The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1&2). James George Frazer
no one may touch the King of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured monarch to his palace.577 No one may touch the King of Corea; and if he deigns to touch a subject, the spot touched becomes sacred, and the person thus honoured must wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above all, no iron may touch the king's body. In 1800 King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose antics made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.578 Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;579 and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig was offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.580 In Crete sacrifices were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because, it was said, Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.581 The Archon of Plataeae might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataeae, he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull.582 To this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a lad.583 Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, etc., have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies.584 Negroes of the Gold Coast remove all iron or steel from their person when they consult their fetish.585 The men who made the need-fire in Scotland had to divest themselves of all metal.586 In making the clavie (a kind of Yule-tide fire-wheel) at Burghead, no hammer may be used; the hammering must be done with a stone.587 Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the temple at Jerusalem or in making an altar.588 The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair without the use of iron or bronze.589 It was expressly provided by law that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools.590 The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.591 The late Raja Vijyanagram, a member of the Viceroy's Council, and described as one of the most enlightened and estimable of Hindu princes, would not allow iron to be used in the construction of buildings within his territory, believing that its use would inevitably be followed by small-pox and other epidemics.592
This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike. For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. “It is a curious superstition,” says a recent pioneer in Borneo, “this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything—whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky—that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot weather we have experienced of late.”593 The first introduction of iron ploughshares into Poland having been followed by a succession of bad harvests, the farmers attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and discarded them for the old wooden ones.594 The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed by them to the gods; possibly this aversion may have been intensified in places by some such accidental cause as the series of bad seasons which cast discredit on iron ploughshares in Poland. But the disfavour in which iron is held by the gods and their ministers has another side. The very fact that iron is deemed obnoxious to spirits furnishes men with a weapon which may be turned against the spirits when occasion serves. As their dislike of iron is supposed to be so great that they will not approach persons and things protected by the obnoxious metal, iron may obviously be employed as a charm for banning ghosts and other dangerous spirits. And it often is so used. Thus when Scotch fishermen were at sea, and one of them happened to take the name of God in vain, the first man who heard him called out “Cauld airn,” at which every man of the crew grasped the nearest bit of iron and held it between his hands for a while.595 In Morocco iron is considered a great protection against demons; hence it is usual to place a knife or dagger under a sick man's pillow.596 In India “the mourner who performs the ceremony of putting fire into the dead person's mouth carries with him a piece of iron: it may be a key or a knife, or a simple piece of iron, and during the whole time of his separation (for he is unclean for a certain time, and no one will either touch him or eat or drink with him, neither can he change his clothes597) he carries the piece of iron about with him to keep off the evil spirit. In Calcutta the Bengali clerks in the Government Offices used to wear a small key on one of their fingers when they had been chief mourners.”598 In the north-east of Scotland immediately after a death had taken place, a piece of iron, such as a nail or a knitting-wire, used to be stuck into all the meal, butter, cheese, flesh, and whisky in the house, “to prevent death from entering them.” The neglect of this precaution is said to have been closely followed by the corruption of the food and drink; the whisky has been known to become as white as milk.599 When iron is used as a protective charm after a death, as in these Hindu and Scotch customs, the spirit against which it is directed is the ghost of the deceased.600
There is a priestly king to the north of Zengwih in Burma, revered by the Sotih as the highest spiritual and temporal authority, into whose house no weapon or cutting instrument may be brought.601 This rule may perhaps be explained by a custom observed by various peoples after a death; they refrain from the use of sharp instruments so long as the ghost of the deceased is supposed to be near, lest they should wound it. Thus after a death the Roumanians of Transylvania are careful not to leave a knife lying with the sharp edge uppermost as long as the corpse remains in the house, “or else the soul will be forced to ride on the blade.”602 For seven days after a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese abstain from the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers.603 Amongst the Innuit (Eskimos) of Alaska for four days after a death the women in the village do no sewing, and for five days the men do not cut wood with an axe.604 On the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the table and used no knives, and the women who served up the food were also without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them. When the meal was over the priest took a broom and swept the souls out of the house, saying, “Dear souls, ye have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth.”605 In cutting the nails and combing the hair of a dead prince in South Celebes only the back of the knife and of the comb may be used.606 The Germans say that a knife should not be left edge upwards, because God and the spirits dwell there, or because it will cut the face of God and the angels.607 We can now understand why no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of the Burmese pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as divine, and it is therefore right that his sacred spirit should not be exposed to the risk of being cut or wounded whenever it quits his body to hover invisible in the air or to fly on some distant mission.
We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name raw flesh.608 In the Pelew Islands when a raid has been made on a village and a head carried off, the relations of the slain man are tabooed and have to submit to certain observances in order to escape the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in the house, touch no raw flesh, and chew beetel over which an incantation has been uttered by the exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered man goes away to the enemy's country in pursuit of his murderer.609 The taboo is probably based on the common belief that the soul or spirit of the animal is in the blood. As tabooed persons are believed to be in a perilous state—for example, the relations of the slain man are liable to the attacks of his indignant ghost—it is especially necessary to isolate them from contact with spirits; hence the prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo is only the special enforcement in particular circumstances of a general rule; in other words, its observance is particularly enjoined in circumstances which are supposed especially to call for its application, but apart from such special circumstances