300 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p. 798.
301 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 287 sq.
302 With what follows compare my article “The Origin of Circumcision,” The Independent Review, November 1904, pp. 204 sqq.; Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 181–184.
303 F. Bonney, “On some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) pp. 134 sq. Compare J. Fraser, “The Aborigines of New South Wales,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, xvi. (1882) pp. 229, 231; A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 451, 465.
304 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 507, 509 sq.
305 Mr. Bussel in Sir G. Grey’s Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia (London, 1841), ii. 330.
306 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 382, 461; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 598.
307 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 464; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 599 sqq.; W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, p. 162, § 283. In North-Western Queensland the blood may be drawn for this purpose from any healthy man, not necessarily from a kinsman.
308 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 380.
309 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 461 sq.; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 560, 562, 598.
310 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 251, 463; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 352, 355.
311 W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, p. 174, § 305.
312 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 250 sq. Among the northern Arunta the foreskin is buried, along with the blood, in a hole (ib. p. 268).
313 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 667.
314 E. Clement, “Ethnographical Notes on the Western Australian Aborigines,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xvi. (1904) p. 11. Among the western coastal tribes of the Northern Territory of South Australia the foreskin is held against the bellies of those who have been present at the operation, then it is placed in a bag which the operator wears round his neck till the wound has healed, when he throws it into the fire. See H. Basedow, Anthropological Notes on the Western Coastal Tribes of the Northern Territory of South Australia, p. 12 (printed by Hussey and Gillingham, Adelaide).
315 B. H. Purcell, “Rites and Customs of the Australian Aborigines,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, p. (287) (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxv. 1893). Cloniny is perhaps a misprint for Cloncurry.
316 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 360 sq., 599. Compare id., Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 257.
317 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 256 sq.
318 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 391.
319 Lieut.-Colonel D. Collins, Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Second Edition (London, 1804), p. 366.
320 D. Collins, op. cit. p. 363.
321 G. Turner, Samoa, p. 94; compare W. T. Pritchard, “Notes on certain Anthropological Matters respecting the South Sea Islanders (the Samoans),” Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, i. (1863–4), pp. 324–326.
322 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 367, 368, 599.
323 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 9, 368, 552, 553, 554 sq. See further E. Palmer, “On Plants used by the Natives of North Queensland,” Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales for 1883, xvii. 101. The seeds of the splendid pink water-lily (the sacred lotus) are also eaten by the natives of North Queensland. The plant grows in lagoons on the coast. See E. Palmer, loc. cit.
324 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 372.
325 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 353 sq. Some of the dwarf tribes of the Gaboon, who practise circumcision, place the severed foreskins in the trunks of a species of nut-tree (Kula edulis), which seems to be their totem; for the tree is said to have a certain sanctity for them, and some groups take their name from it, being called A-Kula, “the people of the nut-tree.” They eat the nuts, and have a special ceremony at the gathering of the first nuts of the season. See Mgr. Le Roy, “Les Pygmées,” Missions Catholiques, xxix. (1897) pp. 222 sq., 237.
326 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 341.
327 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 123 sqq.
329 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 538 sqq., 563, 564, 565, 566, 569, 571, 576, 586 sq., 588, 589, 592, 613, 616, 641, 655 sq., 675 sq.; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 213 sq., 450 sqq.; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 18, 329, 588 sqq.
331 W. Blandowski, “Personal Observations made in an Excursion towards the Central Parts of Victoria,” Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Victoria, i. (Melbourne, 1855) p. 72. Compare R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 61; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 453 sq.
332 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 452 sq.
333 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 594, 596.
334 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 451.
335 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 592–594.
336 A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters, p. 193; Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 193, 221.
337 W. E. Roth, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5 (Brisbane, 1903), pp. 18, 23, §§ 68, 83. We are reminded of the old Greek saying to be born “of an oak or a rock” (Homer, Odyssey, xix. 163). See A. B. Cook, “Oak and Rock,” Classical Review, xv. (1901) pp. 322–326. In Samoa, a child sometimes received as his god for life the deity who chanced to be invoked at the moment of his birth, whether that was his father’s or his mother’s god. See G. Turner, Samoa, p. 79.
339 Lieut.-Colonel D. Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, Second Edition (London, 1804), pp. 353, 372 sqq. The Cammeray of whom Collins speaks are no doubt the tribe now better known as the Kamilaroi. Carrahdy, which he gives as the native name for a high priest, is clearly the Kamilaroi kuradyi, “medicine-man” (W. Ridley, Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages, Sydney, 1875, p. 158).
340 If the possession of the foreskin conferred on the possessor a like power over the person to whom it had belonged, we can readily understand why the Israelites coveted the foreskins of their enemies the Philistines (1 Samuel xviii. 25–27, 2 Samuel iii. 14). Professor H. Gunkel interprets a passage of Ezekiel (xxxii. 18–32) as contrasting the happy lot of the circumcised warrior in the under world with the misery of his uncircumcised foe in the same place, and confesses himself unable to see why circumcision should be thought to benefit the dead. See H. Gunkel, “Über die Beschneidung im alten Testament,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung, ii. (1903) p. 21. (Prof. Gunkel’s paper was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse.) The benefit, on the theory here suggested, was very substantial, since it allowed the dead to come to life again, the grave being a bourne from which only uncircumcised travellers fail, sooner or later, to return. But I confess that Prof. Gunkel’s explanation of the passage seems to me rather far-fetched.
341 G. Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery, ii. 335.
343 J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 62; J. F. Mann, in Proceedings of the Geographical Society of Australia, i. (1885) p. 48.
344 E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia (London, 1845), ii. 345 sq.; W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, pp. 165 sq.; J. Mathew, Eaglehawk and Crow, p. 122; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 505 sqq.
345 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.
346 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 497. Compare id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.
347 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 552 sqq.
348 Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition (1907), pp. 77 sqq.
349 J. B. Purvis, Through Uganda to Mount Elgon (London, 1909), pp. 302 sq.
350 J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore, xix. (1908) p. 422.
351 Plato, Phaedo, 18, p. 72 E καὶ μήν, ἔφη ὁ Κέβης ὑπολαβών, καὶ κατ’ ἐκεῖνόν γε τὸν λόγον, ὦ Σώκρατες, εἰ ἀληθής ἐστιν, ὃν σὺ εἴωθας θαμὰ λέγειν, ὅτι ἡμῖν ἡ μάθησις οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἢ ἀνάμνησις τυγχάνει οὖσα, καὶ κατὰ τοῦτον ἀνάγκη που ἡμᾶς ἐν προτέρῳ τινὶ χρόνῳ μεμαθηκέναι ἂ νῦν ἀναμιμνησκόμεθα. τοῦτο δὲ ἀδύνατον, εἰ μὴ ἦν που ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ πρὶν ἐν τῷδε τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ εἴδει γενέσθαι· ὥστε καὶ ταύτη ἀθάνατόν τι ἔοικεν ἡ ψυχὴ εἶναι. Compare Wordsworth, Ode on Intimations of Immortality:
352 E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk-tales (London, 1908), p. 49.
353 E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India, iii. 398.
354 R. V. Russel, in Census of India, 1901, vol. xiii. Central Provinces, p. 93.
355 Relations des Jésuites, 1636, p. 130 (Canadian Reprint).
356 “Greek Law and Folklore,” Classical Review, ix. (1895) pp. 247–250. For the rules themselves see H. Roehl, Inscriptiones Graecae Antiquissimae, No. 395; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,² No. 877; Ch. Michel, Recueil d’inscriptions grecques, No. 398.
357 This has been suggested by Mr. J. E. King for infant burial (Classical Review, xvii. (1903) p. 83 sq.); but we need not confine the suggestion to the case of infants.
358 Herodotus, iv. 26; Hesychius, s.v. Γενέσια; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, i. pp. 86, 231; Isaeus, ii. 46; The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. Grenfell and Hunt, part iii. (London, 1903), p. 203 εὐωχίαν ἣν ποιήσονται πλησίον τοῦ τάφου μου κατ’ ἔτος τῆ γενεθλίᾳ μου ἐφ’ ᾧ διέπειν ἀργυρίου δραχμὰς ἑκατόν. My attention was called to this subject by my friend Mr. W. Wyse, who supplied me with many of the Greek passages referred to, including the one in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
359 Vitarum Scriptores Graeci, ed. A. Westermann, p. 450; Plutarch, Aratus, 53; Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph. x. 18.
360 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 547 sqq.
361 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 473–475.
362 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 548.
363 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 207–211.
364 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 434 sq., 475.
365 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 418 sqq.
366 “In the Alcheringa lived ancestors who, in the native mind, are so intimately associated with the animals or plants the names of which they bear that an Alcheringa man of, say, the kangaroo totem may sometimes be spoken of either as a man-kangaroo or as a kangaroo-man. The identity of the human individual is often sunk in that of the animal or plant from which he is supposed to have originated” (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 119).
367 Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 45 (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association for 1890).
368 A. C. Haddon in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) p. 427; Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 333, 338.
369 A. C. Kruyt, “Het koppensnellen der Toradja’s,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der konink. Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, IV. Reeks, III. Deel (Amsterdam, 1899), pp. 203 sq. I follow the experienced Messrs. N. Adriani and A. C. Kruijt (Kruyt) in calling the natives of Central Celebes by the name of Toradjas, though that name is not used by the people themselves, but is only applied to them in a derogatory sense by the Buginese. It means no more than “inlanders.” The people are divided into a number of tribes, each with its own name, who speak for the most part one language but have no common name for themselves collectively. See Dr. N. Adriani, “Mededeelingen omtrent de Toradjas van Midden-Celebes,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xliv. (1901) p. 221.
370 J. W. Thomas, “De jacht op het eiland Nias,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxvi. 277.
371 Van Schmid, “Aanteekeningen nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en bijgeloovigheden der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa Laut,” Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands Indië, 1843, dl. ii. pp. 601 sq.
372 B. A. Hely, “Notes on Totemism, etc., among the Western Tribes,” British New Guinea, Annual Report for 1894–95, p. 56.
373 E. Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” Cochinchine française: excursions et reconnaissances, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), p. 157.
374 James Macdonald, Religion and Myth (London, 1893), p. 5.
375 A. G. Morice, “Notes, archaeological, industrial, and sociological, on the Western Dénés,” Transactions of the Canadian Institute, iv. (1892–93) p. 108; id., Au pays de l’Ours Noir: chez les sauvages de la Colombie Britannique (Paris and Lyons, 1897), p. 71.
376 M. J. van Baarda, “Fabelen, verhalen en overleveringen der Galelareezen,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, xlv. (1895) p. 502. As to the district of Galela in Halmahera see G. Lafond in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), ii. série, ix. (1838) pp. 77 sqq. (where Galeta is apparently a misprint for Galela); F. S. A. de Clercq, Bijdragen tot de Kennis der Residentie Ternate (Leyden, 1890), pp. 112 sq.; W. Kükenthal, Forschungsreise in den Molukken und in Borneo (Frankfort, 1896), pp. 147 sqq.
377 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 300.
378 The theory that taboo is a negative magic was first, I believe, clearly formulated by Messrs. Hubert and Mauss in their essay, “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la magie,” L’Année Sociologique, vii. (Paris, 1904) p. 56. Compare A. van Gennep, Tabou et Totémisme à Madagascar (Paris, 1904), pp. 19 sqq. I reached the same conclusion independently and stated it in my Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London, 1905), pp. 52–54, a passage which I have substantially reproduced in the text. When I wrote it I was unaware that the view had been anticipated by my friends Messrs. Hubert and Mauss. See my note in Man, vi. (1906) pp. 55 sq. The view has been criticised adversely by my friend Mr. R. R. Marett (The Threshold of Religion, pp. 85 sqq.). But the difference between us seems to be mainly one of words; for I regard the supposed mysterious force, to which he gives the Melanesian name of mana, as supplying, so to say, the physical basis both of magic and of taboo, while the logical basis of both is furnished by a misapplication of the laws of the association of ideas. And with this view Mr. Marett, if I apprehend him aright, is to a certain extent in agreement (see particularly pp. 102 sq., 113 sq. of his essay). However, in deference to his criticisms I have here stated the theory in question less absolutely than I did in my Lectures. As to the supposed mysterious force which I take to underlie magic and taboo I may refer particularly to what I have said in The Golden Bough,² i. 319–322, 343. In speaking of taboo I here refer only to those taboos which are protected by magical or religious sanctions, not to those of which the sanctions are purely civil or legal; for I take civil or legal taboos to be merely a later extension of magical or religious taboos, which form the original stock of the institution. See my article “Taboo” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. xxiii. pp. 16, 17.
379 M. J. van Baarda, in Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, xlv. (1895) p. 507.
380 F. Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. Part I. (1901) p. 161.
381 R. F. Kaindl, “Zauberglaube bei den Huzulen,” Globus, lxxvi. (1899) p. 273.
382 Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 28.
383 B. Pilsudski, “Schwangerhaft, Entbindung und Fehlgeburt bei den Bewohnern der Insel Sachalin,” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 763.
384 Rev. E. M. Gordon, in Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, New Series, i. (1905) p. 185; id., Indian Folk Tales (London, 1908), pp. 82 sq.
385 Van Schmid, “Aanteekeningen nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en bijgeloovigheden der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa Laut,” Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands Indië, 1843, dl. ii. p. 604.
386 A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xl. (1896) pp. 262 sq.; id. ib. xliv. (1900) p. 235.
387 C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjehers (Batavia and Leyden, 1893–94), i. 409; E. A. Klerks, “Geographisch en ethnographisch opstal over de landschappen Korintje, Sĕrampas en Soengai Tĕnang,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxix. (1897) p. 73; J. C. van Eerde, “Een huwelijk bij de Minangkabausche Maliers,” ib. xliv. (1901) pp. 490 sq.; M. Joustra, “Het leven, de zeden en gewoonten der Bataks,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 406.
388 H. Lake and H. J. Kelsall, “The Camphor-tree and Camphor Language of Johore,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 26 (January 1894), p. 40; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 213.
389 W. H. Furness, Home-life of Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 169.
390 E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos (Saigon, 1885), p. 269.
391 E. Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos (Paris, 1895–97), i. 322. As to lac and the mode of cultivating it, see id. ii. 18 sq. The superstition is less explicitly stated in the same writer’s Notes sur le Laos (Saigon, 1885), p. 110.
392 A. Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique (Antwerp, 1558), p. 93; id., Cosmographie Universelle (Paris, 1575), ii. 970 [wrongly numbered 936] sq.
393 Maximilian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, ii. 247.
394 G. B. Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales (London, 1893), pp. 237, 238.
395 E. Poeppig, Reise in Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstrome (Leipsic, 1835–36), ii. 323.
396 Meanwhile I may refer the reader to The Golden Bough,² ii. 353 sqq.
397 H. F. Standing, “Malagasy fady,” Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, vol. ii. (reprint of the second four numbers, 1881–1884) (Antananarivo, 1896), p. 261.
398 Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood (London, 1906), p. 48.
399 H. Callaway, Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, i. (Natal and London, 1868), pp. 280–282.
402 E. Aymonier, Notes sur le Laos, pp. 25 sq.; id., Voyage dans le Laos (Paris, 1895–97), i. 62, 63.
403 Chalmers, quoted by H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i. 430.
404 E. Aymonier, “Les Tchames et leurs religions,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, xxiv. (1891) p. 278.
405 Th. Hahn, Tsuni-ǁGoam (London, 1881), p. 77.
406 A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters (London, 1901), p. 259.
407 C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae (Copenhagen, 1767), p. 500.
408 H. J. Holmberg, “Über die Völker des russischen Amerika,” Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, iv. (1856) p. 392.
409 Arctic Papers for the Expedition of 1875 (published by the Royal Geographical Society), pp. 261 sq.; Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska (Washington, 1885), p. 39.
410 F. Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. part i. (1901) pp. 149, 160.