allowed to eat the flesh of any male animal. Women with child may not eat the flesh of any animal that has died with young. To them is forbidden the flesh of any animal that has died a natural death as we classify natural deaths, and, by a rather interesting amplification of the category of natural deaths, of any animal that has been killed by a tiger. Here and there I have found evidence of permanent food tabus affecting single clans, and therefore separating them from other clans in the same village. There are whole groups of villages which are subject to a common food tabu, which serves, therefore, as a rough test of tribesmanship. The Tangkhuls do not eat or keep goats. The Marām villagers do not eat pork, and have imposed this tabu on villages which they have conquered. They tell a tale about it which, though doubtless aetiological, seems to indicate a connection between food tabus and the law of marriage. Another important element in the structure of society is sharply and permanently demarcated by food tabus. To the priest-chief, whose sanctity is of a high and special order, necessitating many protective measures, are denied many articles of food otherwise allowed to his fellow villagers. His wife is equally subject to these food tabus, so that she bears a double burden, that of her sex and that of intimacy with so distinguished a lord and master. The first fruits of the cultivation are forbidden to the village until the priest-chief has put his hand to the harvest, thus rendering it available for all.
Even the food tabus which for a moment I classified as temporary may be categorised legitimately as permanent, because they are imposed not by individual choice or caprice, but of necessity, whenever events occur which are held to demand such measures. They are relaxed when the crisis is overpast, and are therefore as much part and parcel of the laws of society as are the permanent tabus. No doubt many of them "depend," as Tylor observed,[1]
- ↑ Early History of Mankind, p. 131.
