Possibly, However, The Gold-Teeth
May Have Become Entirely Absorbed In The Chinese And Shan Population.
The characteristic of casing the teeth in gold should identify the tribe
did it still exist.
But I can learn nothing of the continued existence of
such a custom among any tribe of the Indo-Chinese continent. The insertion
of gold studs or spots, which Buerck confounds with it, is common enough
among Indo-Chinese races, but that is quite a different thing. The actual
practice of the Zardandan is, however, followed by some of the people of
Sumatra, as both Marsden and Raffles testify: "The great men sometimes set
their teeth in gold, by casing with a plate of that metal the under
row ... it is sometimes indented to the shape of the teeth, but more
usually quite plain. They do not remove it either to eat or sleep." The
like custom is mentioned by old travellers at Macassar, and with the
substitution of silver for gold by a modern traveller as existing in
Timor; but in both, probably, it was a practice of Malay tribes, as in
Sumatra. (Marsden's Sumatra, 3rd ed., p. 52; Raffles's Java, I. 105;
Bickmore's Ind. Archipelago.)
[In his second volume of The River of Golden Sand, Captain Gill has two
chapters (viii. and ix.) with the title: In the footsteps of Marco Polo
and of Augustus Margary devoted to The Land of the Gold-Teeth and The
Marches of the Kingdom of Mien. - H.C.]
NOTE 3. - This is precisely the account which Lieutenant Garnier gives of
the people of Laos: "The Laos people are very indolent, and when they are
not rich enough to possess slaves they make over to their women the
greatest part of the business of the day; and 'tis these latter who not
only do all the work of the house, but who husk the rice, work in the
fields, and paddle the canoes. Hunting and fishing are almost the only
occupations which pertain exclusively to the stronger sex." (Notice sur
le Voyage d'Exploration, etc., p. 34.)
NOTE 4. - This highly eccentric practice has been ably illustrated and
explained by Mr. Tylor, under the name of the Couvade, or "Hatching," by
which it is known in some of the Bearn districts of the Pyrenees, where it
formerly existed, as it does still or did recently, in some Basque
districts of Spain. [In a paper on La Couvade chez les Basques,
published in the Republique Francaise, of 19th January, 1877, and
reprinted in Etudes de Linguistique et a' Ethnographie par A. Hovelacque
et Julien Vinson, Paris, 1878, Prof. Vinson quotes the following curious
passage from the poem in ten cantos, Luciniade, by Sacombe, of
Carcassonne (Paris and Nimes, 1790):
"En Amerique, en Corse, et chez l'Iberien,
En France meme encor chez le Venarnien,
Au pays Navarrois, lorsqu'une femme accouche,
L'epouse sort du lit et le mari se couche;
Et, quoiqu'il soit tres sain et d'esprit et de corps,
Contre un mal qu'il n'a point l'art unit ses efforts.
On le met au regime, et notre faux malade,
Soigne par l'accouchee, en son lit fait couvade:
On ferme avec grand soin portes, volets, rideaux;
Immobile, on l'oblige a rester sur le dos,
Pour etouffer son lait, qui gene dans sa course,
Pourrait en l'etouffant remonter vers sa source.
Un mari, dans sa couche, au medecin soumis,
Recoit, en cet etat, parents, voisins, amis,
Qui viennent l'exhorter a prendre patience
Et font des voeux au ciel pour sa convalescence."
Professor Vinson, who is an authority on the subject, comes to the
conclusion that it is not possible to ascribe to the Basques the custom of
the couvade.
Mr. Tylor writes to me that he "did not quite begin the use of this good
French word in the sense of the 'man-child-bed' as they call it in
Germany. It occurs in Rochefort, Iles Antilles, and though Dr.
Murray, of the English Dictionary, maintains that it is spurious, if so,
it is better than any genuine word I know of." - H.C.] "In certain valleys
of Biscay," says Francisque-Michel, "in which the popular usages carry us
back to the infancy of society, the woman immediately after her delivery
gets up and attends to the cares of the household, whilst the husband
takes to bed with the tender fledgeling in his arms, and so receives the
compliments of his neighbours."
The nearest people to the Zardandan of whom I find this custom elsewhere
recorded, is one called Langszi,[2] a small tribe of aborigines in
the department of Wei-ning, in Kweichau, but close to the border of
Yun-nan: "Their manners and customs are very extraordinary. For example,
when the wife has given birth to a child, the husband remains in the house
and holds it in his arms for a whole month, not once going out of doors.
The wife in the mean time does all the work in doors and out, and provides
and serves up both food and drink for the husband, she only giving suck to
the child." I am informed also that, among the Miris on the Upper Assam
border, the husband on such occasions confines himself strictly to the
house for forty days after the event.
The custom of the Couvade has especially and widely prevailed in South
America, not only among the Carib races of Guiana, of the Spanish Main,
and (where still surviving) of the West Indies, but among many tribes of
Brazil and its borders from the Amazons to the Plate, and among the
Abipones of Paraguay; it also exists or has existed among the aborigines
of California, in West Africa, in Bouro, one of the Moluccas, and among a
wandering tribe of the Telugu-speaking districts of Southern India.
According to Diodorus it prevailed in ancient Corsica, according to Strabo
among the Iberians of Northern Spain (where we have seen it has lingered
to recent times), according to Apollonius Rhodius among the Tibareni of
Pontus.
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