Among the Paiwan, as among the other aboriginal tribes, including the Taiyal of the north, there exists the custom of two great festivals during the year, one at seed-time, the other at harvest-time. During these twice-yearly festivals there is much feasting, much dancing, and, unfortunately, much drinking of millet wine. That which distinguishes the Paiwan festivities, however, from those of the other tribes is that once every five years on these festive days the Paiwan play a game called Mavayaiya. This game consists of a contest between several warriors, each trying to impale on a bamboo lance a bundle--now made of bark--which is tossed into the air, the one who catches it on the point of his lance being considered the victor. Tradition among them asserts that in olden days it was a human head--that of a slain enemy--which was thus tossed about, a mere bundle of bark being considered a poor substitute. But Japanese laws against head-hunting are strict, for Japanese themselves have suffered from these expeditions--punitive usually--and knives, even sacred ones, are no match against modern rifles, or against bombs thrown from aeroplanes. Similarly with the neighbouring tribe--now a small one--that of the Piyuma. On a festival day, held annually, a monkey--one of those with which the woods of Formosa are filled--is tied before the bachelor dormitory, and killed by the young men with arrows. After it is killed the village chief throws a little native wine three times towards the sky, and three times on the ground, near the body of the dead monkey. Singing, dancing, and feasting follow. The old people of the Piyuma tribe explain that in the “good days of old,” when their tribe was a large and powerful one, a prisoner, captured from some other tribe, was always sacrificed on these festal occasions, but now they--like the Paiwan, with their Mavayaiya--have to be satisfied with an inferior substitute. It seems that one of the reasons why a monkey is considered so particularly inferior a substitute for a man is that the former can at its death bear no message to the spirits of the ancestors of those who slay it. In the good old days every arrow that was shot into the body of the man bore with it a message to the spirit of the ancestor of the man who shot the arrow. Apparently it was regarded as an obligation, one that could not be evaded, on the part of the victim, to deliver this message--rather these many messages--immediately upon his arrival in the spirit-world. Even among the Paiwan head-hunting is on the decline, being much less practised by this tribe to-day than among the Taiyal. Many of the honours which were formerly paid to the successful Paiwan head-hunter are now paid to the successful hunter of game, and the latter is now even wearing the cap of distinction at one time reserved exclusively for the former.