uch arbitrary social divisions yield gradually to
the influence of education and civic freedom, and this appears to be the
tendency in India at the present day.

+614+. _Punishment of violation of taboo._ Where the hostile power is
inherent in an object, punishment is supposed to follow violation
automatically--through contact the malefic influence passes into the
man's body and works destruction. Many experiences seem to the savage to
establish the certainty of such a result. Fervid belief, moreover,
produced by long tradition, acts powerfully on the imagination, and in
taboo-ridden communities thus often brings about the bodily ill called
for by the theory: a man who ate of food that he found on the roadside,
learning afterwards that it belonged to a chief, fell ill and died in a
few hours.[1013] When taboo regulations have been taken up into the
civil law,[1014] punishment for violations is inflicted by the civil
authorities. The tendency to make taboo a part of the civil law, and to
subordinate the former to the latter, increases with the advance of
knowledge and political organization; and one result of this movement is
that great personages are sometimes permitted to violate with impunity
taboos imposed by inferiors. The native theory in such cases doubtless
is that the great man's mana overcomes the taboo infection; but at
bottom, we may surmise, lies the sense of the dominance of civil
authority.

+615+. The chief's mana, however, sometimes comes into play as a means
of relief. A man who has inadvertently (or perhaps, in some instances,
purposely) violated a taboo may escape punishment by touching some part
of a chief's body. Here the innate potency of the superior man expels or
destroys the taboo force that has entered the inferior--another example
of how the primitive theory of taboo is modified by conceptions of
social rank and authority.

+616+. _Removal of taboo._ In general, magical ceremonies may be
employed to counteract the injurious influence resident in a thing or an
act, or to destroy the evil consequences resulting from a violation of
the taboo law. For this purpose sprinkling with water, bathing in water,
and the employment of charms are held to be effective. Thus in the old
Hebrew code the taboo resting on a house supposed to be infected with
the plague is removed by sprinkling the house with water and the blood
of a slain bird, and setting free a second bird alive, which is supposed
to carry t