Indo-China and its primitive people

by Henry Baudesson

It must not be imagined that the attainment of puberty in a physiological sense coincides with admission into full membership of the tribe. It is possible for these events to be separated by a long period, though many observers have fallen into error in ignorance of the fact.

The Catholics regard the first communion as the point at which the innocence of childhood passes, and manhood, with its burden of temptation, begins. Accordingly the communicant-to-be is prepared for this ceremony by a period of initiation, during which he makes a reverent study of the traditions of his faith and the articles of his creed.

The Moï, too, celebrate the attainment of puberty by a series of rites and festivals. The period of seclusion in a special house which no one may enter points clearly to a belief in the necessity of a period of initiation, during which the candidate prepares himself for the new life.

The Moï also exhibit traces of usages regulating the sexual relation which are of very ancient origin. We have already noticed the innumerable prohibitions obligatory during pregnancy. The rites to be observed during the menstrual period, and particularly at the time of the first menstruation, are no less rigorous and complicated. A woman must not touch meat at that period, and must be particularly careful to avoid contact with either of her parents. The girls of the Lolo, a people on the Chinese frontier, as soon as they have reached a marriageable age, are subjected to a vegetarian diet and have their food, from which every particle of meat and fat is carefully excluded, cooked in special pots.

On the other hand the Moï seem to have no special rites to mark the menopause.

Similar customs are to be found among most of the races in the Far East. The Blimyar, a Dravidian people from southern Mirzapore, reserve a certain part of their houses, under the outer verandah, for the women during the menstrual period. The Parsees forbid their women to look on flame. Europe itself is familiar with regulations of the same type. In the country districts of France the peasants think that the presence of a woman in the condition in question is enough to turn the beer, convert the wine into vinegar or even ruin a whipped cream or mayonnaise! The belief seems to spring, like so many others, from the long accepted convention that contact with blood is a cause of impurity.

Another very curious rite is that which ethnologists have agreed to call "avoidance," which means the prohibition imposed on both parties to a marriage to touch, in the case of the husband, his mother-in-law, and, in the case of the wife, her father-in-law. Colonel Diguet of the Colonial Infantry deposes that this taboo is found also among the Man-Coc and the Man-Pa-Teng, tribes of mountaineers near Tonkin, whose customs bear strong resemblances to those of the Moï. Speaking for myself, I can advance the case no further, for to all my questions on the subject the natives answered with that obvious reticence which is the sign of their dislike to be catechized on sexual matters.

Africa and Australia furnish many examples of "avoidance." The Bovandik of South Australia even have a special language for conversation between a husband and his wife's mother, or a wife and her husband's father. In Uganda a son-in-law may not look at his mother-in-law and not even speak to her except through a partition or carefully closed door. Madagascar provides examples of the separation of the sexes. The Mahafaly and the Sakalava build their houses with two doors, one facing north for the husband and another facing west for the wife. The woman may eat hot foods but the man may not. On the other hand, the wife may not sit on the same mat with her husband during his meals. This practice of eating apart is common throughout the East. The Moï are no exception, and even carry it to the length of taking their meals in groups, each group consisting of members of the same clan or village. We had the most bitter experience of this custom and its resulting inconvenience during the expedition. It was our practice as a rule to have the midday meal in the open at any place where we happened to be at the moment, and the time was naturally short. But however short the interval, the coolies never failed to waste the larger part of it in sorting themselves out into clans.

Primitive peoples regard the fertility of their women as a national asset, and all kinds of rites are celebrated to avert the crowning disaster of sterility, which is neither more nor less than a public calamity. The Laotians, who cannot truly be described as primitive, make family pilgrimages to a temple in which there is a famous statue, probably of the goddess Kâli. The figure is of a woman of a black race standing with a linga in her hand. Each day she receives a large number of visitors, who show their devotion by sprinkling her lips with cocoa-nut oil in the hope of gaining her favour, and thereby assuring to themselves a numerous posterity. The walls of the temple are hung with votive offerings, the nature of which leaves no doubt as to the character of the requests made to the divinity. In this connection it may be mentioned that a similar practice obtains in certain villages of the Italian Tyrol, Bavaria, and Rhenish Prussia, where the traveller will find the votive offerings, consisting of a spiked ball, a symbol of the matrix, directed to the same end.