§ 2. Not to see the Sun
[Sacred persons not allowed to see the sun.]
The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter "was looked upon as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon." 50 The Japanese would not allow that the Mikado should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun was not thought worthy to shine on his head. 51 The Indians of Granada, in South America, "kept those who were to be rulers or commanders, whether men or women, locked up for several years when they were children, some of them seven years, and this so close that they were not to see the sun, for if they should happen to see it they forfeited their lordship, eating certain sorts of food appointed; and those who were their keepers at certain times went into their retreat or prison and scourged them severely." 52 Thus, for example, the heir to the throne of Bogota, who was not the son but the sister's son of the king, had to undergo a rigorous training from his infancy: he lived in complete retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor converse with a woman: he was surrounded by guards who observed his conduct and noted all his actions: if he broke a single one of the rules laid down for him, he was deemed infamous and forfeited all his rights to the throne. 53 So, too, the heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso, before succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or light. 54 The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a month without seeing light. 55 On the day when a Brahman student of the Veda took a bath, to signify that the time of his studentship was at an end, he entered a cow-shed before sunrise, hung over the door a skin with the hair inside, and sat there; on that day the sun should not shine upon him. 56
[Tabooed persons not allowed to see the sun; certain persons forbidden to see fire.]
Again, women after childbirth and their offspring are more or less tabooed all the world over; hence in Corea the rays of the sun are rigidly excluded from both mother and child for a period of twenty-one or a hundred days, according to their rank, after the birth has taken place. 57 Among some of the tribes on the north-west coast of New Guinea a woman may not leave the house for months after childbirth. When she does go out, she must cover her head with a hood or mat; for if the sun were to shine upon her, it is thought that one of her male relations would die. 58 Again, mourners are everywhere taboo; accordingly in mourning the Ainos of Japan wear peculiar caps in order that the sun may not shine upon their heads. 59 During a solemn fast of three days the Indians of Costa Rica eat no salt, speak as little as possible, light no fires, and stay strictly indoors, or if they go out during the day they carefully cover themselves from the light of the sun, believing that exposure to the sun's rays would turn them black. 60 On Yule Night it has been customary in parts of Sweden from time immemorial to go on pilgrimage, whereby people learn many secret things and know what is to happen in the coming year. As a preparation for this pilgrimage, "some secrete themselves for three days previously in a dark cellar, so as to be shut out altogether from the light of heaven. Others retire at an early hour of the preceding morning to some out-of-the-way place, such as a hay-loft, where they bury themselves in the hay, that they may neither see nor hear any living creature; and here they remain, in silence and fasting, until after sundown; whilst there are those who think it sufficient if they rigidly abstain from food on the day before commencing their wanderings. During this period of probation a man ought not to see fire, but should this have happened, he must strike a light with flint and steel, whereby the evil that would otherwise have ensued will be obviated." 61 During the sixteen days that a Pima Indian is undergoing purification for killing an Apache he may not see a blazing fire. 62
[The story of Prince Sunless.]
Acarnanian peasants tell of a handsome prince called Sunless, who would die if he saw the sun. So he lived in an underground palace on the site of the ancient Oeniadae, but at night he came forth and crossed the river to visit a famous enchantress who dwelt in a castle on the further bank. She was loth to part with him every night long before the sun was up, and as he turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties to linger, she hit upon the device of cutting the throats of all the cocks in the neighbourhood. So the prince, whose ear had learned to expect the shrill clarion of the birds as the signal of the growing light, tarried too long, and hardly had he reached the ford when the sun rose over the Aetolian mountains, and its fatal beams fell on him before he could regain his dark abode. 63
Notes:
Footnote 1: (return)
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 44.
Footnote 2: (return)
H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 142; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique-Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 29.
Footnote 3: (return)
Manuscrit Ramirez, Histoire de l'origine des Indiens, publié par D. Charnay (Paris, 1903), p. 108; J. de Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk. vii. chap. 22, vol. ii. p. 505 of E. Grimston's translation, edited by (Sir) Clements R. Markham (Hakluyt Society, London, 1880).
Footnote 4: (return)
Memorials of the Empire of Japon in the XVI. and XVII. Centuries, edited by T. Rundall (Hakluyt Society, London, 1850), pp. 14, 141; B. Varenius, Descriptio regni Japoniae et Siam (Cambridge, 1673), p. 11; Caron, "Account of Japan," in John Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels (London, 1808-1814), vii. 613; Kaempfer, "History of Japan," in id. vii. 716.
Footnote 5: (return)
W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), iii. 102 sq.; Captain James Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 329.
Footnote 6: (return)
A. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte (Leipsic, 1860), iii. 81.
Footnote 7: (return)
Athenaeus, xii. 8, p. 514 c.
Footnote 8: (return)
The Voiages and Travels of John Struys (London, 1684), p. 30.
Footnote 9: (return)
Rev. J. Roscoe, "Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 62, 67; id., The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 154 sq. Compare L. Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa (London, 1898), p. 445 note: "Before horses had been introduced into Uganda the king and his mother never walked, but always went about perched astride the shoulders of a slave—a most ludicrous sight. In this way they often travelled hundreds of miles." The use both of horses and of chariots by royal personages may often have been intended to prevent their sacred feet from touching the ground.
Footnote 10: (return)
E. Torday et T.A. Joyce, Les Bushongo (Brussels, 1910), p. 61.
Footnote 11: (return)
Northcote W. Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria (London, 1913), i. 57 sq.
Footnote 12: (return)
Satapatha Brâhmana, translated by Julius Eggeling, Part iii. (Oxford, 1894) pp. 81, 91, 92, 102, 128 sq. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xli.).
Footnote 13: (return)
A.W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 172.
Footnote 14: (return)
Letter of Missionary Krick, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xxvi. (1854) pp. 86-88.
Footnote 15: (return)
Pechuel-Loesche, "Indiscretes aus Loango," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, x. (1878) pp. 29 sq.
Footnote 16: (return)
Edgar Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. 70.
Footnote 17: (return)
M.C. Schadee, "Het familieleven en familierecht der Dajaks van Landak en Tajan," Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indié, lxiii. (1910) p. 433.
Footnote 18: (return)
James Adair, History of the American Indians (London, 1775), p. 382; Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (London, 1830), p. 123. As to the taboos to which warriors are subject see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 157 sqq.
Footnote 19: (return)
Etienne Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos (Saigon, 1885), p. 26.
Footnote 20: (return)
Die gestritgelte Rockenphilosophie,5 (Chemnitz, 1759), pp. 586 sqq.
Footnote 21: (return)
Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 364, 370 sqq., 629; id., Across Australia (London, 1912), ii. 280, 285 sq.
Footnote 22: (return)
C.G. Seligmann, M.D., The Melanesians of British New Guinea (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 589-599.
Footnote 23: (return)
George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. 60 sq., 64. As to the Duk-duk society, see below, vol. ii. pp. 246 sq.
Footnote 24: (return)
John Keast Lord, The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia (London, 1866), ii. 237.
Footnote 25: (return)
Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains (London, 1823), ii. 47; Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, "Omaha Sociology," Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), p. 226.
Footnote 26: (return)
James Adair, History of the American Indians (London, 1775), pp. 161-163.
Footnote 27: (return)
(Sir) Henry Babington Smith, in Folk-lore, v. (1894) p. 340.
Footnote 28: (return)
Miss C.F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides (London, 1883), p. 211.
Footnote 29: (return)
W. Gregor, "Quelques coutumes du Nord-est du Comté d'Aberdeen," Revue des Traditions populaires, iii. (1888) p. 485 B. Compare Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 158 sq.
Footnote 30: (return)
R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne and London, 1878), i. 450.
Footnote 31: (return)
E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest (Edinburgh and London, 1888), ii. 7.
Footnote 32: (return)
F. Grabowsky, "Der Distrikt Dusson Timor in Südost-Borneo und seine Bewohner," Das Ausland, 1884, No. 24, p. 470.
Footnote 33: (return)
Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition made by Charles F. Hall, edited by Prof. J.E. Nourse (Washington, 1879), pp. 110 sq.
Footnote 34: (return)
See Taboo and Perils of the Soul, pp. 207 sqq.
Footnote 35: (return)
Walter E. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (Brisbane and London, 1897), p. 156, § 265. The custom of killing a man by pointing a bone or stick at him, while the sorcerer utters appropriate curses, is common among the tribes of Central Australia; but amongst them there seems to be no objection to place the bone or stick on the ground; on the contrary, an Arunta wizard inserts the bone or stick in the ground while he invokes death and destruction on his enemy. See Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 534 sqq.; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), pp. 455 sqq.
Footnote 36: (return)
Hugh Low, Sarawak (London, 1848), pp. 145 sq.
Footnote 37: (return)
Pliny, Naturalis Historia xxviii. 33 sq.
Footnote 38: (return)
Rev. Walter Gregor, Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 184. As to the superstitions attaching to stone arrowheads and axeheads (celts), commonly known as "thunderbolts," in the British Islands, see W.W. Skeat, "Snakestones and Stone Thunderbolts," Folklore, xxiii. (1912) pp. 60 sqq.; and as to such superstitions in general, see Chr. Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge, 1911).
Footnote 39: (return)
Pliny, Naturalis Historia, xxix. 52-54.
Footnote 40: (return)
W. Borlase, Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall (London, 1769), pp. 142 sq.; J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London, 1882-1883), i. 322; J.G. Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1834), pp. 140 sq.; Daniel Wilson, The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1851), pp. 303 sqq.; Lieut.-Col. Forbes Leslie, The Early Races of Scotland and their Monuments (Edinburgh, 1866), i. 75 sqq.; J.G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), pp. 84-88; Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), pp. 170 sq.; J.C. Davies, Folk-lore of West and Mid-Wales (Aberystwyth, 1911), p. 76. Compare W.W. Skeat, "Snakestones and Stone Thunderbolts," Folk-lore, xxiii. (1912) pp. 45 sqq. The superstition is described as follows by Edward Lhwyd in a letter quoted by W. Borlase (op. cit. p. 142): "In most parts of Wales, and throughout all Scotland, and in Cornwall, we find it a common opinion of the vulgar, that about Midsummer-Eve (though in the time they do not all agree) it is usual for snakes to meet in companies; and that, by joining heads together, and hissing, a kind of bubble is formed, which the rest, by continual hissing, blow on till it passes quite through the body, and then it immediately hardens, and resembles a glass-ring, which whoever finds (as some old women and children are persuaded) shall prosper in all his undertakings. The rings thus generated, are called Gleineu Nadroeth; in English, Snake-stones. They are small glass amulets, commonly about half as wide as our finger-rings, but much thicker, of a green colour usually, though sometimes blue, and waved with red and white."
Footnote 41: (return)
Pliny, Naturalis Historia xxiv. 12 and 68, xxv. 171.
Footnote 42: (return)
Marcellus, De medicamentis, ed. G. Helmreich (Leipsic, 1889), preface, p. i.: "Nec solum veteres medicinae artis auctores Latino dumtaxat sermone perscriptos ... lectione scrutatus sum, sed etiam ab agrestibus et plebeis remedia fortuita atque simplicia, quae experimentis probaverant didici." As to Marcellus and his work, see Jacob Grimm, "Ueber Marcellus Burdigalensis," Abhandlungen der koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Berlin, 1847, pp. 429-460; id., "Ueber die Marcellischen Formeln," ibid.. 1855, pp. 50-68.
Footnote 43: (return)
Marcellus, De medicamentis, i. 68.
Footnote 44: (return)
Marcellus, op. cit. i. 76.
Footnote 45: (return)
Marcellus, op. cit. xxviii. 28 and 71, xxix. 35.
Footnote 46: (return)
Marcellus, op. cit. xxix. 51.
Footnote 47: (return)
Edward Westermarck, "Midsummer Customs in Morocco," Folklore, xvi. (1905) pp. 32 sq.; id., Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the Weather in Morocco (Helsingfors, 1913), pp. 75 sq.
Footnote 48: (return)
E. Westermarck, "Midsummer Customs in Morocco," Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) p. 35 id., Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the Weather in Morocco (Helsingfors, 1913), pp. 88 sq.
Footnote 49: (return)
Matthäus Prätorius, Deliciae Prussicae, herausgegeben von Dr. W. Pierson (Berlin, 1871), p. 54.
Footnote 50: (return)
H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 142; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 29.
Footnote 51: (return)
Kaempfer, "History of Japan," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, vii. 717; Caron, "Account of Japan," ibid. vii. 613; B. Varenius, Descriptio regni Japoniae et Siam (Cambridge, 1673), p. 11: "Radiis solis caput nunquam illustrabatur: in apertum acrem non procedebat."
Footnote 52: (return)
A. de Herrera, General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, trans, by Capt. John Stevens (London, 1725-1726), v. 88.
Footnote 53: (return)
H. Ternaux-Compans, Essai sur l'ancien Cundinamarca (Paris, N.D.), p. 56; Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker iv. (Leipsic, 1864) p. 359.
Footnote 54: (return)
Alonzo de Zurita, "Rapport sur les differentes classes de chefs de la Nouvelle-Espagne," p. 30, in H. Ternaux-Compans's Voyages, Relations et Mémoires originaux, pour servir à l'Histoire de la Découvertede l'Amérique (Paris, 1840); Th. Waitz, l.c.; A. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika (Berlin, 1878), ii. 204.
Footnote 55: (return)
Cieza de Leon, Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru (Hakluyt Society, London, 1883), p. 18.
Footnote 56: (return)
The Grihya Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, Part ii. (Oxford, 1892) pp. 165, 275 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxx.). Umbrellas appear to have been sometimes used in ritual for the purpose of preventing the sunlight from falling on sacred persons or things. See W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual (Amsterdam, 1900), p. 110 note 12. At an Athenian festival called Scira the priestess of Athena, the priest of Poseidon, and the priest of the Sun walked from the Acropolis under the shade of a huge white umbrella which was borne over their heads by the Eteobutads. See Harpocration and Suidas, s.v. [Greek: Skiron]; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Eccles. 18.
Footnote 57: (return)
Mrs. Bishop, Korea and her Neighbours (London, 1898), ii. 248.
Footnote 58: (return)
J.L. van Hasselt, "Eenige aanteekeningen aangaande de bewoners der N. Westkust van Nieuw Guinea," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-Landen Volkenkunde, xxxi. (1886) p. 587.
Footnote 59: (return)
A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, v. (Jena, 1869) p. 366.
Footnote 60: (return)
W.M. Gabb, "On the Indian Tribes and Languages of Costa Rica," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society held at Philadelphia, xiv. (Philadelphia, 1876), p. 510.
Footnote 61: (return)
L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden (London, 1870), p. 194.
Footnote 62: (return)
H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, i. 553. See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 182.
Footnote 63: (return)
L. Heuzey, Le Mont Olympe et l'Acarnanie (Paris, 1860), pp. 458 sq.
