names of, the deceased, through those on the use of the
house or property of the deceased, to severe injunctions of
seclusion (for widows or widowers). In parts of the Pacific,
there are restrictions against washing or self-adornment, and
often the mourners must wear relics. In traditional China,
specific degrees of mourning behavior were specified accord-
ing to one’s relationship to the deceased. Among the Yi peo-
ple of Yunnan Province in China visitors are prohibited from
entering a compound where there are newborn infants or pi-
glets, where someone is gravely ill, or where someone has
died. Immediately upon a person’s death, among the Usen
Barok of New Ireland, a taboo called the lebe goes into effect:
no gardening can be done, no fires can be made, and no ar-
guments will be tolerated until the conclusion of the final
mourning feast, up to a week later. It is also forbidden to
utter a cry of lament until the mourners hear the first squeals
of the pigs being slaughtered for the first feast.
Taboos surrounding ritual or worship are often the
severest of all, for they involve mediation with the very forces
that are understood to mete out the sanctions. The major rit-
ual of the Daribi of Papua New Guinea concerns the placat-
ing of an unmourned and angry ghost, who possesses the
habu ritualists in the process. Any deviation from the pre-
scribed format of the ritual results in the affliction of the of-
fenders with the dread habu illness, a malign act of possession
that is merely the intended therapeutic possession gone awry
(Wagner, 1972, p. 156). Food taboos accompanying the
Chihamba ritual among the Ndembu of Africa keep the par-
ticipants from “eating Chihamba” or the characteristics asso-
ciated with this spirit (Turner, 1975, pp. 71–72). The sense
of ritual indiscretion as mediation gone wrong is conveyed
by the Navajo belief that ghosts cause people to do the oppo-
site of whatever has been decreed in taboos.
The emphasis of a taboo, however negatively it may be
phrased, is always upon the thing, act, or word tabooed. We
tend to contemplate the object of the taboo itself in a search
for motives, or possibly origins, for the prohibition. Thus,
for instance, pork is a potential carrier of trichinosis, moth-
ers-in-law have many potential conflicts of interest with their
sons-in-law, and interbreeding among close relatives may
lead to the expression of deleterious recessive genes. The dif-
ficulty with this sort of literalistic thinking can be seen in
these examples. Taboo is usually indirect; its real object is not
so much what is forbidden as it is the cultural and social cir-
cumstances affected by the prohibition. The Kaluli do in-
deed say that the juices of fresh meat are unhealthy for
women and that their husbands should avoid it out of com-
passion. But the taboo on the eating of fresh meat for mar-
ried persons serves to force them into the painstaking and
appropriate activity of preparing and exchanging smoked
meat with relatives by marriage. It aligns with a number of
other taboos to restrict interaction to culturally appropriate
categories.
The Daribi, in another example, actually have no expe-
rience of disagreeable mothers-in-law, for a married person
is never allowed to see the mother-in-law, much less speak
with her. But the taboo forces each party to be especially
aware of the other and to funnel their efforts into organizing
the exchanges that must pass between the two sides. An effec-
tive relationship is formed through the principle of “not re-
lating”! Finally, what we know as the “incest taboo” is actual-
ly the summation of a number of particular kin relationships,
which are of differing extent and content in different cul-
tures. What may be considered to be incestuous, or a relative,
or a relationship, varies from one culture to another. But the
fact of kin regulation through restriction, or kin taboo, if you
will, is common to all cultures, for it is the essence of kinship.
Hence, whether its prohibitions are imposed by men or gods,
taboo incorporates the regulatory imperative of culture itself.SEE ALSO Evolution, article on Evolutionism; Power; Purifi-
cation.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Best, Elsdon. “The Lore of the Whare-Kohanga.” Journal of the
Polynesian Society 15 (1906): 147–162. An early, but classic,
discussion of mana and pollution in Maori lore.
Handy, E. S. Craighill. Polynesian Religion. Honolulu, 1927. A
dated, but synoptic, summary, with comprehensive sections
on mana and tapu.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. La pensée sauvage. Paris, 1962. Translated
anonymously as The Savage Mind (London, 1966). A chal-
lenging and highly original treatment of the symbolism of
differentiation and classification.
MacKenzie, Margaret. “Mana in Maori Medicine: Rarotonga,
Oceania.” In The Anthropology of Power, edited by Raymond
D. Fogelson and Richard N. Adams, pp. 45–56. New York,- An engaging and illuminating account of the use of
mana in a modern, mechanized society.
Schieffelin, Edward L. The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning
of the Dancers. New York, 1976. A well-written ethnographic
exploration of an exotic worldview, including a comprehen-
sive investigation of food taboos.
Turner, Victor. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. Itha-
ca, N.Y., 1975. A mature consideration of ritual and ritual
prohibition by a foremost modern authority on the subject.
Wagner, Roy. Habu: The Innovation of Meaning in Daribi Reli-
gion. Chicago, 1972. A discussion of the symbolism of taboo
and ritual prohibition in a New Guinea society.
Webster, Hutton. Taboo: A Sociological Study. Stanford, Calif., - A highly detailed documentation of taboos and related
ethnographic usages in a somewhat dated scholarly style.
ROY WAGNER (1987)
TAFS ̄IR is an Arabic word meaning “interpretation”; it is,
more specifically, the general term used in reference to all
genres of literature which are commentaries upon the
QurDa ̄n.
TAFS ̄IR AND RELATED TERMS. The word tafs ̄ır is used only
once in the QurDa ̄n (25:33), but this is not overly surprising,TAFS ̄IR 8949