Most Of The Women, After Bearing A Child In The Morning, Walk About In The Afternoon, Though Some Have To Wait A Few Days.

Their food for some time is rice and fish, abstaining from salt, lombok (red pepper), fat, acid, and bitter food, also meat.

Seven days after birth the child is taken to the river to be bathed. On its return blood from a fowl or, if people are well to do, from a pig that has been sacrificed, is smeared on its forehead and chest, and a name is given. The presence of the blian not being required, the parents give the name, which is taken from a plant, tree, flower, animal, or fish. A wristlet is placed around each wrist and the name is not changed later in life. There are no puberty nor menstruation ceremonies. No sexual intercourse is permissible while a woman is pregnant, nor during menstruation, nor during the first three months after childbirth. Cousins may marry.

Evidence of polyandry is found among the Duhoi. Eight years previous to my visit on the river Braui lived for six years a woman blian about thirty years old, who had three young husbands. She practised her profession and the husbands gathered rattan and rubber. She was known to have had thirty-three husbands, keeping a man a couple of weeks, or as many months, then taking others. She had no children.

A design representing the flying prahu, described in Chapter XXXI, is also occasionally seen in Kahayan mats, the idea being that it may be of assistance to some beneficent antoh.

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