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Folkways, by William Graham Sumner
A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages,
Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
CHAPTER XIV
UNCLEANNESS AND THE EVIL EYE
Demonism and the aleatory interest. — Universality of primitive demonism. — Uncleanness. — Female uncleanness. — Uncleanness in ethnography. — Uncleanness in higher religions. — Uncleanness amongst Jews. — Uncleanness amongst Greeks. — These customs produced modesty and the subordination of women. — Uncleanness, holiness, devotedness. — The evil eye; jettatura. — The evil eye in ethnography. — Amulets against the evil eye. — Devices against the evil eye. — Insult and vituperation against the evil eye. — Interaction of the mores and the evil eye.
556. Demonism and the aleatory interest. Uncleanness and the evil eye are dogmatic notions, products of demonism. The dogmas are arbitrary. A corpse is unclean and makes any one unclean who touches it. A baby is not unclean. The evil eye brings bad luck, not pain or disease. Uncleanness and the evil eye have each a field. Neither is of universal application. The mores, starting out from primitive demonism, produced these two dogmas as an adjustment of experience and observation to demonism. Uncleanness is a very rude and primary expression of the unsanitary and contagious. It undoubtedly often happens that calamity befalls in the hour of success and rejoicing. A number of people were trodden to death on the Brooklyn bridge when it was opened. A few centuries ago, and in all ancient times, such an incident would have been accepted as the obvious chastisement of the superior powers on the overweening pride of men. The same might be said of the death of Mr. Huskisson at the opening of the first railroad. The sum of such incidents stands in some relation to fundamental superstitions about demons, if such are believed. The incidents can be fitted into the doctrines very easily. The whole aleatory interest is a field for this kind of general dogmas of the application of fundamental principles to classes of cases. The folkways, deeply concerned in the aleatory interest, work out the applications.
510557. Universality of primitive demonism. Demonism is the broadest and most primitive form of religion. All the higher religions show a tendency to degenerate back to it. Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mohammedanism, and mediæval Christianity show this tendency. Greek religion is most remarkable because we find in Homer very little demonism. It appears, therefore, that in his time primitive demonism had been overcome. In the fifth century B.C. we find it coming in again, and in the fourth century it became the ruling form of popular religion. It predominated in late Greek religion, mixed with demonism from western Asia and Egypt, and passed to Rome, where it entered into primitive Christianity, combining with highly developed demonism from rabbinical Judaism. Religion always arises out of the mores. Changes in religion are produced by changes in the mores. Religious ideas, however, in the next stage, are brought back to the mores as controlling dogmas. The product of the first stage becomes the seed in the second. Goblinism and demonism have great effect on the mores, probably because demonism is so original and universal in all religions, and so popular in its hold on the minds of all. Demonism furnishes devices of magic, sorcery, sortilege, divination, augury, oracles, etc., by which it is believed that men can get from the superior powers (spirits, demons, etc.) what they want, and can learn what is to be in the future. It therefore has the greatest apparatus by which to satisfy human needs, as they appear under the demonistic interpretation of the world and human life.
The most important immediate and direct consequences of demonism in the second stage, when it is brought back to the work of life as a normative system, are the notions of uncleanness and of the evil eye.
558. Uncleanness. The notion of uncleanness is ritual. It is not entirely irrational. Contagious diseases and diseases which are the result of ignorance and neglect of sanitation give sense to the notion. The interpretation of those phenomena as due to the intervention of superior powers is like the interpretation of other diseases as due to demons. In fact, uncleanness is a step towards a rational view of disease, because it brings in secondary 511causes, and puts the action of demons one step further off. The effect of uncleanness was that it made the affected person unfit and unable to perform ritual acts on which human welfare was supposed to depend. The affected person became dangerous to others, and was forced to banish himself from societal contact with them. He was also cut off from access to the superior powers. It was therefore indispensable that he should recover cleanness in order to carry on his life. The recovery was accomplished through ritual acts and devices, and chiefly through the intervention of shamans, who were experts in the rites and devices required.
559. Female uncleanness. The ritual notion of uncleanness, being a product of deduction from demonistic world philosophy, was arbitrary, and was capable of indefinite extension. It was not a disease, was not held to facts by symptoms of pain, etc. Women were held to be unclean, and causes of uncleanness by contact, at marriage, menstruation, and childbirth. They were always possessed by demons, which accounted for their special functions as mothers. The periods mentioned were periods of special activity of the demonistic function. The belief was common in the Orient that a woman was dangerous to her husband at marriage. A demon left her at that time in the nuptial bloodshed. At menstruation women were dangerous to men. The ritual idea of uncleanness was so extended that women were put under a kind of imprisonment for a time, especially in the Zoroastrian system (sec. 561), in order to remove them from social contact. At child bearing also they were forced into retirement for a specified period.1767 Corpses also were unclean and made all those unclean who came into contact with them. There are numerous other and comparatively trifling causes of ritual uncleanness.1768
560. Uncleanness in ethnography. The Macusi of British Guiana forbid women to bathe during the period, and also forbid them to go into the forest, for they would risk bites from enamored snakes.1769 If a woman of the Ngumba, in Kamerun, bears a dead child, the uncleanness is double. She 512may not touch the hand of a man until she is unwell again.1770 In Madagascar no one who had been at a funeral might enter the palace, or approach the sovereign, for a month, and no corpse might be buried in the capital city. The mourners washed their dresses, or dipped a portion of them in running water, as a ritual purification.1771 The Tshi peoples of West Africa cause women to retire, at the period, to huts prepared for the purpose in the bush, because they are at that time offensive to the deities.1772 The Ewe-speaking peoples think a mother and baby unclean for forty days after childbirth.1773 The Bechuanas, when they have touched a corpse, dug a grave, or are near relatives of a deceased person, — the ritual uncleanness being thus extended to a wider circle of those in any way concerned in a burial, — purify themselves by prescribed ritualistic washings, put on new garments and cut their hair, or purify themselves with the smoke of a fire into which magic-working materials have been cast. On returning from battle they ceremonially wash themselves and their weapons.1774 The Karoks of California think that if a menstruating woman approaches any medicine which is about to be given to a sick man she will cause his death.1775 The Tamils think that saliva renders ritually unclean whatever it touches. Therefore, in drinking, they pour the liquid down the throat without touching the cup to the lips.1776 The Romans held that nothing else had such marvelous efficacy as, or more deadly qualities than, the menstrual flow.1777 Here we find that which is, in one view, evil and contemptible, regarded, in another view, as powerful and worthy of respect. The Arabs thought that "a great variety of natural powers" attached themselves to a woman during the period.1778 The gum of the acacia was thought to be a clot of menstrual blood. Therefore it was an amulet. The tree is a woman.1779 At the great feast of the dead amongst the Eskimo on Bering Straits the feast makers make wiping motions, stamp, and slap the thighs, in order to "cast off all uncleanness that might be offensive to the shades," and thus to render their sacrifices acceptable.1780 The spirits amongst the Kwakiutl, Chinooks, and their neighbors kill an unclean man. These people have fastings and washings for purification.1781
561. Uncleanness in higher religions. In the higher religions the same notions of ritual cleanness were retained and developed. Pious Zoroastrians could not travel by sea without great inconvenience, because they could not help defiling the natural element water, which they were forbidden to do.1782 They were forbidden to blow a fire with the breath, lest they should 513defile the element fire, and they wore a covering over the mouth when they approached the fire for any purpose. Parings of the nails and cuttings of the hair were unclean. They would be weapons for demons if they were not covered by rites and spells. The menses of women were caused by the evil god Ahriman. A woman, during the period, was "unclean and possessed by the demon. She must be kept confined and apart from the faithful, whom her touch would defile, and from the fire, which her very look would injure. She was not allowed to eat as much as she wanted, as the strength which she might acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food was not given to her from hand to hand, but passed to her from a distance in a long leaden spoon." At childbirth, the mother was unclean, in spite of the logic of the religion, according to which she should be pure because she has increased life. "The strength of old instincts overcame the drift of new principles." [The old mores were too strong for the new religion.] A woman who bears a dead child is a grave, and must be ritually purified as such. Only to save her from death can she drink water, which she would defile, and if it is given to her she must undergo a penalty. These views go back to the notion that she has been near death and has had the death fiend in her. A great fire is lighted to drive off the demons.1783 At this day there is in the house of a Parsee a room for the monthly seclusion of women. It is bare of all comforts and from it neither sun, moon, stars, fire, water, or sacred implements, nor any human being, can be seen. The first ceremony performed on a newborn child is washing its hands, to purify it, since it also is unclean.1784
562. Uncleanness amongst the Jews. Ritual uncleanness is represented in the Old Testament as due to contact with carcasses of unclean cattle and other unclean things;1785 to contact with a woman in childbirth, with a longer period if the infant is a girl than a boy.1786 Care about clean and unclean things was praised as a high religious virtue,1787 and the prophets used the distinction for the difference between virtue and vice.1788 The food taboo is expressed by declaring forbidden animals unclean.1789 Plague and leprosy are cases of ritual uncleanness, also issues.1790 Distinctions of this kind (cleanness and uncleanness), enforced by ritual, depend on clear facts of observation and prescribe simple acts. They include no dogmas. They prescribe things to be done. They produce notions and habits. They enter so deeply into ways of living that it takes long counter-education to eradicate them. The strength of the adherence to this distinction, in the rabbinical period, is well shown in the New Testament.
563. Uncleanness amongst Greeks. The Greeks had similar conceptions of uncleanness. Marriage was surrounded by rites of purification and 514precaution, the marriage bath being one of the most essential acts in the wedding rites.1791 Death and the dead produced uncleanness, and purification by water, fire, or smoke was required.1792
564. These mores produced modesty and subordination of women. Two things of great social importance in respect to women are traceable to these mores: (a) The sex modesty of women. The usages of Zoroastrianism are cruel. They treat women as base, not on the same plane with men, affected by a natural inferiority, and therefore as having something to be ashamed of. Inasmuch as these usages were all in the mores, the women accepted them as true and right, and probably never rebelled against them even in thought. The mores therefore taught them sex modesty, and especial shame of the sex function. (b) The subordination of women. They never were subordinated because they are weaker, because in savagery and barbarism they often are not so, but because of their feminine disabilities and the correlative inferiorities. They accepted the facts and the interpretation which the mores put on them. Then they acquiesced in the treatment they received which was reasonable upon that state of facts.
565. Uncleanness, holiness, devotedness. Uncleanness was an application of taboo. It had a double aspect. It was at once repelling and protective. If corpses were unclean they were put out of contact with the living as far as possible, and this was done to protect the living. The things which were excluded by taboo because they were bad came into parallelism with the things which were tabooed because they were holy and were not to be treated carelessly as common and insignificant. The holy things were in contrast with the profane things; unclean things were in contrast with all which concerned the cult.1793 Nelson says of the Eskimo that at a feast the "wiping motion followed by the stamping and the slapping on the thighs indicated that the feast-makers thus cast off all uncleanness that might be offensive to the shades, and thus render their offerings 515acceptable."1794 This purification was ritual and produced ritual or cult cleanness. Any one who touched a holy thing was raised to a disagreeable amount of holiness, which he must maintain or undergo the ritual uncleanness of a profaned holy thing. Special offerings and atonements were necessary to remove the danger from being holy, which might prove fatal.1795 The Jewish Scriptures which were canonical were distinguished as "those which defile the hands." This shows the original identity of "unclean" and "holy." Both are under taboo, devoted to higher powers. Whatever touches the devoted thing becomes likewise devoted. The high priest has to wash, on the day of atonement, after he has worn the holy vestment.1796 The Sadducees scoffed at the saying of the Pharisees that the Holy Scriptures defile the hands.1797
566. The evil eye. Jettatura. Another direct and immediate product of primitive demonism is the notion of the evil eye. This is a concrete dogma and a primary inference from demonism. It is often confounded with the jettatura of the Italians. The evil eye is an affliction which befalls the fortunate and prosperous in their prosperity. It is the demons who are irritated by human luck and prosperity who inflict calamity, pain, and loss, at the height of good luck. The jettatura is a spell of evil cast either voluntarily or involuntarily by persons who have the gift of the evil eye and can cast evil spells, perhaps unconsciously and involuntarily. It follows from the notion of the evil eye that men should never admire, praise, congratulate, or encourage those who are rich, successful, prosperous, and lucky. The right thing to do is to vituperate and scoff at them in their prosperity. That may offset their good luck, check their pride, and humble them a little. Then the envy of the superior powers may not be excited against them to the point of harming them. It is the most probable explanation of the cloistering and veiling of women that it was intended to protect them, especially if they were beautiful, from the evil eye. The admiration which they would attract would be fatal to them. The notion of the evil eye led to covering some parts of the body and so led to 516notions of decency (sec. 459). It is assumed that demons envy human success and prosperity and so inflict loss and harm on the successful. Hence admiration and applause excite their malignity.
567. Ethnographical illustrations. Of the following cases many are cases of jettatura. In the Malagasy language many proper names of persons are coarse and insulting because a pleasant-sounding name might cause envy.1798 In Bornu when a horse is sold, if it is a fine one, it is delivered by night, for fear of the evil eye (covetous and envious eyes) of bystanders.1799 Schweinfurth1800 tells an incident of a man who, going through a Nubian village, noticed that the limb of a tree was rotten and ready to fall. He warned some people who were standing under it. Immediately afterwards it did fall, but the fall was attributed to the evil eye of the person who first noticed the danger. The Dinka are mentioned as free from this superstition.1801 In the Sudan food is usually covered by a conical straw cover to prevent the evil eye [viz. of the hungry people who might admire and long for it].1802 Customs of eating and drinking in private, and of covering the mouth when eating or drinking, belong here. All along the north coast of Africa the belief in the evil eye prevails. A hen's-egg shell upon which three small leaden horseshoes have been riveted is an amulet against it.1803 At Katanga, Central Africa, only the initiated may watch the smelting of copper, for fear of the evil eye, which would spoil the process.1804 In the Caroline Islands a canoe, while being built, is enclosed in a building for fear of the evil eye.1805 This represents a class of cases in which a high and refined art is being practiced. In parts of Melanesia, and often elsewhere, a shell or leaf is fastened on the end of the masculine organ to ward off the evil eye. The same is the purpose of hanging strips of leather, etc., which catch attention, to divert it from the organ which is sensitive to the evil eye. Hence arose the taboo on parts of the body. In some groups in India, at weddings, women of the bride's and bridegroom's parties sing songs, each deriding and decrying the other. This is for luck. "Praise is risky; abuse and blame are safe."1806 In Behar, on a certain day, sisters abuse brothers, in the belief that this will cause them long life and good luck.1807 In the Horn of Africa magicians who want to get rid of a man stupefy him with drugs and sell him into slavery as having the evil eye (jettatura).1808 Amongst the Kabyles a husband left alone with his bride first strikes her three light blows on the shoulder 517with the back of his knife to ward off from her the evil eye.1809 In India a small object of iron is hung on a cradle because iron wards off the evil eye.1810 The jettatura belongs to persons born at certain periods in the year, or a woman's behavior during pregnancy may cause her child to have it.1811 People are held to be in danger of the evil eye in prosperity and on festive occasions when they put on fine dress and ornaments. Witches, beggars, and people of the lowest class have the evil eye. Diseases of decline are attributed to the jettatura. Cattle cease to give milk and trees lose leaves on account of it. Flowers and fruit wither untimely. Gems break or lose brilliancy.1812
568. Amulets against the evil eye. In the Dutch East Indies the phallus, or the symbol of it, is a charm against the evil eye which is cast in quarrels.1813 Roman boys wore a symbol of this kind. Obscene gestures were supposed to ward off the evil eye.1814 In some parts of India a tiger's tooth or claw is an amulet for the same purpose, also obscene symbols or strings of cowries. Whatever dangles and flutters attracts attention to itself and away from the thing to be protected.1815 Hindoo parents give their children ugly and inauspicious names, especially if they have lost some children.1816 The notion of the evil eye was very strong amongst the Arabs, with the notion that beauty attracted it.1817 Mohammed himself believed in the evil eye. The superstition came down from the heathen period when rags and dirty things were hung on children to protect them from the evil eye.1818 The veiling of women amongst the Arabs was probably due to it. Beautiful women also painted black spots on their cheeks.1819 Children, horses, and asses are now disfigured amongst Moslems to protect them from the risk they would run if beautiful. To save a child from the evil eye they say "God be good to thee" and spit in its face.1820 Amongst the Bedouins, whenever one utters praises he must add: "Mashallah," that is, God avert ill! The only other way to avert ill is to give the praised object to him who praised it.1821 Glittering and waving objects are much used by Moslems on dress and horse caparisons to distract attention. They put texts of the Koran on streamers on their houses for the same purpose.
569. Devices against the evil eye. Homer has the idea that the gods curb the pride of prosperity and are jealous of it. His heroes are taught as a life policy to avert envy. Self-disparagement is an approved pose.1822 Plutarch1823 518explains the efficiency of objects set up to avert witchcraft on the theory that by their oddity they draw the evil eye from persons and objects. Fescennine verses of the Romans, which were used at weddings and triumphs, were intended to ward off ill luck. Soldiers followed the chariot of the triumphing general and shouted to him derisive and sarcastic verses to avert the ill to which he was then most liable. The Greeks used coarse jests at festivals for the same purpose.1824 Modern Egyptians have inherited this superstition. Mothers leave their children ragged and dirty, especially when they take them out of doors, for fear of admiration and envy. Boys are greatly envied. They are kept long in the harem and dressed in girl's clothes for the same protection.1825 Amongst the richer classes at Cairo chandeliers are hung before a bridegroom's house. If a crowd collects to look at a fine chandelier, a jar is purposely broken to distract attention from it, lest an envious eye should cause it to fall.1826 When the Pasha gave up his monopoly of meat, butchers hung up carcasses in full view on the street. This was complained of, since every beggar could see the meat and envy it, "and one might, therefore, as well eat poison as such meat."1827 An antidote is to burn a bit of alum, with the recital of the first and the last three chapters of the Koran.1828 The Jews of Southern Russia do not allow their children to be admired or caressed. If it is done, the mother will order the child to "make a fig gesture" behind the back of the one who did it.1829
The evil eye is mentioned in Proverbs xxiii. 6 and xxviii. 22, and perhaps in Matt. xx. 15. The emphasis in Proverbs seems to be on envy and covetousness, not on magical evil.
In China children are often named "dog," "hog," "flea," etc., to ward off the evil eye.1830
570. Insult and vituperation for luck and against evil eye. Amongst the southern Slavs the evil eye acts by bringing evil spirits into action as the agents, and they "decry" the person or thing. No doubt this mode of operation is to be generally understood when not mentioned. The beautiful suffer most. One may unwittingly do the harm by admiration. One should never say, "What a beautiful child!" but "What an ugly child!" if one admires it. The language has become inverted by this usage.1831 The superstition is popular in Hungary. A child is never to be praised or admired. If one looks at a child for a while in admiration, he should then spit on it three times.1832 Possibly the custom of throwing an old shoe after a bride is to be traced to the same superstition. It is a contemptible and derisory gift for luck, like vituperative outcries. The fear of the evil eye and the jettatura is now very strong in southern Italy.1833
519571. Interaction of the mores and the evil eye. The doctrine of the evil eye is plainly an immediate deduction from demonism. If the atmosphere is full of demons, surrounding us all, agents of all things which happen and affect our interests, human welfare depends either on their uncontrollable caprice, or on devices by which they can be controlled. In the former case human beings need to have omens, oracles, rites of divination, etc., to find out what is to be. In the latter case all devices of magic and sorcery are of the highest value to men. This is why magic is so ultimate and original in the history of civilization. It teaches men not to look for any rational causation in the order of things, and to believe in the efficacy of ritual proceedings which contain no rational relation of means to ends. Then it costs no effort to believe that one person can bewitch another, and do it unconsciously. Any relation of responsibility can be invented and believed, since there are no tests of agency. It follows that a new function is opened for the mores. They have to select and establish those relations of agency and responsibility which are to be believed in; that is, they define crimes and criminal responsibility. Ordeals as tests fall in with the same system. They touch no actual relations and therefore prove nothing. It is the mores which establish faith in them and give them the sanction of the society. As to the evil eye, as the evil result of envy and of prosperity, it is an a posteriori inference from observed facts, exaggerated into a dogma. Cases of disaster in the hour of triumph occur, both as consequences of overweening self-confidence and by pure chance (Cæsar, Cæsar Borgia, Napoleon). The aleatory interest always averages up, but the successful, who have enjoyed good fortune for a time, believe that it must last for them, and forget that the balance requires bad luck. The lookers-on, however, form their philosophy from what they see. They believe in Nemesis, or other doctrine of offsets, and try by vituperation to make artificial offsets which will avert greater and more real calamities. In all steps of these doctrines and acts the mores are called into play. They are the only limits to the applications of the doctrines. They are of little use. They are afloat in and with the faiths 520and doctrines. They never can make definitions or set limits. They only enthuse customs, which may change from day to day in their definitions and limits and carry the mores with them. No doubt primitive religion here had excellent effect, for as it arose out of demonism it brought in authority and fixed dogma, which, although erroneous and in itself bad, was a great deal better than the floating superstitions of demonism.
1767 Levit. xii.
1768 Ibid., xiii, xiv, xv.
1769 Schomburgk, Brit. Guiana, II, 316.
1770 Globus, LXXXI, 337.
1771 Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 290.
1772 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 94.
1773 Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 153.
1774 Fritsch, Eingeb. Süd-Afr., 201.
1775 Powers, Calif. Indians, 31.
1776 Gehring, Süd-Indien, 96.
1777 Pliny, Hist. Nat., VII, 64.
1778 W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 448.
1779 Ibid., 133.
1780 Bur. Eth., XVIII, Part I, 371.
1781 U. S. Nat. Mus., 1895, 393.
1782 Darmsteter, Zend-Avesta, I, xxxiv.
1783 Darmsteter, Zend-Avesta, xcii.
1784 Geiger, Ostiran. Kultur, 236, 259.
1785 Levit. v. 2; xi. 26.
1786 Ibid. xii.
1787 Ibid. x. 10; xi. 47
1788 Isaiah. vi. 5; Ezek. xxxiii. 17.
1789 Levit. xi.
1790 Ibid. xiv, xv.
1791 Rohde, Psyche, II, 72.
1792 Guhl und Koner, Leben der Griechen und Römer, 367.
1793 Maurer, Völkerkunde, Bibel, und Christenthum, I, 105.
1794 Bur. Ethnol., XVIII, Part I, 371.
1795 Hastings, Dict. Bible, "Relig. of Israel."
1796 Levit., xvi. 4, 24.
1797 Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124.
1798 Sibree, Great Afr. Island, 167.
1799 Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, I, 607.
1800 Heart of Africa, II, 406.
1801 Ibid., I, 157.
1802 Junker, Afrika, I, 69.
1803 Globus, LXXV, 19.
1804 Ibid., LXXII, 164.
1805 Kubary, Karolinenarchipel., 292.
1806 JASB, IV, 63.
1807 Ibid., II, 598.
1808 Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., II, 140.
1809 Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, II, 219.
1810 JASB, II, 170.
1811 Ibid., I, 120.
1812 Ibid.
1813 Wilken in Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 399.
1814 Jewish Encyc., s.v. "Evil Eye."
1815 Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 254.
1816 Ibid., 371.
1817 Lane, Arabian Nights, I, 67.
1818 W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 448.
1819 Von Kremer, Kulturgesch. des Orients, II, 212, 253.
1820 Pischon, Einfluss des Islam, 110.
1821 Globus, LXXV, 193.
1822 Keller, Hom. Soc., 114.
1823 Symposium, V, 9.
1824 Smith, Antiq., I, 839; II, 831.
1825 Lane, Mod. Egypt., I, 77.
1826 Ibid., 384
1827 Ibid., 385.
1828 Ibid., 381.
1829 Globus, LXXXIII, 316.
1830 Williams, Middle Kingdom, I, 797.
1831 Krauss, Volksglaube der Südslaven, 41-43.
1832 Temesvary, Aberglaube in der Geburtshilfe, 75.
1833 Bur. Ethnol., III, 297.
