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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s3: § 3. Taboos

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c28.s3

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§ 3. Taboos

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While the bath has the power of removing what is attached to a man's person, and thus is often used before undertaking a rite, as before the Dīkṣā itself by the sacrificer, by bridegroom and bride before marriage, and by a woman after the spell to produce offspring has been performed for her,⁶ it is also necessary to avoid its use to prevent the removal of the holy power, which has been attained by some means or other. The theory would therefore demand that, after the initiation of the Brahman student, he should not take a bath until the final bath, so as to preserve his undoubted condition of holiness to the end, as the sacrificer can do in the case of the sacrifice, but obvious practical considerations rendered it impossible to carry that out in the times recorded for us. Though the more recent ascetics in India often never wash at all, and the seclusion of girls from ordinary life before and during puberty is practised for long periods in some lands, the use of the bath was not normally in the slightest degree forbidden to the Vedic student.⁷ But we hear of cases where the theory was worked out: in the case¹ of the period of a year connected with the ceremony of cutting the beard of the youth, which is introduced by a ceremony comparable to the initiation to studentship and during which the carrying of a girdle, the living on alms, and so on are prescribed as for a student, washing, combing the hair, cleaning the teeth, and washing the feet are forbidden. In the case of the four-month ceremonies,² it is a rule of perfection, at least, that the performer should not bathe until the final bath. The sense is clear, and throws light on the famous reference in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa³ to the dirty condition of the ascetic, which is also echoed in the hymn of the Ṛgveda⁴ regarding the inspired Muni.

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⁶ KÇS. vii. 2. 15, &c.

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⁷ BDS. i. 2. 3. 39; GDS. ii. 8, &c.

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¹ GGS. iii. 1. 10 ff.

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² KÇS. v. 2. 21.

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³ AB. vii. 13.

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⁴ x. 136.

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The case of the hair is analogous to, and closely connected with, that of the washing or refraining from washing the body. The Vedic domestic ritual lays stress on the cutting of the child’s hair once in early childhood, and then later for the youth when he has grown up: the hair is carefully cut, and after that was arranged in the characteristic manner in which the family wore its hair, this being a marked sign of differentiation among the Vedic families and one already recorded to us in the Ṛgveda; the beard of the youth was also shorn.⁵ The aim of the performance is expressly stated in the formulae accompanying it to be the production of long life, and the giving of health and purity, and obviously it served also to mark the family connexion of the child or youth. That in the ceremony there was any idea of an offering whether to gods, or to demons, or to the Fathers⁶ is not indicated by anything in the ritual texts nor in the formulae used, and, if any such idea was ever present, it was not felt in Vedic times. There is indeed no obvious reason for distinguishing the action in these cases from the action in the cases of sacrifices. The sacrificer before the new- and full-moon offerings has his hair cut, except the family knot, and his beard shaven, and even his nails pared: so the sacrificer in the case of the Dīkṣā, and at the four-monthly offerings, and the motive expressed in these cases is the removal of the dead skin to make the body pure.⁷ The same principle of shaving was observed by the living after the death of a member of the family,⁸ at the same time as the putting on of new garments, the renewal of the domestic fire, and the washing of their bodies. The same performances were applied as in all lands to the dead:⁹ perhaps we can say nothing more than that the feeling of impurity from contact with the dead was very strong, and required to be removed as vehemently as possible.

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⁵ AGS. i. 17. 12, 16; 18. 5; GDS. xx. 5. For Greek parallels see Cook, *Zeus*, i. 23–5, 93. For peculiarities of arrangement of hair as characteristic of tribes and families cf. Ridgeway, *Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor*, p. 305; Hillebrandt, *Rituallitteratur*, pp. 7, 8. For the soul in the hair, see Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 116 ff.

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⁶ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 426.

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⁷ ÇB. iii. 1. 2. 1; MS. iii. 6. 2.

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⁸ AGS. iv. 6. 4.

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⁹ AGS. iv. 1. 16; AV. xix. 32. 2.

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On the other hand, as in the case of abstaining from washing, so we have instances in which the hair must not be cut at all. The newly wedded bride on the fourth day, before the consummation of the marriage is permitted, must be rubbed with an ointment from the remains of oblations up to the nails and the hair.¹ The ascetic of the Rigveda wears long hair; the description of the attributes of asceticism in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa include dirt, long hair, a girdle, and an antelope skin. In the period of a year before the shaving of the beard referred to above the hair may not be cut. In the royal consecration the sacrifice is followed by period of a year in which the consecrated may rub but not wash himself, shorten, but not cut off the hair.² The reason for the usage is given with perfect distinctness by the Brāhmaṇa : the anointing has put the strength of the waters of anointing into his hair, and he would destroy the virtue thus engendered, if he cut off the hair. The same principle is applied to the animals of the sacrifice : the steed for the horse sacrifice must not, for the year in which it wanders free before its death, be allowed to bathe in water, and the manes of the horses in the realm should not be cut for a year after the royal consecration.³ Naturally the end of the period of allowing the hair to grow is marked by a formal act of shaving : this is the case with the man consecrated by the Dīkṣā, with the king at the end of the year of consecration; at the Samāvartana ceremony, which ends the period of studentship, the hair, the beard, the hair on the body, and the nails are all carefully cut.⁴

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¹ GGS. ii. 5. 6.

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² LÇS. ix. 2. 18, 21; ÇB. v. 5. 3. 1; KÇS. xv. 8. 28.

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³ KÇS. xx. 2. 12, 13; LÇS. ix. 2. 26. In Persia we have an obscure record (Herodotos, ix. 110) of an annual hair washing (?) by the King, with which Strabo's (xv. 69) remark as to a similar Indian practice has been compared, and far-reaching conclusions as to Persian influence on Candragupta's court drawn but with little cogency; cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 138–43.

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⁴ ĀpÇS. xiii. 23. 16; ÇGS. iii. 1. 2.

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In a considerable number of cases we find that at certain times the intending sacrificer must abstain from sexual intercourse, must fast, or feed on certain specified foods alone, must sleep on the ground, and so on. The man who intends to establish the sacred fire must for the night before the performance lie awake in silence : ⁵ thus he is said to secure purity and Tapas for his approach to the gods next day. For the day before the new- and full-moon sacrifices the sacrificer must be careful not to eat meat or have sexual intercourse; at evening he may eat wild plants and fruits, but nothing of what he is to offer next day; he must sleep on the ground with his wife for the night, and some even demand that the pair shall spend it in telling stories.⁶

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⁵ ĀpÇS. v. 8. 1 ff.

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⁶ Hillebrandt, *Neu- und Vollmopndsopfer*, pp. 3, 6, 14.

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When the student is performing his period of studentship,⁷ he is forbidden intercourse, and a high bed : when he has been admitted to study ⁸ by the solemn offering, he must stand silent for the rest of the day, and eat no salted food for the day. When he comes to a specially sacred part of his work of learning, then he must shut his eyes, and in silence for a day and a night or three days eat nothing, the shutting of the eyes being no doubt in order not to be blinded by the excessive majesty of the work, which he has studied. Before he imparts such important knowledge to his pupil, the teacher himself for a day and a night must practise chastity, and eat no flesh.¹ In the offering of the Çabalihoma it is provided that the offerer must lie on the ground for twelve nights, speak as little as possible, observe chastity, and take only sweet milk.² The fasts are deemed by the Brāhmaṇas to be the essence of Tapas,³ or again the fasting before an offering is deemed courtesy to the gods, just as one does not eat before one's guests.⁴ The former motive is very probably a real one : the use of hunger to produce states of ecstasy is well attested, but other reasons are possible : the motive of refraining from eating flesh is doubtless connected with the spirit, which is in the dead animal, and which may be dangerous, especially to a man undertaking a solemn rite. The refraining from salt, which is even extended by some authorities to cover the offering of any salted food to the gods, is a strange taboo which is very well known in many parts of the earth, and which in some way seems to stand in connexion with fertility : Oldenberg⁵ suggests that if it is not an inheritance from a time which knew no salt, as is very possible, the unfruitfulness of salt ground and of sea water suggested its evil character, but of that we have no adequate proof, and in point of fact salt passes in some measure as a sign of prosperity,⁶ through its use for animals to lick. Other motives may be the danger of evil spirits entering the man who eats, seeing that at a festival such spirits will be present in large numbers ; the desire to secure that there will be enough food for the gods—which is paralleled by the Vedic politeness theory ; or the desire not to interfere with the full benefit to be obtained by the holy food, which is not expressed in any Vedic passage, but with which may be compared fasts ordered after consuming forbidden food until all trace of it has disappeared.⁷ In the case of sexual intercourse probably the same idea is at work as in the case of the loss of seed generally : the horse for the horse sacrifice is kept away from mares as well as from the water, and the motive appears clearly enough in the ritual and the formulae :⁸ it is undesirable in this case as in the case of the Brahman student and the consecrated man to lose any strength whatever. Even laughter⁹ is regarded as loss of strength : the consecrated man must put his hand before his mouth to prevent the loss of his laughter, which is compared with light on the strength of the Rigveda,¹⁰ by which laughter and lightning are already closely connected.

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⁷ GGS. iii. 1. 17 ff.

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⁸ GGS. ii. 10. 45 ff.

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¹ GGS. iii. 2. 37 ; ÇGS. ii. 11. 6.

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² Weber, *Ind. Stud.* v. 440 ff.

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³ ÇB. ix. 5. 1. 6.

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⁴ ÇB. i. 1. 1. 8 ; ii. 1. 4. 1, 2.

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⁵ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 414, n. 1.

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⁶ ÇB. v. 2. 1. 16.

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⁷ ApDS. i. 9. 27. 3 ; GDS. xxiii. 23.

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⁸ ÇB. xiii. 3. 8. 1 ; TB. iii. 9. 17. 4 ; TA. i. 30 ; ii. 18 ; KÇS. xxv. 11. 21 ; AGS. iii. 6. 8 ; Vait. xii. 9.

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⁹ TA. v. 1. 4 ; contrast TS. vi. 1. 3. 8.

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¹⁰ Oldenberg, *op. cit.*, p. 429. For the lucky sneeze (*āṣkāra*), see PB. viii. 1. 1 ; 2. 2.

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In addition to these taboos there are others of more curious character.

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When the ground is ploughed for a fire altar, there are sowed upon it seeds of every kind except one, and of that the sacrificer never tastes again in his life.¹ If a man use a goat or Kuça grass as a fetish of the fire, then he must not eat either the goat or sit on Kuça grass ; ² if a man takes his fire from the house of a wealthy man, he may not again eat in his house ; ³ at the Vājapeya the sacrificer is anointed, or deluged, with various libations, in preparing which all kinds of food are mixed with water, one only being excepted of which he never eats again.⁴ The builder of the fire altar in bird form must not again eat a bird in his life,⁵ and the same rule is laid down for the learner of the Jyeṣṭha Sāman.⁶ To see here traces of totemism is of course possible, but like all possibilities, which have no evidence to raise them into probabilities, not a very helpful mode of procedure. The case of the altar is clearly due to its bird form : the bird is invested with the holiness of Agni, and must not be eaten by a man who is closely connected with Agni, as is the builder of the fire altar. The borrowing of the same taboo by the learner of the Jyeṣṭha Sāman must not mislead us : once a taboo starts, others easily follow. The idea that the taboos represent an agreement with spirits to abstain from one food, in return for being allowed to use others, is one which has no support of any kind in the Vedic religion.⁷

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¹ ÇB. vii. 2. 4. 14 ; cf. GGS. iii. 2. 58.

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² KÇS. xxv. 4. 4 ff.

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³ ApÇS. v. 14. 2.

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⁴ ÇB. v. 2. 2. 4 ; Weber, *Vājapeya*, p. 36.

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⁵ ÇB. x. 1. 4. 13.

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⁶ GGS. iii. 2. 57.

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⁷ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 416.

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The silence taboo may be variously explained : possibly it may denote the desire to avoid the attacks of evil spirits who may enter the open mouth : retirement into solitude which is further recommended may denote the same feeling, and the sleeping on the ground is interpreted by Oldenberg as a device for avoiding the attacks of such spirits, who will be misled by the change of couch. So also, he thinks, one of the causes of the abstinence from intercourse is the avoidance of attack by the demons whom such conduct deceives. It is possible, however, that in the case of sleeping on the ground another motive was at work, the desire to obtain the power which belongs to the earth spirit : we are reminded of the priests of Zeus at Dodona who slept on the ground.⁸

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⁸ Kretschmer, *Gesch. d. griech. Spr.*, p. 87.

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The fear of the spirits is of course an undoubted motive in the case of the constant taboo of anything connected with death. The teacher who desires to instruct his pupil in the secret texts which cannot be recited in the village must not see blood, a cemetery, nor certain beasts, which are said to be shaped like a corpse.⁹ The pupil himself is to avoid the sight of a place of burning bodies or the bearers of such bodies ; he should not look into a well, nor climb a tree : ¹⁰ the first of these rules reminds us that the spirits dwell in the depths of the earth, that it is dangerous to see one’s own reflection in the water, and the second may refer to the part played by the tree as giving the coffin or covering for the body or ashes of the dead. Again the Snātaka may not sit directly on the bare earth, which may be thus explained or by the fear of his losing his holiness by contact with earth.¹ He may not go by evening to another village or by any but the main road, probably lest he meet evil spirits.² There are also innumerable other taboos, connected not only with death but with lying-in women, and women in their courses, who are regarded as specially full of danger by many peoples, an idea which is often to be traced to the blood taboo.³ Of special frequence is the occurrence of taboo against the use of vessels of clay : the consecrated man must not use such a vessel for his milk food, the butter used at the Tānūnaptra service must not be covered by such a vessel, the learner of the Jyeṣṭha Sāman must not eat or drink from such an utensil, the milk for the new-moon offering must not be covered in this way, and so on.⁴ The vessel used when certain secret texts are recited must be of metal.⁵ In these cases the Brāhmaṇas show clearly that the sense of the connexion of the earth with the dead was the cause of the objection.

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⁹ ÇGS. ii. 12. 10 ; vi. 1. 4, 5.

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¹⁰ ÇGS. iv. 12. 27 ff.

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¹ ÇGS. iv. 12. 21.

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² GGS. iii. 5. 32.

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³ Reinach, *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, i. 162 ff. ; Frazer, *Taboo*, pp. 145 ff. This work contains examples of all the kinds of Vedic taboos.

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⁴ KÇS. vii. 4. 33 ; viii. 2. 1 ; GGS. iii. 2. 60, 61, &c.

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⁵ GGS. iii. 2. 35 ; PGS. i. 3. 5.

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On the other hand there are instances in which the aim of man is precisely the opposite from that seen in the working of taboos : he desired to come into the closest possible relations with the object which he desires to provide. Thus in the case of the Çakvarī verses which are already alluded to in the Rigveda the rules for the conduct of the pupil who desires to study the verses are of a peculiar nature. He is required to follow certain rules for a period of from twelve years to a year—in fixing lengths of courses the Brahmans are always accommodating—which include the duty of touching water thrice daily, wearing black garments, eating black food, exposing himself uncovered to the rain : he must not cross flowing water nor save in case of the greatest need go on a ship, because the strength of the Çakvarī rests in the waters. At the end, when he has learned to sing the verses, he must plunge his hands in water in which vegetables are placed.⁶ The whole performance has only one possible meaning : it is a Brahmanized version of a rain spell. Moreover, the ordinary student is encouraged to expose himself to the rain :⁷ the holy youth is not to shrink from the holy element. The same sort of observance in the case of the sun is laid down for students of the Sāmaveda :⁸ they are not to cover themselves from the sun with more than a single garment, and not to allow anything save trees to get between them and the sun. The performer of the Pravargya⁹ ceremony is forbidden to cover himself in the sun, or to defile it by performing before it any of the acts of nature :¹⁰ at night he must make a light, and eat by it, thus creating for himself a presentment of the sun. The performer of the second form of consecration at the Soma offering takes nothing save hot milk in the effort to make complete the state of heat which the performer of the first consecration aimed at.¹

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⁶ PB. xii. 13. 14 ; TS. ii. 2. 8. 5 ; GGS. iii. 2.

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⁷ PGS. ii. 7. 11 ; GGS. iii. 5. 11. Cf. Usener, *Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft*, vii. 285.

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⁸ GGS. iii. 1. 31 ff.

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⁹ ÇB. xiv. 1. 1. 33.

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¹⁰ Cf. the rule for the Brahman student, ÇB. xiv. 1. 2. 33 ; AV. xiii. 1. 56 (with Lanman's note); Hes. *op.* 725 ; Brunnhofer, *Arische Urzeit*, pp. 324, 325.

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¹ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* x. 363.

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It is of interest to mention in conclusion the conjecture put forward by Weber² that the word taboo as *tābuva* was actually found in the Atharvaveda;³ it is clear that such a suggestion could not possibly be made good, and the idea has been rejected with almost entire unanimity by scholars.⁴

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² SBA. 1896, pp. 681 ff., 873 ff. (with remarks of Jacobi, E. Kuhn, and Bendall); cf. *Ind. Stud.* xviii. 215; Bloomfield, *Atharvaveda*, p. 61.

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³ v. 13. 10. For other strange terms in this hymn, cf. Tilak, *Bhandarkar Comm. Vol.*, pp. 27 ff. See also App. G.

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⁴ Hillebrandt, *Rituallitteratur*, p. 171. *Contra*, Hauer, *Die Anfänge der Yoga-praxis im alten Indien*, p. 63.

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