Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/158

126 and the rest is distributed among the members. Some people think this compensation unlucky, and will not admit it into their houses, but put it in a hollow tree until a pig is purchased from the proceeds. When another group claims compensation, the chief must consider the case, and, if he finds the demand reasonable, will instruct the offender to pay. If it be found unreasonable, it becomes the duty of the group to resist, even to the taking up of arms. In this way intratribal warfare is apt to break out for very trivial causes.

If a woman, after the birth of a child, does not perform the rite of purification, the ancestral spirits are offended, and send storms. The purification ceremony must take place within ten or twenty days after the birth, and it is performed either by the mother herself, or by sending for a magician woman, who burns a piece of camphor as she mutters incantations, while the mother holds the baby with its head covered with a cloth. The magician woman then says to the mother, "I now remove all impurity, and you may go out and there will be no storms." Then the woman throws the piece of burning camphor outside the door, and the mother follows with the baby; she points to the heaven, offers prayer and returns to the house. After the purification ceremony is over, the family invite relations and friends to a feast, in which a pig is killed and spirits are prepared, while each guest brings a present. On this day the family must give presents to the brothers and cousins of the mother, and this marks the completion of the purification rite. Her brothers cannot look at their sister's child until these gifts have been received. The child is named one or two months after birth, either by the parents or by the elders. The Taiyal have no family name, and, in the case of two or more persons being named alike, the father's or mother's name is added. The child is usually placed in a rattan basket, and when the mother goes out to the field she always takes the basket with her