understood that a dancer when not dancing needs to be specially guarded against direct contact with other material objects, unless their being completely covered indicates the necessity in itself and is not merely due to secrecy. In most tribes there is little or no ceremony. A dancer walks to the dancing place and returns without ceremony as a rule, for everybody in the tribe at some time or other dances.
No. 6. Sacred Inanimate Objects.
Sanctity when applied to inanimate objects necessitates their being guarded from pollution or hurt. The care bestowed on idols by idolatrous races is well known to all readers and observers. I will only mention here, therefore, two rather unusual cases.
In New Guinea there is the cult of the mango tree. A tree is selected and becomes at once sacred. It is cut down by fasting men with a special stone adze. Iron must not be used. All the chips, etc., are caught on new mats. The tree is wrapped in mats with all the chips and fallen leaves and carried to a certain place by the fasting men. There it is tied to the central pole of the platform inside the special house built for the fasting men. No part of the tree may ever touch the ground, and sacrifices of pigs are made to it. (A. C. Haddon, Migration of Culture.)
Finally, I may refer to the old Fiji custom of launching a new war canoe on the bodies of captured enemies instead of on wooden rollers. It may be with the idea of guarding the sanctity of the canoe, or perhaps the spirit of the canoe, against contamination. Or it may be no other than an additional and specially thought out fiendish device to render the launching sacrifice as attractive as possible to the jaded spirits of the spectators. Simple sacrifices usually accompanied a launch, and the idea is not lost in modern Europe, but is represented by a bottle of wine being broken on the vessel's bows.
