________________
JUNE, 1928
SOME NOTES ON MAGIC AND TABOO IN BENGAL
107
SOME NOTES ON MAGIC AND TABOO IN BENGAL.
BY BIREN BONNERJEA, D.LITT. (PARIS). In the earliest stage of the evolution of mankind, magic, as has been pointed out by the great German philosopher Hegelt, was the primary form of religion. Gradually, when men found out that they were unable to direct nature to their own will, religion, which assumes the existence of a superior being or beings, dawned upon them, and was practised simultaneously with magic in its primitive form. Religion alone is the last developmental phase in the history of human faiths.
The mind of the primitive man is wayward; he does not distinguish between similarity and identity; his powers of analysis and discrimination are limited ; his ideas are formed by chance impressions; and his conclusions are based on superficial analogies. Magic with him assumes that all things which are alike to each other are the same, or that things which have been in contact with each other are always in contact. In India, from very early times, there has been confusion between religion and magic, and we find that the sacrificial ritual of the Vedic period was pervaded with practices breathing the spirit of the most primitive magic3. It is therefore necessary to see if it is possible to draw a definite line of demarcation between religion and magic. The main difference between them seems to lie in the fact that in religion the worshippers belonging to a group of persons are bound together by a common faith, whereas in magic there is no such faith to unite them. Religion assumes the world to be directed by conscious beings who, by means of conciliatory methods, may be induced to use their powers for the good of the worshipper; magic does not admit it, but says that the course of nature is determined by immutable laws acting mechanically. Again, religious and magical rites do not differ from each other, and it is often very difficult to distinguish the one from the other; magic, however, takes a sort of pleasure in profaning all sacred things, as also there is something profoundly anti-religious in all the actions of a magiciant. Without going deeper into the subject, religion may be defined as "a propitia. tion or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life "6; while Messrs. H. Hubert and M. Mauss define magical rites as tout rite qui ne fait pas partie d'un culte organisé, rite privé, rite secret, mystérieux, et tendant, comme limite, vers le rite prohiben.
Magic has two different aspects which we may conveniently call positive and negative. The former which aims at arriving at some definite object by the performance of certain acts is called Sorcery, the latter which protects from certain dreaded consequences by means of nonperformance of certain acts is known as Taboo ; thus, if we consider sorcery as the positive pole of sympathetic magic, taboo is its negative pole. The theory that taboo was negative magic was first distinctly formulated more than twenty years ago by Messrs. Hubert and Mauss'.
Magic is practical ; it assumes that like produces like, hence it is a common enough custom in Bengal even to-day for those desirous of winning love to make a little clay image
1 Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion, Berlin, 1832, vol. I, pp. 220 sq. * (Sir) J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, London, 1920, vol. I, p. 53. 8 H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, Berlin, 1894, p. 59.
4 W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., pp. 264, 268; Hubert and Mause, "Esquisse d'une théorie gónérale de la magie," Année Sociologique, vol. viii (Paris, 1904), p. 19; Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Swain's tr., p. 43.
5 (Sir) J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art, vol. I, p. 222.
6 Hubert and Mauss, op. cit., p. 19; cf. P. Huvelin, "Magie et droit individuel," Année Sociologique, vol. X (Paris, 1905-1906), p. 2, quoted by Biren Bonnerjea, L'Ethnologie du Bengale, Paris, 1927, p. 120.
Op. oit., p. 56. A year later, in 1905, the same conclusion was independently arrived at by Sir Jamet G. Frazer (Lectures on the Early History of Kingship, London, 1905, pp. 52-54); see also Man, vol. VI, (1 906) pp. 55 sq.
For a similar ancient Hindu ceremony see M. Bloomfield, Hymns of the Atharva Veda, Oxford, 1897, pp. 358 sg.; W. Caland, Astindischer Zauberrituel, Amsterdam, 1900, p. 119.
