Encyclopedia of Religion

IMAGES AND THE BODY

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

or ancestral spirits into the very body of the participant.

On the island of New Zealand, richly carved objects were

used to attend to other aspects of the body. A carved

wooden bar, called paepae (f ), may have been part of the

ritualizing of excreting waste. It has been suggested that

such a device was bitten by someone using a latrine as the

final act of elimination, providing a cleansing of taboo

caused by excretion. The Maori also used another type

of carved device, the feeding funnel (g). It was forbidden

for food to touch the lips of chiefs while they healed from

the application of tattoos. The feeding funnel allowed the

chief to eat semi-liquid food. The elaborately tattooed

faces on the outside of the funnel may correspond to the

power the funnel seeks to preserve in the tattooed face of

the chief who ate with the funnel.

(f ) TOP. A paepae of carved wood and haliotis shell, New Zea-

land. [Masco Collection; photograph by Dirk Baker] (g) LEFT. A

Maori feeding funnel (koropata) of carved wood and haliotis

shell, New Zealand. [Masco Collection; photograph by Dirk Baker]

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