Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
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 Bürck
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 Béarn 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 _République Française_,
of 19th January, 1877, and reprinted in _Études de Linguistique et
d’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
Nîmes, 1790):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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