A
woman of the upper class may remain recumbent for the most part of
several days or even weeks. For seventeen days the mother wears
threads tied round the thumbs and big toes, and during this time
she is expected to avoid heavy labour, such as farm-work and the
pounding of hadi. There seems to be no trace of any such custom as
the COUVADE, though the father observes, like the mother, certain
tabus during the early months and years of the child's life, with
diminishing strictness as the child grows older. The child also is
hedged about with tabus. The general aim of all these tabus seems to
be to establish and maintain about the child a certain atmosphere
(or, as they say, a certain odour)[168] in which alone it can
thrive. Neither father nor mother will eat or touch anything whose
properties are thought to be harmful or undesirable for the child,
E.G. such things as the skin of the timid deer (see vol. ii. p. 72),
or that of the tiger-cat; and the child himself is still more strictly
preserved from such contacts. Further, nothing used by or about the
child -- toys, garments, cradle, or beads -- must be lost, lent, sold,
or otherwise allowed to pass out of the possession of the parents;
though, if one child has thriven, its properties are preferred to all
others for the use of a younger brother or sister.
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