Even
among savages the excreta are frequently regarded as disgusting, but under
the influence of these conceptions such disgust is inhibited, and those
emanations of the body which are usually least honored become religious
symbols.
Urine has been regarded as the original holy water, and many
customs which still survive in Italy and various parts of Europe,
involving the use of a fluid which must often be yellow and
sometimes salt, possibly indicate the earlier use of urine. (The
Greek water of aspersion, according to Theocritus, was mixed
with salt, as is sometimes the modern Italian holy water. J.J.
Blunt, _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs_, p. 173.) Among
the Hottentots, as Kolbein and others have recorded, the medicine
man urinated alternately on bride and bridegroom, and a
successful young warrior was sprinkled in the same way. Mungo
Park mentions that in Africa on one occasion a bride sent a bowl
of her urine which was thrown over him as a special mark of honor
to a distinguished guest. Pennant remarked that the Highlanders
sprinkled their cattle with urine, as a kind of holy water, on
the first Monday in every quarter.
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