TABU (TAPU). - A Polynesian word resulting from two elements: ta "to mark, to note," bu an intensifying particle, each retaining its own accent, so that it is pronounced tàbu, with the meaning of a thing whose use and contact are forbidden; the word t. has entered religious ethnology to express sacred interdiction with a meaning analogous to that of Latin sacer and Greek ἅγιος (ἀγνός).
The violation of this interdiction carries with it sanctions not so much of a juridical character as proceeding from the supernatural power that is released from the t. person or thing and appears as the manifestation of an invisible but present harmful force.
The t. is "ambivalent," that is, it has a double aspect, positive and negative, favorable and unfavorable according to the sacred condition of the persons who come into contact with it. For those who are in the required dispositions, contact not only does no harm but increases their sacredness; for one who is not in the required conditions, contact is harmful. Once he has come into contact with the t. person or thing, whether legitimately or illegitimately, the individual remains "tabooed," that is, himself invested with an influence that can bring fatal effects upon others, unless before returning to normal life it is annulled by means of a purification (v.).
VARIOUS KINDS OF TABOO. - Persons. - In Oceania, where the t. found its widest application, the person of the king (and of priests) was so sacred that whatever he touched he rendered interdicted, so that he had to be fed by hand and no one could approach him, nor pronounce his name, nor violate his property. The t. of sacred persons exists in all non-Christian religions; it suffices to recall in Rome the t. to which the flamen Dialis was subject.
Things. - Objects, places and names connected with sacredness are also t. As a general principle it may be affirmed that, religiously, all objects or uses more recent with respect to more ancient ones are t. or interdicted. Thus is explained, in the Roman religion and in popular superstition, the t. that strikes, for religious uses, iron, a metal of more recent use and of more mysterious working than copper; the t. that weighs upon the place and the objects of youthful initiation and of the secret societies of savages with regard to women and children; the t. that weighs upon certain foods (in many cases a residue of totemistic beliefs); the fish at Hierapolis in Syria, the kangaroo among various Australian tribes, meats in general among the Orphics, beans among the Pythagoreans, etc.
Time. - Certain days and periods of time can also be t., especially in relation to lunar phenomena or to recurrences or circumstances of social life: hunting, fishing, war, agriculture, various festivals.
Illness and death. - Given the animistic concept that illness and death are the effect of evil spirits or in any case of evil influences or powers that have penetrated the organism, it is understandable that the sick person and the corpse are t. and that those who have come into contact with them have remained contaminated by the same impurity.
Sex and blood. - Sexual t. are very numerous and extend from all that is connected with the phenomenon of generation (fecundation, pregnancy and childbirth), down to the t. of kinship (v. ESOGAMIA; INCESTO), particularly that of the mother-in-law, which has survived as a subject of jest in universal folklore. In time the t. tends to disappear as an interdiction of a religious-social character. It does not disappear entirely, however, since it remains alive in all cases of individual animistic beliefs (funerary, sexual, alimentary t., etc.), partly becoming incorporated into social ethics, partly remaining as a survival in the less evolved strata of the population.
Bibliography9 works
Nicola Turchi
«TABULAE LUSORIAE»: v. GIUCHI.