We may, accordingly, infer with
some confidence that the rule of continence imposed on the
poison-maker himself is also a simple case of sympathetic magic, and
not, as a civilised reader might be disposed to conjecture, a wise
precaution designed to prevent him from accidentally poisoning his
wife.
Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa, when the
site of a new village has been chosen and the houses are building,
all the married people are forbidden to have conjugal relations with
each other. If it were discovered that any couple had broken this
rule, the work of building would immediately be stopped, and another
site chosen for the village. For they think that a breach of
chastity would spoil the village which was growing up, that the
chief would grow lean and perhaps die, and that the guilty woman
would never bear another child. Among the Chams of Cochin-China,
when a dam is made or repaired on a river for the sake of
irrigation, the chief who offers the traditional sacrifices and
implores the protection of the deities on the work has to stay all
the time in a wretched hovel of straw, taking no part in the labour,
and observing the strictest continence; for the people believe that
a breach of his chastity would entail a breach of the dam.
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