BECKWITH] INTRODUCTION 309 
stood that back of the community disapproval is the unappeased 
challenge of the gods. In the case of the Polynesian taboo, the god 
himself is represented in the person of the chief, whose divine right 
none dare challenge and who may enforce obedience within his taboo 
right, under the penalty of death. The limits of this right are pre- 
scribed by grade. Before some chiefs the bystander must prostrate 
himself, others are too sacred to be touched. So, when a chief dedi- 
cates a part of his body to the deity, for an inferior it is taboo; any 
act of sacrilege will throw the chief into a fury of passion. In the 
same way tabooed food or property of any kind is held sacred and 
can not be touched by the inferior. To break a taboo is to challenge 
a contest of strength—that is, to declare war. 
As the basis of the taboo right lay in descent from the gods, lineage 
was of first importance in the social world. Not that rank was inde- 
pendent of ability—a chief must exhibit capacity who would claim 
possession of the divine inheritance;+ he must keep up rigorously 
the fitting etiquette or be degraded in rank. Yet even a successful 
warrior, to insure his family title, sought a wife from a superior 
rank. For this reason women held a comparatively important posi- 
tion in the social framework, and this place is reflected in the folk 
tales.2 Many Polynesian romances are, like the Laietkawai, cen- 
tered about the heroine of the tale. The mother, when she is of 
higher rank, or the maternal relatives, often protect the child. The 
virginity of a girl of high rank is guarded, as in the Laieikawai, 
in order to insure a suitable union.? Rank, also, is authority for 
inbreeding, the highest possible honor being paid to the child of a 
brother and sister of the highest chief class. Only a degree lower is 
the offspring of two generations, father and daughter, mother and 
son, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew being highly honorable alli- 
ances.* 
1 Compare Kriimer, Samoa Inseln, p. 31; Stair, p. 75; Turner, Samoa, p. 173; White, 
11, 62, and the Fornander stories of Aukele and of Kila, where capacity, not precedence 
of birth, determines the hero’s rank. 
2JIn certain groups inheritance descends on~the mother’s side only. See Kriimer, 
op. cit., pp. 15, 39; Mariner, 11,89, 98. Compare Mariner, 11, 210-212; Stair, p. 222. 
In Fison (p. 65) the story of Longapoa shows what a husband of lower rank may en- 
dure from a termagant wife of high rank. 
8 Kriimer (p. 32 et seq.) tells us that in Samoa the daughter of a high chief is 
brought up with extreme care that she may be given virgin to her husband. She is 
called taupo, ‘‘ dove,”” and, when she comes of age, passes her time with the other girls 
cof her own age in the fale aualuma or “ house of the virgins,’ of whom she assumes 
the leadership. Into this house, where the girls also sleep at night, no youth dare enter. 
Compare Fornander’s stories of Kapuaokaoheloai and Hinaaikamalama. 
See also Stair, p. 110; Mariner, 11, 142, 212; Fison, p. 33. 
According to Gracia (p. 62) candidates in the Marquesas for the priesthood are 
strictly bound to a taboo of chastity. 
*Rivers, 1, 874; Malo, p. 80. 
Gracia (p. 41) says that the Marquesan genealogy consists in a long line of gods and 
goddesses married and representing a genealogy of chiefs. To the thirtieth generation 
’ they are brothers and sisters. After this point the relation is no longer observed. 
