Note 376 — Chapter XI · THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES ON VEGETATION
Reading edition
J. Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea (London, 1887), p. 181. The word which I have taken to mean “holy or taboo” is helaga. Mr. Chalmers does not translate or explain it. Dr. C. G. Seligmann says that the word “conveys something of the idea of ‘sacred,’ ‘set apart,’ ‘charged with virtue’” (The Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 101, note 2).