As soon as his wife was confined he was banished again to the mbure-ni-sa for the entire suckling period, which lasted
from two to three years. During the whole of this time, unless he had more than one wife, he was obliged to live a life of celibacy.
In the above description I am, of course, speaking of the ordinary middle-class Fijian. The higher chiefs, having several wives, provided a separate house for the confinement, and never saw the mbure-ni-sa again after their marriage. Men of the lowest rank had generally no wives at all.
The mbure-ni-sa thus served a double purpose. The girls of the tribe sleeping with their parents, and the young men being practically incarcerated every night under the eyes of their elders, there was little opportunity for immorality before marriage. With the duties of defence, of fighting, of providing food and of fishing, the young men had little time for philandering, and it is asserted by many of the elder natives that it was a rare thing for a girl to have lost her virtue before marriage. Such sexual immorality as took place was between the young men and the older married women.
But the chief value of the mbure-ni-sa undoubtedly lay in the separation of the parents of a child during the suckling period. Natives, when asked to account for the decrease in their numbers, have for years mentioned the breaking down of this custom of abstinence as the principal cause, asserting that cohabitation injures the quality of the mother's milk. Not understanding the true cause that lay behind this belief, Europeans, medical men as well as missionaries, have treated the opinion with contempt, without, however, shaking the natives' fixed belief. Within the last few years a missionary, the late Rev. J. P. Chapman, characterized this custom of abstinence as an "absurd and superstitious practice."
The Mbure-ni-sa (Club House).
The teaching of the missionaries, who believed that the only perfect social system was to be found in the English mode of family life, and the example of the Europeans settled in the group, have broken down the custom of the mbure-ni-sa in all parts of the islands, except the mountain districts of Vitilevu. The example of the native teachers, one of whom is to be found in every village, was in itself enough to discourage a custom which the men had long found irksome,
and the natives assert that a large number of infant deaths might have been prevented if public opinion still sufficed to keep the parents apart.
PROLONGED PERIOD OF SUCKLING