avoidance of ordinary pursuits.
Arbitrary enactments by chiefs may attach restrictions to a particular
day. Sometimes restrictive usages, of obscure origin, become communal
law. Thus, every Toda clan has certain days of the week (not the
occasion of special ceremonies) in which it is forbidden to follow
ordinary occupations; among the things forbidden are the giving of
feasts, the performance of funeral ceremonies, the cutting of nails, and
shaving; women and dairymen may not leave the village, and the people
and buffaloes may not move from one place to another.[986] Doubtless
this system of prohibitions is the outcome of many generations of
experience--the organization of various local usages.

+605+. _Taboos connected with the moon._ Unusual celestial phenomena,
such as eclipses, meteors, and comets, have always excited terror, being
referred to some hostile supernatural agency, and have called forth
special placative and restrictive ceremonies. They are accounted for in
savage lore by various myths.[987] But the permanently important taboos
have been those that are associated with the phases of the moon. These
periodical transformations, unexplained and mysterious, seemed to early
man to have vital relation with all earthly life--the waxing and waning
of the moon was held to determine, through the sympathy existing between
all things, the growth and decay of plants, animals, and men.[988] Hence
arose the widely diffused belief that all important undertakings should
be begun while the moon was increasing, and innumerable regulations for
the conduct of affairs were established, not a few of them surviving in
civilized popular belief and practice to the present day.

+606+. Sometimes the changes in the moon are minutely observed. The
Nandi describe every day of the month by the appearance of the moon or
by its relation to occupations.[989] Natural observation in some cases
divided the lunar month into four parts: the Buddhist uposatha days are
the four days in the lunar month when the moon is full or new or halfway
between the two;[990] in Hawaii the 3d-6th, 14th-15th, 24th-25th,
27th-28th days of every month were taboo periods;[991] the Babylonians
had five such periods in certain months (four periods with one period
intercalated). But, though the quartering of the lunation may seem to us
the most natural division of the month, in actual practice it is rather
the exception.[992] The simplest division, indeed, is that