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General Shein, commander-in-chief of the army, was the first to yield to the imperative edict and submit his venerable beard to the indignity of the razor's edge. The old age seemed past and the new age come when Shein walked shamefacedly into court with a clean chin. The example thus set was quickly followed. Beards were tabooed within the precincts of the court.
That reluctance is probably based partly on a fear of attracting the notice of evil spirits, partly on a dread of revealing the name to sorcerers, who would thereby obtain a handle for injuring the owner of the name. Names of Relations tabooed
Again, newly born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango they are not allowed to touch the earth. Among the Iluvans of Malabar the bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men and then carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the marriage booth; he may not touch the ground with his feet.
O Frida, you can't imagine what things for I know they hide them from you: cruelties of lust and neglect and shame such as you couldn't even dream of; women dying of foul disease, in want and dirt deliberately forced upon them by the will of your society; destined beforehand for death, a hateful lingering death a death more disgusting than aught you can conceive in order that the rest of you may be safely tabooed, each a maid intact, for the man who weds her.
"It was," they said, "no act of treachery on our part; we did not invite you to our shores for the purpose of plunder and murder: but you came, and ill-used us; you broke into our tabooed grounds. And did not Atua give those bad white men into the hands of our fathers?" I am confident that a body of Europeans may now reside in perfect security in any part of these islands.
“I tell you you’re not tabooed,” said he. “The Kanakas won’t go near you, that’s all. And who’s to make ’em? We traders have a lot of gall, I must say; we make these poor Kanakas take back their laws, and take up their taboos, and that, whenever it happens to suit us. But you don’t mean to say you expect a law obliging people to deal in your store whether they want to or not?
"It's worse than that, you see," said Case. "You ain't tabooed I told you that couldn't be. The people won't go near you, Wiltshire, and there's where it is." "They won't go near me? What do you mean by that? Why won't they go near me?" I cried. Case hesitated. "Seems they're frightened," says he in a low voice. I stopped dead short. "Frightened?" I repeated. "Are you gone crazy, Case?
The excreta of the body have been so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation, that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid disgust.
Down the Pilcomayo he dares not take them, as that would only bring him back to the Paraguay river, interdict to navigation, as ever jealously guarded, and, above all, tabooed to himself.
This is of course particularly prominent in the case of the woman tabooed because of the strength of the sex instinct. As Freud has very justly said, the tabooed object is very often in itself the object of supreme desire. This is very obvious in the case of the food and sex taboos, which attempt to inhibit two of the most powerful impulses of human nature.
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