The origin and development of the moral ideas

This religious sanction given to ownership is no doubt in some measure due to the same circumstances as, in certain cases, make morality in general a matter of divine concern—a subject which will be dealt with in a future chapter. But there are also special reasons which account for it. Partly it has its origin in magic practices, particularly in the curse.

Cursing is a frequent method of punishing criminals who cannot be reached in any other way.168 In the Book of Judges we read of Micah’s mother who had pronounced a curse with reference to the money stolen from her, and afterwards, when her son had confessed his guilt, hastened to render it ineffective by a blessing.169 In early Arabia the owner of stolen property had recourse to cursing in order to recover what he had lost.170 In Samoa “the party from whom anything had been stolen, if he knew not the thief, would seek satisfaction in sitting down and deliberately cursing him.”171 The Kamchadales “think they can punish an undiscovered theft by burning the sinews of the stonebuck in a publick meeting with great ceremonies of conjuration, believing that as these sinews are contracted by the fire so the thief will have all his limbs contracted.”172 Among the Ossetes, if an object has been secretly stolen, its owner secures the assistance of a sorcerer. They proceed together to the house of any person whom they suspect, the sorcerer carrying under his arm a cat, which is regarded as a particularly enchanted animal. He exclaims, “If thou hast stolen the article and dost not restore it to its owner, may this cat torment the souls of thy ancestors!” And such an imprecation is generally followed by a speedy restitution of the stolen property.

Again, if their suspicions rest upon no particular individual, they proceed in the same manner from house to house, and the thief then, knowing that his turn must come, frequently confesses his guilt at once.173 A common mode of detecting the perpetrator of a theft is to compel the suspected individual to make oath, that is to say, to pronounce a conditional curse upon himself.174

Cursing is resorted to not only for the purpose of punishing thieves or compelling them to restore what they have stolen, but also as a means of preventing theft. In the South Sea Islands it is a common practice to protect property by making it taboo, and the tabooing of an object is, as Dr. Codrington puts it, “a prohibition with a curse expressed or implied.”175 The curse is then, in many cases, deposited in some article which is attached to the thing or place it is intended to protect. The mark of taboo, in Polynesia called rahui or raui, sometimes consists of a cocoa-nut leaf plaited in a particular way,176 sometimes of a wooden image of a man or a carved post stuck in the ground,177 sometimes of a bunch of human hair or a piece of an old mat,178 and so forth. In Samoa there were various forms of taboo which formed a powerful check on stealing, especially from plantations and fruit-trees, and each was known by a special name indicating the sort of curse which the owner wished would fall on the thief. Thus, if a man desired that a sea-pike should run into the body of the person who attempted to steal, say, his bread-fruits, he would plait some cocoa-nut leaflets in the form of a sea-pike, and suspend it from one or more of the trees which he wanted to protect. This was called the “sea-pike taboo”; and any ordinary thief would be terrified to touch a tree from which this was suspended, believing that, if he did so, a fish of the said description would dart up and mortally wound him the next time he went to the sea.

The “white shark taboo” was done by plaiting a cocoa-nut leaf in the form of a shark, and was tantamount to an expressed imprecation that the thief might be devoured by the white shark when he went to fish. The “cross-stick taboo,” again, consisted of a stick suspended horizontally from the tree, and meant that any thief touching the tree would have a disease running right across his body and remaining fixed there till he died.179 Exactly equivalent to the taboo of the Pacific Islanders is the pomali of the natives of Timor; “a few palm leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of the pomali will preserve its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring-guns, or a savage dog, would do with us.”180 Among the Santals, whenever a person “is desirous of protecting a patch of jungle from the axes of the villagers, or a patch of grass from being grazed over, or a newly sown field from being trespassed upon, he erects a bamboo in his patch of grass or field, to which is affixed a tuft of straw, or in the case of jungle some prominent and lofty tree has the same prohibitory mark attached, which mark is well understood and strictly observed by all parties interested.”181 So also in Madagascar “on rencontre sur les chemins, on voit dans les champs de longs bâtons munis à leur sommet d’un paquet d’herbes et qui sont plantés en terre soit pour interdire le passage du terrain soit pour indiquer que les récoltes sont réservées à l’usage d’individus déterminés.”182 Among the Washambala the owner of a field sometimes puts a stick wound round with a

banana leaf on the road to it, believing that anybody who without permission enters the field “will be subject to the curse of this charm.”183 The Wadshagga protect a doorless hut against burglars by placing a banana leaf over the threshold, and any maliciously inclined person who dares to step over it is supposed to get ill or die.184 The Akka “stick an arrow in a bunch of bananas still on the stalk to mark it as their own when ripe,” and then not even the owner of the tree would think of touching the fruit so claimed by others.185 Of the Barotse we are told that “when they do not want a thing touched they spit on straws and stick them all about the object.”186 When a Balonda has placed a beehive on a tree, he ties a “piece of medicine” round the trunk, and this will prove sufficient protection against thieves.187 Jacob of Edessa tells us of a Syrian priest who wrote a curse and hung it on a tree, that nobody might eat the fruit.188 In the early days of Islam a masterful man reserved water for his own use by hanging pieces of fringe of his red blanket on a tree beside it, or by throwing them into the pool;189 and in modern Palestine nobody dares to touch the piles of stones which are placed on the boundaries of landed property.190 The old inhabitants of Cumaná on the Caribbean Sea used to mark off their plantations by a single cotton thread, in the belief that anybody tampering with these boundary marks would speedily die.191 A similar idea seems still to prevail among the Indians of the Amazon.

Among the Jurís a traveller noticed that in places where the hedge surrounding a field was broken, it was replaced by a cotton string; and when Brazilian Indians leave their huts they often wind a piece of the same material round the latch of the door.192 Sometimes they also hang baskets, rags, or flaps of bark on their landmarks.193 In these and in various other instances just referred to it is not expressly stated that the taboo mark embodies a curse, but their similarity to cases in which it does so is striking enough to preclude much doubt about their real meaning. It is true that an object which is sacred by itself may, on that account, protect everything in its neighbourhood;194 in Morocco any article deposited in the ḥorm of a saint is safe, and among pagan Africans the same effect is produced by using fetishes as protectors of fields or houses.195 But a thing of inherent holiness may also be chosen for taboo purposes for the reason that its sanctity is supposed to give particular efficacy to any curse with which it may be loaded.