These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.[1]
No one was allowed to touch the body of the King or Queen of Tahiti;[2] and 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.[3] 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.[4] Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;[5] 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
- ↑ On the nature of taboo, see especially W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, i. 142 sqq. 427 sqq.
- ↑ Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 102.
- ↑ J. Moura, Le Royamme du Cambodge, i. 226.
- ↑ Ch. Dallet, Histoire de l’Église de Corée, i. xxiv. sq.; Griffis, Corea, the Hermit Nation, p. 219.
- ↑ Macrobius, Sat. v. 19, 13; Servius on Virgil, Aen. i. 448; Joannes Lydus, De mens. i. 31.
