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Due to the development of China and western countries in the international trade,the communication b towards the end of the eighteenth century. According to Radcliffe-Brown: In the languages of
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Polynesia the word means simply ‘to forbid’, ‘forbidden’, and can be applied to any sort of prohibition. A rule of etiquette, an order issued by a chief, an injunction to children not to meddle with the possessions of their elders, may all be expressed by the use of the word tabu. (Radcliffe-Brown 1939:5)
On his first voyage of 1768–71, Captain James Cook was sent to Tahiti to observe the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun. In his logbook he just wrote something about taboo of the Tahitians. Cook did not name this custom either taboo or by the equivalent Tahitian term raa. In the log of his third voyage, Cook first used the term tabu in an entry for 15 June 1777. He wrote:
Taboo as I have before observed is a word of extensive signification; Human Sacrifices are called Tangata Taboo, and when any thing is forbid to be eaten, or made use of they say such a thing is Taboo; they say that if the King should happen to go into a house belonging to a subject, that house would be Taboo and never more be inhabited by the owner; so that when ever he travels there are houses for his reception.(Cook1967:176)
In the journal entry for July 1777, the surgeon on the Resolution, William Anderson, wrote:
[taboo]is the common expression when any thing is not to be touch’d ,unless the transgressor will risque some very severe punishment as appears from the great apprehension they have of approaching any thing prohibited by it.
Cook and Anderson used taboo (or tabu) to describe the behavior of Polynesians towards things that were not to be done, entered, seen or touched. Such taboos are, in some form, almost universal.
The origin of taboo in Chinese culture
In China, at least early in the Han Dynasty appeared the phrase “禁忌” . Ho