Chapter V

.

[64] The word tabu, in the meaning of taboo--prohibition--is used in its verbal form in the language of the Trobriands, but not very often. The noun "prohibition," "sacred thing," is always bomala, used with suffixed personal pronouns.

[65] At a later date, I hope to work out certain historical hypotheses with regard to migrations and cultural strata in Eastern New Guinea. A considerable number of independent indices seem to corroborate certain simple hypotheses as to the stratification of the various cultural elements.

[66] The word vineylida suggests the former belief, as vine--female, lida--coral stone.

[67] Professor Seligman has described the belief in similar beings on the North-East Coast of New Guinea. At Gelaria, inland of Bartle Bay, the flying witches can produce a double, or "sending," which they call labuni. "Labuni exists within women, and can be commanded by any woman who has had children.... It was said that the labuni existed in, or was derived from, an organ called ipona, situated in the flank, and literally meaning egg or eggs." op. cit., p. 640. The equivalence of beliefs here is evident.

[68] Not all the spells which I have obtained have been equally well translated and commented upon. This one, although very valuable, for it is one of the spells of the old chief Maniyuwa, and one which had been recited when his corpse was brought over from Dobu by his son Maradiana, was obtained early in my ethnographic career, and Gomaya, Maradiana's son, from whom I got it, is a bad commentator. Nor could I find any other competent informant later on, who could completely elucidate it for me.

[69] Such reconstructions are legitimate for an Ethnographer, as well as for a historian. But it is a duty of the former as well as of the latter to show his sources as well as to explain how he has manipulated them. In one of the next chapters, Chapter XVIII , Divisions XIV-XVII, a sample of this methodological aspect of the work will be given, although the full elaboration of sources and methods must be postponed to another publication.

[70] See