Volume 2 — CHAPTER XXXVIII RESTRICTIONS IN DIET (concluded)

BESIDES the occasional abstinence from certain victuals, which was noticed in the last chapter, there are restrictions in diet of a more durable character.

Thus among the Australian aborigines the younger members of a tribe are, as it seems universally, subject to a variety of such restrictions, from which they are only gradually released as they grow older.1 In the Wotjobaluk tribe in South-Eastern Australia, for instance, boys are forbidden to eat of the kangaroo and the padi-melon, being told that if they transgress these rules they will fall sick, break out all over with eruptions, and perhaps die. If a man under forty eats the tail part of the emu or bustard, he will turn grey, and if he eats the freshwater turtle he will be killed by lightning. If young men or women of the Wakelbura tribe eat emu, black-headed snake, or porcupine, they will become sick and probably die, uttering the sounds peculiar to the creature in question, the spirit of which is believed to have entered into their bodies.2 In the Warramunga tribe in Central Australia a man is usually well in the middle age before he is allowed to eat wild turkey, rabbit-bandicoot, and emu.3 According to certain writers, the object of these restrictions is to reserve the best things for the use of the elders, and, more especially, of the older men;4 but, on the other hand, it has been remarked that, in looking over the list of animals prohibited, one fails to see any good reasons for the selection, unless they may be assumed to have chiefly sprung from superstitious beliefs.5 Among the Land Dyaks the young men and warriors are debarred from venison for fear it should render them as timid as the hind.6 The Moors believe that if a young person before the age of puberty eats wolf’s flesh he will have troubles afterwards.

There are, further, numerous instances of certain kinds of food being permanently forbidden to certain individuals. In Unyamwezi, south of Victoria Nyanza, women are not permitted to eat fowl, a food which is reserved for the men.7 Among the Mandingoes of Teesee no woman is allowed to eat an egg, and this prohibition is so rigidly adhered to that “nothing will more affront a woman of Teesee than to offer her an egg”; the men, on the other hand, eat eggs without scruple, even in the presence of their wives.8 Among the Bayaka, a Bantu people in the Congo Free State, both fowls and eggs are forbidden to women; “if a woman eats an egg she is supposed to become mad, tear off her clothes and run away into the bush.”9 The Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, allow men to eat beef and the meat of certain antelopes and of buffalo, whereas women are generally allowed to eat beef only.10 The people of Darfur, in Central Africa, prohibit their women from eating an animal’s liver, because they think that a person may increase his soul by partaking of it, and women are believed to have no souls.11 The Miris of Northern India prize tiger’s flesh as food for men, but consider it unsuitable for women, as “it would make them too strong-minded.”12 In the Australian tribes some articles of food are entirely interdicted to females.13 The natives inhabiting the neighbourhood of Cape York forbid women to eat various kinds of fish, including some of the best, “on the pretence of causing disease in women, although not injurious to the men.”14 In the Sandwich Islands, again, women were not allowed to eat hog’s flesh, turtle, and certain kinds of fruit, as cocoa and banana.15 Many of these prohibitions have been represented as signs of the low condition of the female sex; but a more intimate knowledge of the facts connected with them would perhaps show that they have some other foundation than the mere selfishness of the men. For sometimes the latter also are subject to very similar restrictions. Among the Bahuana, in the Congo Free State, “women are forbidden to eat owls or other birds of prey, but are permitted to eat frogs, from which men are obliged to abstain under penalty of becoming ill.”16 With reference to the natives of New Britain, Mr. Powell states that, whilst in one place the women are prohibited from eating pigs or tortoises, the men are, in another place, prohibited from eating anything but human flesh, fowls, or fish.17 In the Caroline Islands the men are forbidden to eat a common blackbird, Lamprothornis—which is a favourite food of the women—because it is believed that anyone who did so, and afterwards climbed a cocoa-tree, would fall down and perish.18 In some Dyak tribes on the Western branch of the river of Sarawak, goats, fowls, and the fine kind of fern (paku), which forms an excellent vegetable, are forbidden food to the men, though the women and boys are allowed to partake of them.19

Among various peoples certain foods are forbidden to priests or magicians. The priests of the ancient Egyptians were not allowed to eat fish,20 nor to meddle with the esculent or potable substances which were produced out of Egypt;21 and, according to Plutarch, they so greatly disliked the nature of excrementitious things that they not only rejected most kinds of pulse, but also the flesh of sheep and swine, because it produced much superfluity of nutriment.22 The lamas of Mongolia will touch no meat of goats, horses, or camels.23 Among the Semang of the Malay Peninsula the medicine-men will not eat goat or buffalo flesh and but rarely that of fowl.24 The dairymen of the Todas may drink milk from certain buffaloes only, and are altogether forbidden to eat chillies.25 These and similar restraints laid upon priests or wizards are probably connected with the idea that holiness is a delicate quality which calls for special precautions.26 Schomburgk states that the conjurers of the British Guiana Indians partake but seldom of the native hog, because they consider the eating of it injurious to the efficacy of their skill.27 And the Ulád Bu ʿAzîz in Morocco believe that if a scribe or a saint eats wolf’s flesh the charms he writes will have no effect, and the saliva of the saint will lose its curative power.

There are still other cases in which certain persons are permanently required to abstain from certain kinds of food. Thus in the Andaman Islands every man and woman “is prohibited all through life from eating some one (or more) fish or animal: in most cases the forbidden dainty is one which in childhood was observed (or imagined) by the mother to occasion some functional derangement; when of an age to understand it the circumstance is explained, and cause and effect being clearly demonstrated, the individual, in question thence forth considers that particular meat his yât-tūb, and avoids it carefully. In cases where no evil consequences have resulted from partaking of any kind of food, the fortunate person is privileged to select his own yât-tūb, and is, of course, shrewd enough to decide upon some fish, such as shark or skate, which is little relished, and to abstain from which consequently entails no exercise of self-denial.” It is believed that the god Pūluga would punish severely any person who might be guilty of eating his yât-tūb, either by causing his skin to peel off, or by turning his hair white, and flaying him alive.28 In Samoa each man had generally his god in the shape of some species of animal; and if he ate one of these divine animals it was supposed that the god avenged the insult by taking up his abode in the eater’s body and there generating an animal of the same kind until it caused his death.29 The members of a totem clan are usually forbidden to eat the particular animal or plant whose name they bear.30 Thus among the Omaha Indians men whose totem is the elk believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break out in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies; and men whose totem is the red corn think that if they ate red corn they would have running sores all round their mouths.31 Yet, however general, prohibitions of this kind cannot be said to be a universal characteristic of totemism.32 Sir J. G. Frazer even suggests that the original custom was perhaps to eat the totem and the latter custom to abstain from it.33 But this is hardly more than a guess.

There are, finally, restrictions in eating which refer to the whole people or tribe. In early society certain things which might serve as food are often not only universally abstained from, but actually prohibited by custom or law. The majority of these prohibitions have reference to animals or animal products, which are naturally more apt to cause disgust than is vegetable food—probably because our ancestors in early days, by instinct, subsisted chiefly on a vegetable diet, and only subsequently acquired a more general taste for animal nourishment.34 Certain animals excite a feeling of disgust by their very appearance, and are therefore abstained from. This I take to be a reason for the aversion to eating reptiles. It is said that snakes are avoided as food because their flesh is supposed to be as poisonous as their bite;35 but this explanation is hardly relevant to harmless reptiles, which are likewise in some cases forbidden food.36 The abstinence from fish seems generally to have a similar origin, though some peoples say that they refuse to eat certain species because the soul of a relative might be in the fish.37 The Navahoes of New Mexico “must never touch fish, and nothing will induce them to taste one.”38 The Mongols consider them unclean animals.39 The South Siberian Kachinzes are said to refrain from them because they believe that “the evil principle lives in the water and eats fish.”40 The Káfirs on the North-Western frontier of India “detest fish, though their rivers abound in them.”41 The same aversion is common in the South African tribes42 and among most Hamitic peoples of East Africa;43 when asked for an explanation of it, they say that fish are akin to snakes. Fish, or at least certain species of fish, were forbidden to the ancient Syrians;44 and the Hebrews were prohibited from eating all fish that have not fins and scales.45 It is curious to note that various peoples who detest fish also abstain from fowl.46 The Navahoes are strictly forbidden to eat the wild turkey with which their forests abound;47 and the Mongols dislike of fowl is so great that one of Prejevalsky’s guides nearly turned sick on seeing him eat boiled duck.48 Some peoples have a great aversion to eggs,49 which are said to be excrements, and therefore unfit for food.50 There may be a similar reason for the abstinence from milk among peoples who have domesticated animals able to supply them with it.51 The Dravidian aborigines of the hills of Central India, who never use milk, are expressly said to regard it as an excrement.52 The ancient Caribs had a horror of eggs and never drank milk.53 The Ashantees are “forbidden eggs by the fetish, and cannot be persuaded to taste milk.”54 The Kimbunda in South-Western Africa detest milk, and consider it inconceivable how a grown-up person can enjoy it; they believe that the Kilulu, or spirit, would punish him who partook of it.55 The Dyaks of Borneo, the Javanese, and the Malays abstain from milk.56 To the Chinese milk and butter are insupportably odious.57

The meat of certain animals may also be regarded with disgust on account of their filthy habits or the nasty food on which they live. In the Warramunga tribe, in Central Australia, there is a general restriction applying to eagle-hawks, and the reason assigned for it is that this bird feeds on the bodies of dead natives.58 It seems that the abstinence from swine’s flesh, at least in part, belongs to the same group of facts. Various tribes in South Africa hold it in abomination.59 In some districts of Madagascar, according to Drury, the eating of pork was accounted a very contemptible thing.60 It is, or was, abstained from by the Jakuts of Siberia, the Votyaks of the Government of Vologda,61 and the Lapps.62 The disgust for pork has likewise been met with in many American tribes. The Koniagas will eat almost any digestible substance except pork.63 The Navahoes of New Mexico abominate it “as if they were the devoutest of Hebrews”;64 it is not forbidden by their religion, but “they say they will not eat the flesh of the hog simply because the animal is filthy in its habits, because it is the scavenger of the town.”65 In his description of the Indians of the South-Eastern States Adair writes:—“They reckon all those animals to be unclean that are either carnivorous, or live on nasty food, as hogs, wolves, panthers, foxes, cats, mice, rats…. When swine were first brought among them, they deemed it such a horrid abomination in any of their people to eat that filthy and impure food, that they excluded the criminal from all religious communion in their circular town-house…. They still affix vicious and contemptible ideas to the eating of swine’s flesh; insomuch that Shúkàpa, ‘swine eater,’ is the most opprobrious epithet that they can use to brand us with; they commonly subjoin Akang-gàpa, ‘eater of dunghill fowls.’ Both together signify ‘filthy, helpless animals.’”66 So also those Indians in British Guiana who have kept aloof from intercourse with the colonists reject pork with the greatest loathing. Schomburgk tells us that an old Indian permitted his children to accompany him on a journey only on the condition that they were never to eat any viands prepared by his cook, for fear lest pork should have been used in their preparation. But this objection does not extend to the native hog, which, though generally abstained from by wizards, is eaten by the laity indiscriminately, with the exception of women who are pregnant or who have just given birth to a child.67 This suggests that the aversion to the domestic pig partly springs from the fact that it is a foreign animal. Indeed, the Guiana Indians refuse to eat the flesh of all animals that are not indigenous to their country, but were introduced from abroad, such as oxen, sheep, and fowls, apparently on the principle “that any strange and abnormal object is especially likely to be possessed of a harmful spirit.”68 The Kafirs, also, abstain from the domestic swine, though they eat the wild hog.69 Some writers maintain that pork has been prohibited on the ground that it is prejudicial to health in hot countries;70 but, as we have seen, this prohibition is found among various northern peoples as well, and it seems besides that the unwholesomeness of pork in good condition has been rather assumed than proved. Sir J. G. Frazer, again, believes that the ancient Egyptians, Semites, and some of the Greeks abstained from this food not because the pig was looked upon simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but because it was considered to be endowed with high supernatural powers.71 In Greece the pig was used in purificatory ceremonies.72 Lucian says that the worshippers of the Syrian goddess abstained from eating pigs, some because they held them in abomination, others because they thought them holy.73 The heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine’s flesh once a year.74 According to Greek writers, the Egyptians abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal, and to drink its milk was believed to cause leprosy and itchy eruptions;75 but once a year they sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris and ate of the flesh of the victims, though at any other time they would not so much as taste pork.76

Of the abhorrence of cannibalism I shall speak in a separate chapter, but in this connection it is worth noticing that the eating of certain animals is regarded with horror or disgust either because they are supposed to be metamorphosed ancestors77 or on account of their resemblance to men. Various peoples refrain from monkey’s flesh;78 and European travellers mention their own instinctive repugnance to it and their aversion to shooting monkeys.79 The Indians of Lower California will eat any animal, except men and monkeys, “the latter because they so much resemble the former.”80 According to an ancient writer quoted by Porphyry, the Egyptian priests rejected those animals which “verged to a similitude to the human form.”81 The Kafirs say that elephants are forbidden food because their intelligence resembles that of men.82

Moreover, intimacy with an animal easily takes away the appetite for its flesh. Among ourselves, as Mandeville observes, “some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with, whilst they were alive; others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse on beef, mutton, and fowls, when they are bought in the market.”83 Among other races we meet with feelings no less refined. Mencius, the Chinese moralist, said:—“So is the superior man affected towards animals, that, having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die; having heard their dying cries, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore he keeps away from his slaughter house and cook-room.”84 The abstinence from domestic fowls and their eggs, as also from the tame pig, may occasionally have sprung from sympathy. Dr. von den Steinen states that the Brazilian Yuruna cannot be induced to eat any animal which they have bred themselves, and that they apparently considered it very immoral when he and his party ate hen-eggs.85 In the sacred books of India it is represented as a particularly bad action to eat certain domestic animals, including village pigs and tame cocks; a twice-born man who does so knowingly will become an outcast.86 Among the Bechuanas in South Africa dogs and tame cats are not eaten, though wild cats are.87 The Arabs of Dukkâla in Morocco eat their neighbours’ cats but not their own. Among the Dinka only such cows as die naturally or by an accident are used for food; but a dead cow is never eaten by the bereaved owner himself, who is too much afflicted at the loss to be able to touch a morsel of the carcase of his departed beast.88 Herodotus says that the Libyans would not taste the flesh of the cow, though they ate oxen;89 and the same rule prevailed among the Egyptians and Phœnicians, who would sooner have partaken of human flesh than of the meat of a cow.90 The eating of cow’s flesh is prohibited by the law of Brahmanism.91 According to Dr. Rájendralála Mitra, the idea of beef as an article of food “is so shocking to the Hindus, that thousands over thousands of the more orthodox among them never repeat the counterpart of the word in their vernaculars, and many and dire have been the sanguinary conflicts which the shedding of the blood of cows has caused.”92 In China “the slaughter of buffaloes for food is unlawful, according to the assertions of the people, and the abstaining from the eating of beef is regarded as very meritorious.”93 It is said in the ‘Divine Panorama’ that he who partakes of beef or dog’s flesh will be punished by the deity.94 In Japan neither cattle nor sheep were in former days killed for food;95 and in the rural districts many people still think it wrong to eat beef.96 In Rome the slaughter of a labouring ox was in olden days punished with excommunication;97 and at Athens and in Peloponnesus it was prohibited even on penalty of death.98 Indeed, the ancient idea has survived up to modern times in Greece, where it has been held as a maxim that the animal which tills the ground ought not to be used for food.99 These prohibitions are no doubt to some extent expressions of kindly feelings towards the animals to which they refer.100 A Dinka is said to be fonder of his cattle than of his wife and children;101 and according to classical writers, the ploughing ox is not allowed to be slaughtered because he is himself an agriculturist, the servant of Ceres, and a companion to the labourer in his work.102 But at the same time the restrictions in question are very largely due to prudential motives. Peoples who live chiefly on the products of their cattle show a strong disinclination to reduce their herds, especially by killing cows or calves;103 and agricultural races are naturally anxious to preserve the animal which is used for work on the field. With reference to the Egyptian and Phœnician custom of eating bulls but abstaining from cows, Porphyry observes that “for the sake of utility in one and the same species of animals distinction is made between that which is pious and that which is impious,” cows being spared on account of their progeny.104 Until quite recently in Egypt no one was allowed to kill a calf, and permission from the government was required for the slaughter of a bull.105 Moreover, domestic animals are frequently regarded as sacred in consequence of their utility, and for that reason also abstained from. The Dinka pay a kind of reverence to their cattle.106 In Egypt, according to Herodotus, the cow was sacred to Isis.107 In India she has been the object of a special worship.108

Certain foods, then, are generally abjured, not merely because they excite disgust, or as the case may be, because they have a disagreeable taste, but also from utilitarian considerations. To the instances just mentioned may be added the custom prevalent among the Tonga Islanders of setting a temporary prohibition or taboo on certain eatables in order to prevent them from growing scarce.109 But the most important prudential motive underlying the general restrictions in diet is no doubt fear lest the food should have an injurious effect upon him who partakes of it. The harm caused by it may only be imaginary; indeed, forbidden food is commonly regarded as unwholesome, whatever be the original ground on which it was prohibited.110 The Negroes of the Loango Coast say that they abstain from goat-flesh because otherwise their skin would scale off, and from fowl so as not to lose their hair.111 Some tribes of the Malay Peninsula refuse to eat the flesh of elephants under the pretext that it would occasion sickness.112 The tribes inhabiting the hills of Assam think that “the penalty for eating the flesh of a cat is loss of speech, while those who infringe a special rule forbidding the flesh of a dog are believed to die of boils.”113 The worshippers of the Syrian goddess maintained that the eating of sprats or anchovies would fill the body with ulcers and wither up the liver.114 In Russia veal is considered by many to be very unwholesome food, and is entirely rejected by pious people.115 It is not probable that these ideas are in the first instance derived from experience; but there can be no doubt that fear of evil consequences is in many cases a primary motive for the abstinence from a certain kind of food. Mr. Im Thurn supposes that the Guiana Indian avoids eating the flesh of various animals because he thinks they are particularly malignant.116 Animals that present some unusual or uncanny peculiarity are rejected because they are objects of superstitious fear. The Egyptian priests, we are told, did not eat oxen which were twins or which were speckled, nor animals that had only one eye.117 The North American Indians of the South-Eastern States abstained from all birds of night, believing that if they ate them they would fall ill.118 Another cause of rejecting the flesh of certain animals is the idea that anybody who partook of it would at the same time acquire some undesirable quality inherent in the animal.119 The Záparo Indians of Ecuador “will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any heavy meats such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, &c., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them also unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility and unfitting them for the chase.”120 For a similar reason the ancient Caribs are said to have refrained from turtles;121 and some North American Indians state that in former days their greatest chieftains “seldom ate of any animal of gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a dullness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves with proper vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties.”122 The Namaquas of South Africa, again, pretend not to eat the flesh of the hare, because they think it would make them as faint-hearted as that animal.123 Among the Kafirs only children may eat hares, whereas the men partake of the flesh of the leopard in order to get its strength.124 Among some other peoples the hare is forbidden food,125 possibly owing to a similar superstition. The blood of an animal is avoided because it is believed to contain its life or soul. We meet with this custom in several North American tribes,126 as well as in the Old Testament;127 and from the Jews it passed into early Christianity.128

The general abstinence from certain kinds of food has thus sprung from a great variety of causes. Of these I have been able to point out only some of the more general and obvious. As Sir J. G. Frazer justly remarks, to explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess.129 Even explanations given by the natives themselves may be misleading, since the original motive for a custom may have been forgotten, while the custom itself is still preserved. But I think that, broadly speaking, the general avoidance of a certain food may be traced to one or several of the following sources: its disagreeable taste; disgust caused, in the case of animal food, either by the external appearance of the animal, or by its unclean habits, or by sympathy, or by associations of some kind or other, or even by the mere fact that it is commonly abstained from; the disinclination to kill an animal for food, or, generally, to reduce the supply of a certain kind of victuals; the idea, whether correct or false, that the food would injure him who partook of it. From what has been said in previous chapters it is obvious that any of these factors, if influencing the manners of a whole community and especially when supported by the force of habit, may lead not only to actual abstinence but to prohibitory rules the transgression of which is apt to call forth moral disapproval. This is particularly the case at the earlier stages of culture, where a people’s tastes and habits are most uniform, where the sway of custom is most powerful, where instinctive aversion most readily develops into moral indignation, and where man in almost every branch of action thinks he has to be on his guard against supernatural dangers. And in this, as in other cases of moral concern, the prohibition may easily be sanctioned by religion, especially when the abstinence is due to fear of some mysterious force or quality in the thing avoided. The religious aspect assumed particular prominence in Hebrewism and Brahmanism. It is said in the ‘Institutes of Vishnu’ that the eating of pure food is more essential than all external means of purification; “he who eats pure food only is truly pure, not he who is only purified with earth and water.”130 The Koran forbids the eating of “what is dead, and blood, and flesh of swine, and whatsoever has been consecrated to other than God.”131 Mediæval Christianity prohibited the eating of various animals, especially horses, which were not used as food in the South of Europe, but which the pagan Teutons sacrificed and ate at their religious feasts.132 The idea that it is “unchristian” to eat horseflesh has survived even to the present day, and has, together with the aversion to feeding on a pet animal, been responsible for the loss of enormous quantities of nourishing food. Among ourselves the only eatable thing the partaking of which is generally condemned as immoral is human flesh. But there are a considerable number of people who think that we ought to abstain from all animal meat, not only for sanitary reasons, but because man is held to have no right to subject any living being to suffering and death for the purpose of gratifying his appetite.

On similar grounds vegetarianism has been advocated as a moral duty among Eastern races, as also in classical antiquity. The regard for life in general, which is characteristic of Taouism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism,133 led to the condemnation of the use of animals as food. It is a very common feeling among the Chinese of all classes that the eating of flesh is sensual and sinful, or at least quite incompatible with the highest degree of sincerity and purity.134 In Japan many persons abstain from meat, owing to Buddhistic influence.135 In India animal food was not avoided in early times; the epic characters shoot deer and eat cows.136 Even in the sacred law-books the eating of meat is permitted in certain circumstances:—“On offering the honey-mixture to a guest, at a sacrifice and at the rites in honour of the manes, but on these occasions only, may an animal be slain.”137 Nay, some particular animals are expressly declared eatable.138 The total abstinence from meat is in fact represented as something meritorious rather than as a strict duty;139 it is said that “by avoiding the use of flesh one gains a greater reward than by subsisting on pure fruit and roots, and by eating food fit for ascetics in the forest.”140 But on the other hand we also read that “there is no greater sinner than that man who, though not worshipping the gods or the manes, seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings.”141 As a matter of fact, meat is nowadays commonly, though by no means universally, abstained from by high caste Hindus, whereas most low caste natives are only vegetarian when flesh food is not within their reach;142 and we are told that the views which many Hindus entertain of people who indulge in such food are not very unlike the opinions which Europeans have about cannibals.143 The immediate origin of these restrictions seems obvious enough. They were not introduced—as has been supposed—either as mere sumptuary measures,144 or because meat was found to be an aliment too rich and heavy in a warm climate,145 but they were the natural outcome of a system which enjoins regard for life in general and kindness towards all living beings. In the ‘Laws of Manu’ it is expressly said that the use of meat should be shunned for the reason that “meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss.”146 That the prohibition of eating animals resulted from the prohibition of killing them is also suggested by other facts. If Hindu Pariahs eat the flesh of animals which have died naturally, it “is not visited upon them as a crime, but they are considered to be wretches as filthy and disgusting as their food is revolting.”147 Buddhism allows the eating of fish and meat if it is pure in three respects, to wit—if one has not seen, nor heard, nor suspected that it has been procured for the purpose;148 and among the Buddhists of Burma even the most strictly religious have no scruples in eating the flesh of an animal killed by another person, “as then, they consider, the sin of its destruction does not rest upon them, but on the person who actually caused it.”149

Vegetarianism is, further, said to have been practised by the first and most learned class of the Persian Magi, who, according to Eubulus, neither slew nor ate anything animated;150 and many of the Egyptian priests are reported to have abstained entirely from animal food.151 In ancient legends we are told that the earliest men, who were pure and free from sin, killed no animal but lived exclusively on the fruits of the earth.152 In Greece the Pythagoreans opposed the killing and eating of animals, “as having a right to live in common with mankind,”153 or in consequence of their theory that the souls of men after death transmigrate into animals.154 According to Porphyry, a fleshless diet not only contributes to the health of the body and to the preservation of the power and purity of the mind, but is required by justice. Animals, he said, are allied to men, and he must be considered an impious person who does not abstain from acting unjustly towards his kindred.155

There still remains a group of restrictions in diet which call for our consideration, namely, such as refer to the use of intoxicating drinks, either only prohibiting immoderation or also demanding total abstinence.

Among a large number of peoples drunkenness is so common that it can hardly be looked upon as a vice by the community; on the contrary, it is sometimes an object of pride, or is regarded almost as a religious duty. An old traveller on the West African Gold Coast says that the natives teach their children drunkenness at the age of three or four years, “as if it were a virtue.”156 The Negroes of Accra, according to Monrad, take a pride in getting drunk, and praise the happiness of a person who is so intoxicated that he can hardly walk.157 In ancient Yucatan he who dropped down senseless from drink in a banquet was allowed to remain where he fell, and was regarded by his companions with feelings of envy.158 Among the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, who are otherwise a sober people, drunkenness forms a part of their religious festivals.159 So also in the hill tribes of the Central Provinces of India a large quantity of liquor is an essential element in their religious rites, and their acts of worship invariably end in intoxication.160 Of the Ainu in Japan we are told that “to drink for the god” is their chief act of worship; the more saké they drink the more devout they are, whereas the gods will be angry with a person who abstains from the intoxicating drink.161 The ancient Scandinavians regularly concluded their religious ceremonies with filling and emptying stoops in honour of their gods; and even after their conversion to Christianity they were allowed to continue this practice at the end of their services, with the difference that they were now required in their toast-drinking to substitute for the names of their false deities those of the true God and his saints.162 Of the Germans Tacitus states that “to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one”;163 and this habit of intoxication the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, where it was nourished by a damp climate and a marshy soil. In the seventh and eighth centuries some efforts were made to check drunkenness on the initiative of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, archbishop of York, and these exertions were supported by the kings from a political desire to prevent riots and bloodshed.164 The Penitentials tell us the tale of universal intemperance more effectively than any description of it could do. A bishop who was so drunk as to vomit while administering the holy sacrament was condemned to eighty or ninety days penance, a presbyter to seventy, a deacon or monk to sixty, a clerk to forty;165 and if a person was so intoxicated that, pending the rite, he dropped the sacred elements into the fire or into a river, he was required to chant a hundred psalms.166 A bishop or priest who persevered in the habit of drunkenness was to be degraded from his office;167 whilst single cases of intoxication, if accompanied by vomiting, incurred penance for a certain number of days—forty for a presbyter or deacon,168 thirty for a monk,169 fifteen for a layman.170 However, these rules admitted of exceptions: if anybody in joy and glory of our Saviour’s natal day, or of Easter, or in honour of any saint, vomited through being drunk, and in so doing had taken no more than he was ordered by his elders, it mattered nothing; and if a bishop had commanded him to be drunk he was likewise innocent, unless indeed the bishop was in the same state himself.171 If these attempts to encourage soberness produced any change for the better, it could only have been temporary; for some time afterwards intemperance was carried to its greatest excess through the practice and example of the Danes.172 Under the influence of the Normans, who were a more temperate race, drunkenness, for a time decreased in England; but after a few reigns the Saxons seem rather to have corrupted their conquerors than to have been benefited by their example.173 As late as the eighteenth century drunkenness was universal among all classes in England. It was then as uncommon for a party to separate while any member of it remained sober as it is now for any one in such a party to degrade himself through intoxication. No loss of character was incurred by habitual excess. Men in the position of gentlemen congratulated each other upon the number of bottles emptied; and it would have been considered a very frivolous objection to a citizen who aspired to the dignity of Alderman or Mayor that he was an habitual drunkard.174

Though of late years drunkenness has been decreasing among those European nations who have been most addicted to it, and is nowadays generally recognised as a vice, our civilisation is still, as it has always been, the great source from which the poison of intoxication is pouring over the earth in all directions, infecting or killing races who previously knew nothing of alcohol or looked upon it with abhorrence. Eastern religions have emphatically insisted upon sobriety or even total abstinence from intoxicating liquors. In the sacred law-books of Brahmanism thirteen different kinds of alcoholic drinks are mentioned, all of which are forbidden to Brâhmanas and three to Kshatriyas and Vaisyas;175 yet, though there be no sin in drinking spirituous liquor, “abstention brings greater reward.”176 A twice-born man who drinks the liquor called Surâ commits a mortal sin, which will be punished both in this life and in the life to come;177 the most proper penalty for such a person is to drink that liquor boiling-hot, and only when his body has been completely scalded by it is he freed from his guilt.178 Among the modern Hindus drunkenness is said to be detested by all but the very lowest castes in the agricultural districts and some high caste people residing in the great towns, who have learned it from Europeans; it is supposed to be destructive of caste purity; hence a notorious drunkard is, or at least used to be, expelled from his caste.179 Buddhism interdicts altogether the use of alcohol;180 “of the five crimes, the taking of life, theft, adultery, lying, and drinking, the last is the worst.”181 Taouism condemns the love of wine.182 In Zoroastrianism the holy Sraosha is represented as fighting against the demon of drunkenness,183 and it is said that the sacred beings are not pleased with him who drinks wine more than moderately;184 but it seems that the ancient Persians nevertheless were much addicted to intoxication.185 According to classical writers, some of the Egyptian priests abstained entirely from wine, whilst others drank very little of it;186 and before the reign of Psammetichus the kings neither drank wine, nor made libation of it as a thing acceptable to the gods.187 The use of wine and other inebriating drinks is forbidden by Islam,188 and was punished by Muhammed with flogging.189 It may also be said of his followers that they for the most part have obeyed this command, at least in country districts,190 and that the exceptions to the rule are directly or indirectly attributable to the influence of Christians.

The condemnation of drunkenness is, of course, in the first place due to its injurious consequences. The Basutos of South Africa say that “there is blood in the dregs”—that is, intoxication ends in bloody quarrels.191 The Omaha Indians made drunkenness a crime punishable with flogging and loss of property, because it often led to murders.192 Sahagun tells us of a Mexican king who severely admonished his people to abstain from intoxication, as being the cause of troubles and disorders in villages and kingdoms, of misery, sorrow, and poverty.193 Of him who drinks immoderately it is said in one of the Pahlavi texts that infamy comes to his body and wickedness to his soul.194 According to Ecclesiasticus, “drunkenness increaseth the rage of a fool till he offend: it diminisheth strength and maketh wounds.”195 We read in the Talmud, “Drink not, and you will not sin.”196 Muhammed said that in wine there is both sin and profit, but that the sin is greater than the profit.197 Buddhism stigmatises drinking as the worst of crimes because it leads to all other sins; from the continued use of intoxicating drink six evil consequences are said to follow—namely, the loss of wealth; the arising of disputes that lead to blows and battles; the production of various diseases, as soreness of the eyes and others; the bringing of disgrace, from the rebuke of parents and superiors; the exposure to shame, from going hither and thither unclothed; the loss of the judgment required for the carrying on of the affairs of the world.198 That drunkenness, in spite of the evils resulting from it, nevertheless so frequently escapes censure, is due partly to the pleasures connected with it, partly to lack of foresight,199 and in a large measure to the influence of intemperate habits. Why such habits should have grown up in one country and not in another we are often unable to tell. The climate has no doubt something to do with it, although it is impossible to agree with the statement made by Montesquieu that the prevalence of intoxication in different parts of the earth is proportionate to the coldness and humidity of the air.200 A gloomy temperament and a cheerless life are apt to induce people to resort to the artificial pleasures produced by drink. The dreariness of the Puritan Sunday has much to answer for; the evidence given by a spirit merchant before the Commission on the Forbes Mackenzie Act was “that there is a great demand for drink on Sunday,” and that “this demand must be supplied.”201 Ennui was probably a cause of the prevailing inebriety in Europe in former days, when there was difficulty in passing the time not occupied in fighting or hunting;202 and the monotony of life in the lower ranks of an industrial community still tends to produce a similar effect. Other causes of drunkenness are miserable homes and wretched cooking. Mr. Lecky is of opinion that if the wives of the poor in Great Britain and Ireland could cook as they can cook in France and in Holland, a much smaller proportion of the husbands would seek a refuge in the public-house.203

The evil consequences of intoxication have led not only to the condemnation of an immoderate use of alcoholic drink, but also to the demand for total abstinence, in consideration of the difficulty many people have in avoiding excess. But this hardly accounts in full for the religious prohibition of drink which we meet with in the East. Wine or spirituous liquor inspires mysterious fear. The abnormal mental state which it produces suggests the idea that there is something supernatural in it, that it contains a spirit, or is perhaps itself a spirit.204 Moreover, the juice of the grape is conceived as the blood of the vine205—in Ecclesiasticus the wine which was poured out at the foot of the altar is even called “the blood of the grape”;206 and in the blood is the soul. The law of Brahmanism not only prohibits the drinking of wine, but also commands that “one should carefully avoid red exudations from trees and juices flowing from incisions.”207 That spirituous liquor is believed to contain baneful mysterious energy is obvious from the statement that if the Brahman (the Veda) which dwells in the body of a Brâhmana is even once deluged with it, his Brahmanhood forsakes him, and he becomes a Sûdra;208 holy persons are, of course, most easily affected by the mysterious drink, owing to the delicate nature of holiness. Muhammedans likewise regard wine as “unclean” and polluting;209 some of them dread it so much that if a single drop were to fall upon a clean garment it would be rendered unfit to wear until washed.210 In Morocco it is said that by drinking alcohol a Muhammedan loses the baraka, or holiness, of “the faith” and a scribe the memory of the Koran, and that if a person who drinks alcohol has a charm on him, its baraka is spoiled. The fact that wine was forbidden by the Prophet might perhaps by itself be a sufficient reason for the notion that it is unclean. But already in pre-Muhammedan times it seems to have been scrupulously avoided by some of the Arabs,211 though among others it was much in use and was highly praised by their poets.212

As for the Muhammedan prohibition of wine, the suggestion has been made by Palgrave that it mainly arose from the Prophet’s antipathy to Christianity and his desire to broaden the line of demarcation between his followers and those of Christ. Wine was raised by the founder of Christianity to a dignity of the highest religious import. It became well-nigh typical of Christianity and in a manner its badge. To declare it “unclean,” an “abomination,” and “the work of the devil,” was to set up for the Faithful a counter-badge.213 This view derives much probability from the fact that there are several unequivocal indications of the same bent of policy in Muhammed’s system, showing a distinct tendency to oppose Islam to other religions. But at the same time both a desire to prevent intoxication and the notion that wine is polluting may very well have been co-operating motives for the prohibition.