Indo-China and its primitive people

by Henry Baudesson

It is also not without a certain significance that all these agrarian rites, no matter the group which practise them, are celebrated in the open air and not in a temple, and that their observance is not the function of a professional priestly class, but the duty of all, from the highest magnate to the humblest slave.

The Moï preface every religious ceremony with the opening of a jar of spirits of rice. To omit this prelude would be to invite disaster. In the dead of night the discordant voice of the tom-tom suddenly breaks upon the stillness, and, as often as not, its message is one of invitation to the opening of a jar. We obeyed the summons at first mainly out of curiosity, but finding the proceedings monotonously similar, we soon came to take no further interest. One of the best-known chiefs, Me-Sao, who enjoyed the title of "King of the Moï," had a grandiloquent manner on these occasions which is worthy of record.

His house, or rather conglomeration of huts, was certainly not less than a hundred yards in length. The stage was thus fully worthy of the scene to be presented. As the guests arrive, the host invites them to be seated on a row of stools, very large but so low as to give the impression of sitting on the ground. A number of attendants immediately take off the visitors' shoes, anoint their feet with various oils, after which the guests rest their legs on a low, iron railing fixed in the ground and worked into a rude pattern. In front of the audience is a post to which is fixed an enormous jar containing perhaps twenty-five to thirty litres of spirits of rice. A Moï seated before the post recites our praises in a drawling voice. Our skill in the hunting-field, our physical strength, the efficacy of our medicines form a theme on which the bard lets his fancy play freely. When he has recounted our individual virtues, another warrior imprisons our right wrists in a thick copper bracelet, an act which signifies the conclusion of a compact and an oath of blood-brotherhood. The great jar is then solemnly decanted after an invocation to the spirits. The King of the Moï introduces a long hollow straw into the liquid, draws up a mouthful, and graciously offers the other end to those whom he deigns to honour with his friendship. It would be the height of ill-breeding to decline this mark of friendship, and there is no alternative but submission. One by one we take a sip from the stalk, which is kept filled from a small drinking-horn with a hole in the middle to regulate the flow of the liquid. Those who drink first are the most to be pitied, for the jar is corked with a mixture of glazed earth and bran, and in spite of the cup-bearer's skill some of the solid matter always gets into the tube. By a happy convention there is nothing to prevent the guest from spitting out his dose, in fact the action is regarded as a high compliment to the character of the vintage. This ceremony frequently lasts all night to the accompaniment of selections by the band of native musicians on enormous gongs. When the distinguished strangers have been thus honoured the tribesmen, in order of rank, take the tube in turn, and after them the women also, by which time the liquid has become perfectly innocuous, thanks to its successive dilutions.

The offer of a jar to a guest of rank is a mark of respect and allegiance in all these parts. Wherever we went we were always received by the chiefs with a preliminary greeting of this kind.

Spirits of rice consist of a mixture of paddy and water which is allowed to ferment for not less than ten days and not more than three moons. Another favourite offering was that of a white cock flanked by an odd number of eggs and served on a kind of cane tray, of which the bottom was sprinkled with a layer of snow-white rice. In exchange for these courtesies we returned presents of brass needles, and, if our reception had been particularly cordial, mirrors, which the women almost tore from our hands. This exchange of presents was the sign of an alliance and was seldom followed by any act of treachery. We soon came to realize that we had little to fear from groups who gave and received these hostages.

Superficial observers often attribute to superstitions certain modern customs of which the origin is to be sought in moral or legal decrees. Many of these customs which seem without significance become quite intelligible when viewed in the light of recent research into the institutions and ways of life of societies which have long since disappeared. In the same way our opinion will be sensibly modified by a close examination of the customs of primitive peoples whose rites and ceremonies we are apt to attribute too readily to abstract symbolism.

For example, research into the origin of the practice of circumcision has brought some authorities to the view that this custom has at some time been substituted for that of human sacrifice when the victor offered the body of the vanquished as a gift to the gods. When David came to Saul to demand the hand of his daughter, the King replied that the only dowry he required was a hundred foreskins of the Philistines. In other words, Saul's conditions were the sacrifice of a hundred of his enemies, and do not seem to be unreasonable under the circumstances. Again the Dyaks of Borneo are not allowed to take a wife until they have at least one scalp of their foes to their credit. Later, by a prolonged process of substitution, circumcision of the boys and excision of the girls have taken their place as rites which mark the admission of the young people into the full privileges and fellowship of the community and signify the passing of childhood.

Most of the groups which practise these rites set apart a special hut for the accommodation of the boys and girls during the celebration. No one is allowed to enter, and the novices are subject to a multitude of disciplinary regulations which are designed to promote physical courage and endurance, obedience to superiors, and respect for established tradition. Certain kinds of food are rigorously prohibited during this period of seclusion, which lasts until the wounds made by the operation are healed, an event celebrated with great pomp.

These ceremonies are only consistent with the theory that among certain races circumcision is not a piece of pure symbolism but an act of physical and social initiation. The candidate for admission to the full rights of citizenship must be instructed in the duties and responsibilities of his new status. He must be initiated into the traditions of his clan. In nearly every case some distinctive feature of dress or hair, or some tribal mark, such as tattooing, deformation, or mutilation indicates the critical period. In Rome the young man put on the toga to indicate his assumption of the rights of manhood.