Indian Antiquary Vol 26

SR No.: 032518
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 360
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 132

128
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1897.
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ancient Britons tattooed their bodies with woad or wad prepared from the isatis tinctoria plant.79 The fondness for tattoo marks among most European nations seems to be mainly due to the dislike of giving up what was once believed to be lucky.
These examples suggest that, like other forms of ornament, the root-object of tattooing is to secure luck by the two familiar methods of scaring ansquarable spirits and housing squarable spirits as guardians. That in origin tattooing is religious or lacky, and not simply ornamental, is supported by Reville's remarks on the Polynesian tattoo. The Polynesiau tattoo marks are made by inserting, with the help of a sharp-toothed comb, dast of the aleurilns triloba nut. The dust is inserted under the skin by a priest, and, while the marking is in progress, the priest and his family sing songs in praise of tattooing. Lizards, sharks, and birds are common tattoo marks, but the luckiest shape is that of the person's guardian badge or iiki. Again, Reville writes: "The tattoo mark is a divine badge or livery. While he is being marked, the victim is taboo or sacred, because during the marking his guardian touches and seals him. Slaves were not tattooed, women were a little, and among freemen the higher in rank were the most marked." Contrary to the general rule, the highest in-rank were unadorned by tattoomarks, because, says Reville, they were already part of the divine tribe. The sense seems to be that as the object of marking ancestral and other guardian shapes was to enable the guardian to pass into the person tattooed, any person in whom the guardian already dwelt required po tattoo-mark or other fresh guardian entranoe. This view is supported by the practice in Tonga Island, 81 where the high priest (in whom the guardian dwells) is the only person who is not tattooed. That the tattoo-mark is a guardian entrance is in agreement with the general English belief that moles and other natural skin marks are lucky. Further, that the basis of the luck in skin spots is that they are spirit entrances is shown by the practice of the seventeenth century English witch-finders, who drove pins into moles and other natural marks to discover the place through which her familiar passed in and out of the witch's body. A similar belief seems to be the basis of the Jewish prohibition against offering in sacrifice any animal which has on its body any mark of the nature of a spot or blemish. In another passage82 Reville says: "The object for which the Polynesian is tattooed is the same as the object for which the Hottentot performs his religious dances, namely, to make him anite with the deity." That is, in simpler phrase, to give the guardian a door of entrance either into the dancer or. into the person who is tattooed. Once more Reville says :83 “The tattoo-mark is to the Polynesian what the shaven circle on the crown of his head is to the Catholio priest." This seems correct, as the original object of priestly tonsure is to allow the guardian to pass through the sature in the priest's skull, a way by which the guardian has previously entered through the virtue of the laying on of hands in consecration. It may be objected that certain tattoomarks, and also the belief that the tattoo-mark is lucky because it scares evil influences, belong to a stage of thought when the mark was held to be a scare and not an entrance. This difference of view may at first seem to amount to a contradiction. Still, as has been more than once noticed, the difference between scaring evil influences and housing good influences disappears when it is remembered' that by housing it the angry element in most spirits is appeased and the spirit becomes friendly, according to the law, the guardian is the squared fiend. Reville notices that the Palans of West New Guinea wanted to tattoo the English, while the Rataks in the extreme East' would not tattoo the English. The explanation apparently is that the Rataks, like the Tahitans and the Mexicans, held there was a squarable element in the strangers, and that, therefore, the guardian might pass into and dwell in them. On the other hand, the Rataka, like the Chinese, saw nothing but the unsquarable or devil
T9 Perrot and Chipiez's Art in Primitive Greece, Vol. II. pp. 184.5.
# Reville's Les Religions des Peuple. Non-Civilinės, Vol. II. pp. 68, 70, 71. Compare Codrington's Among the Melanesians, pp. 232, 284, 240. $1 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 79.
#3 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 72. * Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 72.
Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 132.