Rest Days; A Sociological Study 2 1 



" to afford protection against harm from spirits who at those 

 moments are specially active."-^ An older writer who has com- 

 mented on these practices among the Angami Nagas remarks 

 that there is " no end to the reasons on which a kennie must or 

 may be declared, and as it consists of a general holiday when no 

 work is done this Angami sabbath appears to be rather a popular 

 institution."-^ 



In the three communities which have been selected as repre- 

 sentative it thus appears that there are certain occasions when 

 the normal current of life is interrupted and when what may well 

 be called a crisis presents itself. In general, any time of special 

 significance, any period of storm or stress, any epoch when un- 

 toward events have occurred or are expected to occur, may be 

 marked by taboos designed to meet the emergency in the com- 

 munal life and to ward off the threatened danger or disaster. 

 Taboos are imposed in connection with such unusual and there- 

 fore critical events as a conflagration, an epidemic sickness, or 

 an earthcj[uake ; or at the time of such important undertakings 

 as the commencement of a war, seed-planting and harvest, or the 

 celebration of a solemn religious or magical ceremony. But the 

 notion of crisis has a far wider extension and, as I hope to show, 

 will be found capable of a general application to the phenomena 

 discussed in the following chapters.^" 



II. PERIODS OF ABSTINENCE AFTER A DEATH AND 

 ON RELATED OCCASIONS 



4. THE PRIMITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS DEATH 



Among the lower races perhaps the commonest occasion for 

 the suspension of ordinary occupations is after a death. The 



'* Hodson, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1906, xxxvi. 102. 



-" Brown, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1875, xliv. i. 316. 



^ On the sociological conception of crisis see W. I. Thomas, Source 

 Book for Social Origins, Chicago, 1909, pp. 16 sqq.; R. R. Marett, The 

 Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, pp. 28 sqq. (an inaugural lecture by the 

 Reader in Social Anthropology). 



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