as the chief removes the taboo from the fields. In Tonga, as well as in Hawaii, it was the custom, when great festivities were celebrated with immoderate extravagance, to lay a taboo on certain produce;. every landowner can in this way protect his own piece of ground from persons lower in rank; or even such fishing-places as are reckoned private property.

The fact that taboo is so frequently laid upon articles of food, is due to the further reason that everything connected with the tutelary deity of a tribe in animal form - the atua - must not be touched by those that belonged to the tribe. The soul-eating of the gods, a religious method of expressing wonder at the enigmatic process of digestion, plays equally a part in this, and, lastly, selfishness is not without its effect. Thus, in the western islands, there were forests, roads, beaches, which were tambu. Undoubtedly, in the later times of religious corruption, taboo was shamelessly misused for the selfish objects of priests and chiefs. Thus once upon a time King Kamehameha I, who more than anyone else profited by this power to serve his political ends, laid a taboo on a mountain near Honolulu, because he took the quartz crystals found there for diamonds. When Hawaii in 1840 tabooed for the space of five years all the herds of oxen which were being unmercifully decimated, taboo became a measure of government. The old sacred taboo becomes a police regulation. Formerly its influence cannot have been so extensive, since divinity was limited to the kings; now it has been spread over all the business of life.

Even where the custom itself has become remote from its religious origin, the penalties for breach of taboo have retained a religious character. Thus, too, the strongest trespasses against taboo obviously lay in the religious direction. Desecrations of temples were the greatest sins. The penalties, indeed, fall mostly upon the lower classes and the women; for persons of rank there are means of averting ill consequences. The old faith is falling to pieces; while it still stood unbroken Polynesian religion often demanded what was impossible. In Tahiti nobody might sleep with his feet turned towards the mawai; in New Zealand the mere looking at a corpse involved taboo. Sick people were tabooed because the illness was caused by an atua, new-born children because they belonged to the gods, women in child-bed on account of the child, and corpses because the soul hovered round them. Whoever had taken up a dead man might not touch food before the priests had made atonement for him by reciting the hymn of creation.

Thus breaches of taboo could easily be committed by inexperienced Europeans, and therein lay a main cause of serious conflicts. Let us just imagine how, from the spiritual and secular centres of these races, taboo spread as a burdensome and threatening epidemic. In New Zealand it could even be incurred by the naming of any article belonging to a person of rank. If in any village a strong taboo prevailed, owing to the tattooing of some lads, the whole village was tabooed. In Tahiti, when a man of rank fell ill, the whole district of which he was the head was declared taboo by the priests. Universal silence must reign, no boat might sail, no food be cooked, no fire lighted. Taboo enters into the life of the lower classes in so burdensome a fashion as to produce a universal oppression, which the priests and chiefs well understood how to turn to political account.

Ear-button and war-amulet of whale tooth, from the Marquesas - approx. 90mm top to bottom. (Christy Collection.)

Variations of detail indicate that here and there the inconvenience was mitigated by a tacit understanding. Taboo-free persons were required to feed those under taboo, and for this purpose slaves captured in war were very useful, since having passed out of the authority of their own tribal tutelary spirit, and not come under the new one, they were incapable of violating a taboo. There must also be some means of removing a taboo, since otherwise it would spread by contagion until all the free-will .and unconstrained action of a people was stifled. The removal involves various ceremonies. Many of its effects, indeed, are indelible, and are interwoven with the life of generations to come, even when they are no longer understood. Thus the names of dead chiefs, the spots where they have died, large burial-places, are tabooed; which explains why in even the more thickly-peopled islands many uninhabited tracts are found. Christianity, too, has been willing to make use of taboo to enforce its requirement of humble and obedient hearts.