I just came across an excellent book called
"The Golden Bough" by Sir James George Frazer.
In it a sub chapter is dedicated to the taboos connected
with ones blood.
I found this rather interesting considering the massive
propaganda "out there" to have people donate their blood.
From what I understand if a person is suffering from blood
loss a blood transaction is not necessary but instead a salt
water dilution can be injected instead at amazing results.
If someone has more information on this it would
beinteresting to hear about it.
Here is the chapter from the book:
| Sir James George Frazer
(1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
§ 4. Blood
tabooed |
| |
| WE have seen that the
Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name
raw flesh. At certain times a Brahman teacher is
enjoined not to look on raw flesh, blood, or persons
whose hands have been cut off. In Uganda the father
of twins is in a state of taboo for some time after
birth; among other rules he is forbidden to kill
anything or to see blood. 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 betel 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. 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 of a general precept; in other words,
its observance is particularly enjoined in
circumstances which seem urgently to call for its
application, but apart from such circumstances the
prohibition is also observed, though less strictly,
as a common rule of life. Thus some of the
Esthonians will not taste blood because they believe
that it contains the animal’s soul, which would
enter the body of the person who tasted the blood.
Some Indian tribes of North America, “through a
strong principle of religion, abstain in the
strictest manner from eating the blood of any
animal, as it contains the life and spirit of the
beast.” Jewish hunters poured out the blood of the
game they had killed and covered it up with dust.
They would not taste the blood, believing that the
soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or
actually was the blood. |
1 |
| It is a common rule that royal blood may not be
shed upon the ground. Hence when a king or one of
his family is to be put to death a mode of execution
is devised by which the royal blood shall not be
spilt upon the earth. About the year 1688 the
generalissimo of the army rebelled against the king
of Siam and put him to death “after the manner of
royal criminals, or as princes of the blood are
treated when convicted of capital crimes, which is
by putting them into a large iron caldron, and
pounding them to pieces with wooden pestles, because
none of their royal blood must be spilt on the
ground, it being, by their religion, thought great
impiety to contaminate the divine blood by mixing it
with earth.” When Kublai Khan defeated and took his
uncle Nayan, who had rebelled against him, he caused
Nayan to be put to death by being wrapt in a carpet
and tossed to and fro till he died, “because he
would not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt
upon the ground or exposed in the eye of Heaven and
before the Sun.” “Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar
maxim: ‘One Khan will put another to death to get
possession of the throne, but he takes great care
that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is
highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan
should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the
victim to be smothered somehow or other.’ The like
feeling prevails at the court of Burma, where a
peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is
reserved for princes of the blood.” |
2 |
| The reluctance to spill royal blood seems to be
only a particular case of a general unwillingness to
shed blood or at least to allow it to fall on the
ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day persons
caught in the streets of Cambaluc (Peking) at
unseasonable hours were arrested, and if found
guilty of a misdemeanor were beaten with a stick.
“Under this punishment people sometimes die, but
they adopt it inorder to
eschew bloodshed, for their Bacsis say that
it is an evil thing to shed man’s blood.” In West
Sussex people believe that the ground on which human
blood has been shed is accursed and will remain
barren for ever. Among some primitive peoples, when
the blood of a tribesman has to be spilt it is not
suffered to fall upon the ground, but is received
upon the bodies of his fellow-tribesmen. Thus in
some Australian tribes boys who are being
circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the
living bodies of the tribesmen; and when a boy’s
tooth is knocked out as an initiatory ceremony, he
is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast
the blood flows and may not be wiped away. “Also the
Gauls used to drink their enemies’ blood and paint
themselves therewith. So also they write that the
old Irish were wont; and so have I seen some of the
Irish do, but not their enemies’ but friends’ blood,
as, namely, at the execution of a notable traitor at
Limerick, called Murrogh O’Brien, I saw an old
woman, which was his foster-mother, take up his head
whilst he was quartered and suck up all the blood
that ran thereout, saying that the earth was not
worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her
face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and
shrieking most terribly.” Among the Latuka of
Central Africa the earth on which a drop of blood
has fallen at childbirth is carefully scraped up
with an iron shovel, put into a pot along with the
water used in washing the mother, and buried
tolerably deep outside the house on the left-hand
side. In West Africa, if a drop of your blood has
fallen on the ground, you must carefully cover it
up, rub and stamp it into the soil; if it has fallen
on the side of a canoe or a tree, the place is cut
out and the chip destroyed. One motive of these
African customs may be a wish to prevent the blood
from falling into the hands of magicians, who might
make an evil use of it. That is admittedly the
reason why people in West Africa stamp out any blood
of theirs which has dropped on the ground or cut out
any wood that has been soaked with it. From a like
dread of sorcery natives of New Guinea are careful
to burn any sticks, leaves, or rags which are
stained with their blood; and if the blood has
dripped on the ground they turn up the soil and if
possible light a fire on the spot. The same fear
explains the curious duties discharged by a class of
men called ramanga or “blue blood” among
the Betsileo of Madagascar. It is their business to
eat all the nail-parings and to lick up all the
spilt blood of the nobles. When the nobles pare
their nails, the parings are collected to the last
scrap and swallowed by these ramanga. If
the parings are too large, they are minced small and
so gulped down. Again, should a nobleman wound
himself, say in cutting his nails or treading on
something, the ramanga lick up the blood as
fast as possible. Nobles of high rank hardly go
anywhere without these humble attendants; but if it
should happen that there are none of them present,
the cut nails and the spilt blood are carefully
collected to be afterwards swallowed by the
ramanga. There is scarcely a nobleman of any
pretensions who does not strictly observe this
custom, the intention of which probably is to
prevent these parts of his person from fallinginto
the hands of sorcerers, who on the principles of
contagious magic could work him harm thereby. |
3 |
| The general explanation of the reluctance to
shed blood on the ground is probably to be found in
the belief that the soul is in the blood, and that
therefore any ground on which it may fall
necessarily becomes taboo or sacred. In New Zealand
anything upon which even a drop of a high chief’s
blood chances to fall becomes taboo or sacred to
him. For instance, a party of natives having come to
visit a chief in a fine new canoe, the chief got
into it, but in doing so a splinter entered his
foot, and the blood trickled on the canoe, which at
once became sacred to him. The owner jumped out,
dragged the canoe ashore opposite the chief’s house,
and left it there. Again, a chief in entering a
missionary’s house knocked his head against a beam,
and the blood flowed. The natives said that in
former times the house would have belonged to the
chief. As usually happens with taboos of universal
application, the prohibition to spill the blood of a
tribesman on the ground applies with peculiar
stringency to chiefs and kings, and is observed in
their case long after it has ceased to be observed
in the case of others. |
Last
Edited: December 7, 2006 01:54 by cesco |