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Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. by Sir James George Frazer

S >> Sir James George Frazer >> Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I.





Sec. 5. _Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of South America_


[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and
Lengua Indians of South America.]

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the
Guaranis of Southern Brazil, on the borders of Paraguay, used to sew her
up in her hammock, leaving only a small opening in it to allow her to
breathe. In this condition, wrapt up and shrouded like a corpse, she was
kept for two or three days or so long as the symptoms lasted, and during
this time she had to observe a most rigorous fast. After that she was
entrusted to a matron, who cut the girl's hair and enjoined her to
abstain most strictly from eating flesh of any kind until her hair
should be grown long enough to hide her ears. Meanwhile the diviners
drew omens of her future character from the various birds or animals
that flew past or crossed her path. If they saw a parrot, they would say
she was a chatterbox; if an owl, she was lazy and useless for domestic
labours, and so on.[132] In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of
southeastern Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where
she stayed for a month: the second month the hammock was let half-way
down from the roof; and in the third month old women, armed with sticks,
entered the hut and ran about striking everything they met, saying they
were hunting the snake that had wounded the girl.[133] The Lengua
Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco under similar circumstances hang the
girl in her hammock from the roof of the house, but they leave her there
only three days and nights, during which they give her nothing to eat
but a little Paraguay tea or boiled maize. Only her mother or
grandmother has access to her; nobody else approaches or speaks to her.
If she is obliged to leave the hammock for a little, her friends take
great care to prevent her from touching the _Boyrusu_, which is an
imaginary serpent that would swallow her up. She must also be very
careful not to set foot on the droppings of fowls or animals, else she
would suffer from sores on the throat and breast. On the third day they
let her down from the hammock, cut her hair, and make her sit in a
corner of the room with her face turned to the wall. She may speak to
nobody, and must abstain from flesh and fish. These rigorous observances
she must practise for nearly a year. Many girls die or are injured for
life in consequence of the hardships they endure at this time. Their
only occupations during their seclusion are spinning and weaving.[134]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Yuracares of Bolivia.]

Among the Yuracares, an Indian tribe of Bolivia, at the eastern foot of
the Andes, when a girl perceives the signs of puberty, she informs her
parents. The mother weeps and the father constructs a little hut of palm
leaves near the house. In this cabin he shuts up his daughter so that
she cannot see the light, and there she remains fasting rigorously for
four days. Meantime the mother, assisted by the women of the
neighbourhood, has brewed a large quantity of the native intoxicant
called _chicha_, and poured it into wooden troughs and palm leaves. On
the morning of the fourth day, three hours before the dawn, the girl's
father, having arrayed himself in his savage finery, summons all his
neighbours with loud cries. The damsel is seated on a stone, and every
guest in turn cuts off a lock of her hair, and running away hides it in
the hollow trunk of a tree in the depths of the forest. When they have
all done so and seated themselves again gravely in the circle, the girl
offers to each of them a calabash full of very strong _chicha_. Before
the wassailing begins, the various fathers perform a curious operation
on the arms of their sons, who are seated beside them. The operator
takes a very sharp bone of an ape, rubs it with a pungent spice, and
then pinching up the skin of his son's arm he pierces it with the bone
through and through, as a surgeon might introduce a seton. This
operation he repeats till the young man's arm is riddled with holes at
regular intervals from the shoulder to the wrist. Almost all who take
part in the festival are covered with these wounds, which the Indians
call _culucute_. Having thus prepared themselves to spend a happy day,
they drink, play on flutes, sing and dance till evening. Rain, thunder,
and lightning, should they befall, have no effect in damping the general
enjoyment or preventing its continuance till after the sun has set. The
motive for perforating the arms of the young men is to make them skilful
hunters; at each perforation the sufferer is cheered by the promise of
another sort of game or fish which the surgical operation will
infallibly procure for him. The same operation is performed on the arms
and legs of the girls, in order that they may be brave and strong; even
the dogs are operated on with the intention of making them run down the
game better. For five or six months afterwards the damsel must cover her
head with bark and refrain from speaking to men. The Yuracares think
that if they did not submit a young girl to this severe ordeal, her
children would afterwards perish by accidents of various kinds, such as
the sting of a serpent, the bite of a jaguar, the fall of a tree, the
wound of an arrow, or what not.[135]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of the Gran Chaco.]

Among the Matacos or Mataguayos, an Indian tribe of the Gran Chaco, a
girl at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies
covered up with branches or other things in a corner of the hut, seeing
no one and speaking to no one, and during this time she may eat neither
flesh nor fish. Meantime a man beats a drum in front of the house.[136]
Similarly among the Tobas, another Indian tribe of the same region, when
a chief's daughter has just attained to womanhood, she is shut up for
two or three days in the house, all the men of the tribe scour the
country to bring in game and fish for a feast, and a Mataco Indian is
engaged to drum, sing, and dance in front of the house without
cessation, day and night, till the festival is over. As the merrymaking
lasts for two or three weeks, the exhaustion of the musician at the end
of it may be readily conceived. Meat and drink are supplied to him on
the spot where he pays his laborious court to the Muses. The proceedings
wind up with a saturnalia and a drunken debauch.[137] Among the Yaguas,
an Indian tribe of the Upper Amazon, a girl at puberty is shut up for
three months in a lonely hut in the forest, where her mother brings her
food daily.[138] When a girl of the Peguenches tribe perceives in
herself the first signs of womanhood, she is secluded by her mother in a
corner of the hut screened off with blankets, and is warned not to lift
up her eyes on any man. Next day, very early in the morning and again
after sunset, she is taken out by two women and made to run till she is
tired; in the interval she is again secluded in her corner. On the
following day she lays three packets of wool beside the path near the
house to signify that she is now a woman.[139] Among the Passes, Mauhes,
and other tribes of Brazil the young woman in similar circumstances is
hung in her hammock from the roof and has to fast there for a month or
as long as she can hold out.[140] One of the early settlers in Brazil,
about the middle of the sixteenth century, has described the severe
ordeal which damsels at puberty had to undergo among the Indians on the
south-east coast of that country, near what is now Rio de Janeiro. When
a girl had reached this critical period of life, her hair was burned or
shaved off close to the head. Then she was placed on a flat stone and
cut with the tooth of an animal from the shoulders all down the back,
till she ran with blood. Next the ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into
the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot, and hung in a hammock,
being enveloped in it so closely that no one could see her. Here she had
to stay for three days without eating or drinking. When the three days
were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her
feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of nature, a female
relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her
a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl's body.
Being replaced in her hammock, she was now allowed to get some flour,
boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh. Thus she
continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which
she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back.
During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of
abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third month
she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as
usual.[141]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of Guiana; custom of
beating the girls and of causing them to be stung by ants.]

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shews the first signs
of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut.
For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at
night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it,
else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts
of her body. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast
rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her
abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner
of the hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a
separate fire and in a vessel of her own. After about ten days the
magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on
her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has come in
contact. The pots and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and the
fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be
beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end
of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now
"clean," and can mix again with people.[142] Other Indians of Guiana,
after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a month,
expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.[143]
Sometimes, in addition to being stung with ants, the sufferer has to
fast day and night so long as she remains slung up on high in her
hammock, so that when she comes down she is reduced to a skeleton. The
intention of stinging her with ants is said to be to make her strong to
bear the burden of maternity.[144] Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl
at puberty is secluded in the house for a month, and allowed only a
small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken out into the midst
of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her four or five blows
with pieces of _sipo_ (an elastic climber), till she falls senseless or
dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four times at intervals
of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to
strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been made ready; the
_sipos_ are dipped into them and then given to the girl to lick, who is
now considered a marriageable woman.[145]

[Custom in South America of causing young men to be stung with ants as
an initiatory rite.]

The custom of stinging the girl at such times with ants or beating her
with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of
endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the
malignant influences with which a girl in this condition is believed to
be beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, by beating, by
incisions in the flesh, and by stinging with ants, have already come
before us.[146] In some Indian tribes of Brazil and Guiana young men do
not rank as warriors and may not marry till they have passed through a
terrible ordeal, which consists in being stung by swarms of venomous
ants whose bite is like fire. Thus among the Mauhes on the Tapajos
river, a southern tributary of the Amazon, boys of eight to ten years
are obliged to thrust their arms into sleeves stuffed with great
ferocious ants, which the Indians call _tocandeira_ (_Cryptocerus
atratus_, F.). When the young victim shrieks with pain, an excited mob
of men dances round him, shouting and encouraging him till he falls
exhausted to the ground. He is then committed to the care of old women,
who treat his fearfully swollen arms with fresh juice of the manioc; and
on his recovery he has to shew his strength and skill in bending a bow.
This cruel ordeal is commonly repeated again and again, till the lad has
reached his fourteenth year and can bear the agony without betraying any
sign of emotion. Then he is a man and can marry. A lad's age is reckoned
by the number of times he has passed through the ordeal.[147] An
eye-witness has described how a young Mauhe hero bore the torture with
an endurance more than Spartan, dancing and singing, with his arms cased
in the terrible mittens, before every cabin of the great common house,
till pallid, staggering, and with chattering teeth he triumphantly laid
the gloves before the old chief and received the congratulations of the
men and the caresses of the women; then breaking away from his friends
and admirers he threw himself into the river and remained in its cool
soothing water till nightfall.[148] Similarly among the Ticunas of the
Upper Amazon, on the border of Peru, the young man who would take his
place among the warriors must plunge his arm into a sort of basket full
of venomous ants and keep it there for several minutes without uttering
a cry. He generally falls backwards and sometimes succumbs to the fever
which ensues; hence as soon as the ordeal is over the women are prodigal
of their attentions to him, and rub the swollen arm with a particular
kind of herb.[149] Ordeals of this sort appear to be in vogue among the
Indians of the Rio Negro as well as of the Amazon.[150] Among the
Rucuyennes, a tribe of Indians in the north of Brazil, on the borders of
Guiana, young men who are candidates for marriage must submit to be
stung all over their persons not only with ants but with wasps, which
are applied to their naked bodies in curious instruments of trellis-work
shaped like fantastic quadrupeds or birds. The patient invariably falls
down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his hammock, where he is
tightly lashed with cords. As they come to themselves, they writhe in
agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to and fro, causing the hut
to shake as if it were about to collapse. This dreadful ordeal is called
by the Indians a _marake_.[151]

[Custom of causing men and women to be stung with ants to improve their
character and health or to render them invulnerable.]

The same ordeal, under the same name, is also practised by the Wayanas,
an Indian tribe of French Guiana, but with them, we are told, it is no
longer deemed an indispensable preliminary to marriage; "it is rather a
sort of national medicine administered chiefly to the youth of both
sexes." Applied to men, the _marake_, as it is called, "sharpens them,
prevents them from being heavy and lazy, makes them active, brisk,
industrious, imparts strength, and helps them to shoot well with the
bow; without it the Indians would always be slack and rather sickly,
would always have a little fever, and would lie perpetually in their
hammocks. As for the women, the _marake_ keeps them from going to sleep,
renders them active, alert, brisk, gives them strength and a liking for
work, makes them good housekeepers, good workers at the stockade, good
makers of _cachiri_. Every one undergoes the _marake_ at least twice in
his life, sometimes thrice, and oftener if he likes. It may be had from
the age of about eight years and upward, and no one thinks it odd that a
man of forty should voluntarily submit to it."[152] Similarly the
Indians of St. Juan Capistrano in California used to be branded on some
part of their bodies, generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the
leg also, not as a proof of manly fortitude, but because they believed
that the custom "added greater strength to the nerves, and gave a better
pulse for the management of the bow." Afterwards "they were whipped with
nettles, and covered with ants, that they might become robust, and the
infliction was always performed in summer, during the months of July and
August, when the nettle was in its most fiery state. They gathered small
bunches, which they fastened together, and the poor deluded Indian was
chastised, by inflicting blows with them upon his naked limbs, until
unable to walk; and then he was carried to the nest of the nearest and
most furious species of ants, and laid down among them, while some of
his friends, with sticks, kept annoying the insects to make them still
more violent. What torments did they not undergo! What pain! What
hellish inflictions! Yet their faith gave them power to endure all
without a murmur, and they remained as if dead. Having undergone these
dreadful ordeals, they were considered as invulnerable, and believed
that the arrows of their enemies could no longer harm them."[153] Among
the Alur, a tribe inhabiting the south-western region of the upper Nile,
to bury a man in an ant-hill and leave him there for a while is the
regular treatment for insanity.[154]

[In such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification; at
a later time it is interpreted as a test of courage and endurance.]

In like manner it is probable that beating or scourging as a religious
or ceremonial rite was originally a mode of purification. It was meant
to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion, whether personified as
demoniacal or not, which was supposed to be adhering physically, though
invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.[155] The pain inflicted on the
person beaten was no more the object of the beating than it is of a
surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that was all.
In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the pain,
from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony, which
was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons at
critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well
pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never
primitive. The savage, it is true, in certain circumstances will
voluntarily subject himself to pains and privations which appear to us
wholly needless; but he never acts thus unless he believes that some
solid temporal advantage is to be gained by so doing. Pain for the sake
of pain, whether as a moral discipline in this life or as a means of
winning a glorious immortality hereafter, is not an object which he sets
himself deliberately to pursue.

[This explanation confirmed with reference to the beating of girls at
puberty among the South American Indians; treatment of a girl at puberty
among the Banivas of the Orinoco; symptoms of puberty in a girl regarded
as wounds inflicted by a demon.]

If this view is correct, we can understand why so many Indian tribes of
South America compel the youth of both sexes to submit to these painful
and sometimes fatal ordeals. They imagine that in this way they rid the
young folk of certain evils inherent in youth, especially at the
critical age of puberty; and when they picture to themselves the evils
in a personal form as dangerous spirits or demons, the ceremony of their
expulsion may in the strict sense be termed an exorcism. This certainly
appears to be the interpretation which the Banivas of the Orinoco put
upon the cruel scourgings which they inflict on girls at puberty. At her
first menstruation a Baniva girl must pass several days and nights in
her hammock, almost motionless and getting nothing to eat and drink but
water and a little manioc. While she lies there, the suitors for her
hand apply to her father, and he who can afford to give most for her or
can prove himself the best man, is promised the damsel in marriage. The
fast over, some old men enter the hut, bandage the girl's eyes, cover
her head with a bonnet of which the fringes fall on her shoulders, and
then lead her forth and tie her to a post set up in an open place. The
head of the post is carved in the shape of a grotesque face. None but
the old men may witness what follows. Were a woman caught peeping and
prying, it would go ill with her; she would be marked out for the
vengeance of the demon, who would make her expiate her crime at the very
next moon by madness or death. Every participant in the ceremony comes
armed with a scourge of cords or of fish skins; some of them reinforce
the virtue of the instrument by tying little sharp stones to the end of
the thongs. Then, to the dismal and deafening notes of shell-trumpets
blown by two or three supernumeraries, the men circle round and round
the post, every one applying his scourge as he passes to the girl's
back, till it streams with blood. At last the musicians, winding
tremendous blasts on their trumpets against the demon, advance and touch
the post in which he is supposed to be incorporate. Then the blows cease
to descend; the girl is untied, often in a fainting state, and carried
away to have her wounds washed and simples applied to them. The youngest
of the executioners, or rather of the exorcists, hastens to inform her
betrothed husband of the happy issue of the exorcism. "The spirit," he
says, "had cast thy beloved into a sleep as deep almost as that of
death. But we have rescued her from his attacks, and laid her down in
such and such a place. Go seek her." Then going from house to house
through the village he cries to the inmates, "Come, let us burn the
demon who would have taken possession of such and such a girl, our
friend." The bridegroom at once carries his wounded and suffering bride
to his own house; and all the people gather round the post for the
pleasure of burning it and the demon together. A great pile of firewood
has meanwhile been heaped up about it, and the women run round the pyre
cursing in shrill voices the wicked spirit who has wrought all this
evil. The men join in with hoarser cries and animate themselves for the
business in hand by deep draughts of an intoxicant which has been
provided for the occasion by the parents-in-law. Soon the bridegroom,
having committed the bride to the care of his mother, appears on the
scene brandishing a lighted torch. He addresses the demon with bitter
mockery and reproaches; informs him that the fair creature on whom he,
the demon, had nefarious designs, is now his, the bridegroom's, blooming
spouse; and shaking his torch at the grinning head on the post, he
screams out, "This is how the victims of thy persecution take vengeance
on thee!" With these words he puts a light to the pyre. At once the
drums strike up, the trumpets blare, and men, women, and children begin
to dance. In two long rows they dance, the men on one side, the women on
the other, advancing till they almost touch and then retiring again.
After that the two rows join hands, and forming a huge circle trip it
round and round the blaze, till the post with its grotesque face is
consumed in the flames and nothing of the pyre remains but a heap of red
and glowing embers. "The evil spirit has been destroyed. Thus delivered
from her persecutor, the young wife will be free from sickness, will not
die in childbed, and will bear many children to her husband."[156] From
this account it appears that the Banivas attribute the symptoms of
puberty in girls to the wounds inflicted on them by an amorous devil,
who, however, can be not only exorcised but burnt to ashes at the stake.


Sec. 6. _Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in India and Cambodia_


[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Hindoos; seclusion of girls at
puberty in Southern India.]

When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for
four days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean;
no one may touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk,
sugar, curd, and tamarind without salt. On the morning of the fifth day
she goes to a neighbouring tank, accompanied by five women whose
husbands are alive. Smeared with turmeric water, they all bathe and
return home, throwing away the mat and other things that were in the
room.[157] The Rarhi Brahmans of Bengal compel a girl at puberty to live
alone, and do not allow her to see the face of any male. For three days
she remains shut up in a dark room, and has to undergo certain penances.
Fish, flesh, and sweetmeats are forbidden her; she must live upon rice
and ghee.[158] Among the Tiyans of Malabar a girl is thought to be
polluted for four days from the beginning of her first menstruation.
During this time she must keep to the north side of the house, where she
sleeps on a grass mat of a particular kind, in a room festooned with
garlands of young coco-nut leaves. Another girl keeps her company and
sleeps with her, but she may not touch any other person, tree or plant.
Further, she may not see the sky, and woe betide her if she catches
sight of a crow or a cat! Her diet must be strictly vegetarian, without
salt, tamarinds, or chillies. She is armed against evil spirits by a
knife, which is placed on the mat or carried on her person.[159] Among
the Kappiliyans of Madura and Tinnevelly a girl at her first monthly
period remains under pollution for thirteen days, either in a corner of
the house, which is screened off for her use by her maternal uncle, or
in a temporary hut, which is erected by the same relative on the common
land of the village. On the thirteenth day she bathes in a tank, and, on
entering the house, steps over a pestle and a cake. Near the entrance
some food is placed and a dog is allowed to partake of it; but his
enjoyment is marred by suffering, for while he eats he receives a sound
thrashing, and the louder he howls the better, for the larger will be
the family to which the young woman will give birth; should there be no
howls, there will be no children. The temporary hut in which the girl
passed the days of her seclusion is burnt down, and the pots which she
used are smashed to shivers.[160] Similarly among the Parivarams of
Madura, when a girl attains to puberty she is kept for sixteen days in a
hut, which is guarded at night by her relations; and when her
sequestration is over the hut is burnt down and the pots she used are
broken into very small pieces, because they think that if rain-water
gathered in any of them, the girl would be childless.[161] The Pulayars
of Travancore build a special hut in the jungle for the use of a girl at
puberty; there she remains for seven days. No one else may enter the
hut, not even her mother. Women stand a little way off and lay down food
for her. At the end of the time she is brought home, clad in a new or
clean cloth, and friends are treated to betel-nut, toddy, and
arack.[162] Among the Singhalese a girl at her first menstruation is
confined to a room, where she may neither see nor be seen by any male.
After being thus secluded for two weeks she is taken out, with her face
covered, and is bathed by women at the back of the house. Near the
bathing-place are kept branches of any milk-bearing tree, usually of the
_jak_-tree. In some cases, while the time of purification or uncleanness
lasts, the maiden stays in a separate hut, which is afterwards burnt
down.[163]