Women and the Dairy
Women take no part in the dairy ritual, nor in the milking and churning operations which are carried on in the hut. It is said that at one time the women took charge of the buffaloes at the time of calving, but this is not the case at the present time.
Women go to the dairy to fetch buttermilk, using an appointed path and standing at an appointed spot to receive it.
Females enter, dairies under two conditions only. They may enter the outermost rooms of those dairies which are used as funeral huts while the bodies of men are lying in them. Here they may sit only on one side of the room, and only when the dairy operations are not in progress. Women also enter the temporary funeral huts of men, which are called pali, or dairies.
The other condition under which a female enters a dairy is at the migration ceremony of the village, in which a girl, seven or eight years of age, is given food in the dairy of the village which the buffaloes are leaving, and sweeps the front of the dairy of the village to which they are going. This ceremony is one in which a girl seems to take a definite part in dairy ceremonial, but the girl chosen for this office must be below the age of puberty.
The relations of women with the different grades of dairymen have already been considered; a point which may again [[246]]be mentioned is that the emblems of womanhood, the pounder, sieve, and broom, may be removed from the hut while the dairyman is present, though the women themselves remain.
During certain dairy ceremonials, women must leave the village altogether, and during the passage of the buffaloes of the Nòdrs ti near the village of Kiudr, the women leave the village, taking with them the pounder, sieve, and broom.
Although women are thus excluded from all participation in the dairy ceremonial, we shall see later ([Chapter XIV]) that an artificial dairy plays a part in some of the ceremonies connected with pregnancy and childbirth.