Chapter III

. Here, after we have acquired a better knowledge of preliminaries, and a more thorough grasp of native psychology and custom, we shall be more ready to enter into a detailed description.

The main principle of the Kula exchange has been laid down in the before-mentioned chapter; the Kula exchange has always to be a gift, followed by a counter-gift; it can never be a barter, a direct exchange with assessment of equivalents and with haggling. There must be always in the Kula two transactions, distinct in name, in nature and in time. The exchange is opened by an initial or opening gift called vaga, and closed by a final or return present called yotile. They are both ceremonial gifts, they have to be accompanied by the blow of a conch shell, and the present is given ostentatiously and in public. The native term "to throw" a valuable describes well the nature of the act. For, though the valuable has to be handed over by the giver, the receiver hardly takes any notice of it, and seldom receives it actually into his hands. The etiquette of the transaction requires that the gift should be given in an off-hand, abrupt, almost angry manner, and received with equivalent nonchalance and disdain. A slight modification in this is introduced when, as it happens sometimes, in the Trobriands, and in the Trobriands only, the vaygu'a is given by a chief to a commoner, in which case the commoner would take it into his hand, and show some appreciation of it. In all other cases, the valuable would be placed within the reach of the receiver, and an insignificant member of his following would pick it up.

It is not very easy to unravel the various motives which combine to make up this customary behaviour on receiving and giving a gift. The part played by the receiver is perhaps not so difficult to interpret. Right through their ceremonial and commercial give and take, there runs the crude and fundamental human dissatisfaction with the value received. A native will always, when speaking about a transaction, insist on the magnitude and value of the gift he gave, and minimise those of the equivalent accepted. Side by side with this, there is the essential native reluctance to appear in want of anything, a reluctance which is most pronounced in the case of food, as we have said before (