clean who came into contact with them. There are
numerous other and comparatively trifling causes of ritual
uncleanness.[1768]

+560. Uncleanness in ethnography.+ The Macusi of British Guiana
forbid women to bathe during the period, and also forbid them to
go into the forest, for they would risk bites from enamored
snakes.[1769] If a woman of the Ngumba, in Kamerun, bears a dead
child, the uncleanness is double. She may not touch the hand of
a man until she is unwell again.[1770] In Madagascar no one who
had been at a funeral might enter the palace, or approach the
sovereign, for a month, and no corpse might be buried in the
capital city. The mourners washed their dresses, or dipped a
portion of them in running water, as a ritual purification.[1771]
The Tshi peoples of West Africa cause women to retire, at the
period, to huts prepared for the purpose in the bush, because
they are at that time offensive to the deities.[1772] The
Ewe-speaking peoples think a mother and baby unclean for forty
days after childbirth.[1773] The Bechuanas, when they have
touched a corpse, dug a grave, or are near relatives of a
deceased person,--the ritual uncleanness being thus extended to a
wider circle of those in any way concerned in a burial,--purify
themselves by prescribed ritualistic washings, put on new
garments and cut their hair, or purify themselves with the smoke
of a fire into which magic-working materials have been cast. On
returning from battle they ceremonially wash themselves and their
weapons.[1774] The Karoks of California think that if a
menstruating woman approaches any medicine which is about to be
given to a sick man she will cause his death.[1775] The Tamils
think that saliva renders ritually unclean whatever it touches.
Therefore, in drinking, they pour the liquid down the throat
without touching the cup to the lips.[1776] The Romans held that
nothing else had such marvelous efficacy as, or more deadly
qualities than, the menstrual flow.[1777] Here we find that which
is, in one view, evil and contemptible, regarded, in another
view, as powerful and worthy of respect. The Arabs thought that
"a great variety of natural powers" attached themselves to a
woman during the period.[1778] The gum of the acacia was thought
to be a clot of menstrual blood. Therefore it was an amulet. The
tree is a woman.[1779] At the gre