The traditional tabu also supplies to some extent the place of laws and a police. In Many places exposed property of some kinds is always under its shelter. In some cases it appears to have been worked in the interest of the priests; thus, certain foods—for example, turtle—are always tabu, and cannot be eaten until a portion has been set aside for the gods. There is a purely superstitious use of it, too, in relation to common things, as when a canoe is made tabu that it may go more safely.
The chiefs have a large discretionary power of declaring articles or actions tabu; indeed, their power is unlimited, but they are expected to keep within precedent. In many cases they use it for purely public purposes—thus, when a feast is coming on they lay a tabu upon pigs and nuts, and other articles, that there may be abundance for the feast. And when a scarcity of anything is apprehended they place a temporary tabu on its use. Speaking generally, any article of food—fish, flesh, fowl, grain, or fruit—may be rendered tabu. A coast, a river, a hunting ground, may be declared tabu; and then there is an end of fishing, and sailing, and hunting, until the chief has withdrawn the prohibition. The tabu is obviously a powerful instrument of govern ment; and the chiefs are very adroit in using it for their own advantage.
When a man has accidentally infringed the tabu against touching a chief, or a rela tive, or things immediately connected with him, he is freed from the state of tabu by a ceremony called this consists in pressing, first the palms, then the back of the hands, to a superior chief's foot, and afterward washing the hands with water. If a man has accidentally eaten food which a relative or chief has left, he 'goes through a ceremony called fota, which consists in pressing a superior chief's foot against the stomach. Any breach of the laws relating to sacred places must be atoned for by sacri ficing to the offended god. A person, when he is tabu, must not use his hands in feed ing himself or in working; were he to feed himself, it is believed that he would die; lie must be fed by others until the tabu is removed. In many cases the tabu can only be removed by time. Thus, a common person, who has touched a dead chief, remains for ten lunar months; a chief for four or five months, more or less, according to the deceased's superiority over him. In several cases breach of tabu is punished with death; in many, it involves a sort of outlawry—the neighbors of the offender being free to carry off or to destroy his goods.
It is obvious that the effect of breaking a tabu—at any rate, one effect of it—is to produce uncleanness. The offender has done something unholy, accursed; his hands are not clean; if he has not sinned in the last degree he must make atonement or un dergo purification. The chief, holding a divinely appointed rank, recognized as a semi divine person, descended from the gods, is the medium of purification; he has authority to loose as well as to bind. The offense consists in a thing having been done displeas ing to the supernatural powers, for which, it is believed, they will not fail to take vengeance. It is not, in the general case, an offense against any particular god; nor is the punishment of it looked for from one god more than from another. Tabu is cer tainly older than most of the Polynesian gods; it must have existed for ages before the mythologies took their present shapes; it might have existed before any name for god had become current. It has no connection with fetishism. The Polynesians do not worship natural objects; their belief that certain plants and animals are the shrines of gods would naturally lead to the worship of those; but, in fact, they merely do not eat the plant or animal which is the shrine of their tutelary god. And though this is enforced by a tabu, the tabu is evidently distinct from the belief in the god's connec tion with the plant or animal; it is only the means of enforcing that bclief—beiugt he customary means used to prevent any act which would provoke a god to anger. The origin of tabu seems to be a vague fear of superhuman powers; this has become associ ated with certain things and acts; thus practically, tabu is a system of divinely ap pointed restraints—religion, in the primary sense of the word. The religious horror has attached itself—or, through the policy of priests and rulers, has become attached— to every prohibition supported by a strong expediency; which it is apt to do among rude peoples, especially where the prohibition relates to the family, or to the relation of tribesmen to their chief. It must have been through a long process of construction, carried on by the governing classes—the chiefs and the priests—that tabu became the system it now is. The extensive political application of tabu is sufficient evidence that the Polynesian chiefs have been adepts in the art of turning the religious feelings of their countrymen to their own account.