TÀBU (TÀPU). — Polynesian word resulting from two elements: ta, “to mark, to note,” and bu, an intensifying particle, each retaining its own accent; hence it is pronounced tàbu, with the meaning of a thing whose use and contact are forbidden. The word t. entered religious ethnology to express sacred interdiction, with a meaning analogous to that of the Latin sacer and the Greek ἅγιος (ἀγνός).
Violation of this interdiction entails sanctions that are not so much juridical in character as arising from the supernatural power released by the t. person or thing, and appears as the manifestation of an invisible yet present harmful force.
The t. is “ambivalent,” that is, it has a dual positive and negative, favorable and unfavorable aspect, according to the sacred condition of the persons who come into contact with II. For those who are in the required condition, contact, besides causing no harm, increases their sacredness; for anyone not in the required condition, contact is harmful. Once an individual has come into contact with the t. person or thing, whether legitimately or illegitimately, he remains “tabooed,” that is, himself invested with an influence that may produce disastrous effects on others, unless it is first purification (v.) before he reenters normal life.
VARIOUS KINDS OF T. — Persons. — In Oceania, where t. found its widest application, the person of the king (and of the priests) was so sacred that whatever he touched became forbidden; consequently, he had to be fed by others, and no one could approach him or pronounce his name, or violate his property. The t. of sacred persons exists in all non-Christian religions; suffice it to recall the t. to which the flamen Dialis was subject in Rome.
Things. — Objects, places, and names connected with sacredness are likewise t. As a general principle, it may be asserted that, religiously, all objects or practices more recent than the older ones are t. or forbidden. Thus, in Roman religion and popular superstition, one may explain the t. affecting iron, for religious uses, as a metal of more recent use and more mysterious workmanship than copper; the t. imposed upon the place and objects of youthful initiation and of the secret societies of savages with regard to women and children; the t. imposed upon certain foods (in many cases a remnant of totemistic beliefs); the fish at Hierapolis in Syria, the kangaroo among various Australian tribes, meat in general among the Orphics, beans among the Pythagoreans, etc.
Time. — Certain days and periods of time may also be t., especially in relation to lunar phenomena or to anniversaries or circumstances of social life: hunting, fishing, war, agriculture, and various festivals.
Illness and death. — Given the animistic conception that illness and death are the effect of evil spirits or, in any event, of evil influences or powers that have entered the organism, it is understandable that the sick person and the corpse should be t., and that those who have come into contact with them should have been contaminated by the same impurity.
Sex and blood. — Sexual t. are very numerous and extend from everything connected with the phenomenon of generation (fertilization, pregnancy, and childbirth) to the t. of kinship (v. ESOGAMIA; INCEST), particularly that concerning the mother-in-law, which has remained a subject of joking in universal folklore. With time, t. tends to disappear as a prohibition of a religious-social nature. It does not, however, disappear entirely, since it remains alive in all cases of individual animistic beliefs (funerary, sexual, dietary t., etc.), partly becoming incorporated into social ethics, and partly remaining as a survival among the less developed strata of the population.
law and morality, New York 1916; F. R. Lehmann, Die polynesischen Tabuetten, Leipzig 1930; J. Lublinski, Ursprung und Entwicklung des Begriffes tabu, in Studi e mat. di storia delle relig., 13 (1937), pp. 215–26. Nicola Turchi
«TABULAE LUSORIAE»: V. GIUCHI.