The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
(M91) A similar distribution of labour between the sexes prevails among
some savage tribes in other parts of the world. Thus among the Lhoosai of
south-eastern India the men employ themselves chiefly in hunting or in
making forays on their weaker neighbours, but they clear the ground and
help to carry home the harvest. However, the main burden of the bodily
labour by which life is supported falls on the women; they fetch water,
hew wood, cultivate the ground, and help to reap the crops.(392) Among the
Miris of Assam almost the whole of the field work is done by the women.
They cultivate a patch of ground for two successive years, then suffer it
to lie fallow for four or five. But they are deterred by superstitious
fear from breaking new ground so long as the fallow suffices for their
needs; they dread to offend the spirits of the woods by needlessly felling
the trees. They raise crops of rice, maize, millet, yams, and sweet
potatoes. But they seldom possess any implement adapted solely for
tillage; they have never taken to the plough nor even to a hoe. They use
their long straight swords to clear, cut, and dig with.(393) Among the
Korwas, a savage hill tribe of Bengal, the men hunt with bows and arrows,
while the women till the fields, dig for wild roots, or cull wild
vegetables. Their principal crop is pulse (_Cajanus Indicus_).(394) Among
the Papuans of Ayambori, near Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, it is the men who
lay out the fields by felling and burning the trees and brushwood in the
forest, and it is they who enclose the fields with fences, but it is the
women who sow and reap them and carry home the produce in sacks on their
backs. They cultivate rice, millet, and bananas.(395) So among the natives
of Kaimani Bay in Dutch New Guinea the men occupy themselves only with
fishing and hunting, while all the field work falls on the women.(396) In
the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, when the natives have decided to
convert a piece of grass-land into a plantation, the men cut down the long
grass, burn it, dig up the soil with sharp-pointed sticks, and enclose the
land with a fence of saplings. Then the women plant the banana shoots,
weed the ground, and in the intervals between the bananas insert slips of
yams, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, or ginger. When the produce is ripe,
they carry it to the village. Thus the bulk of the labour of cultivation
devolves on the women.(397)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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