The Story of Raga: A Man's Ethnography on
His Own Society (IV):Man and Woman

Masanori YOSHIOKA


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　INTRODUCTION

　　This is the fourth part of an“experimental ethnography”entitled“The Story
of Raga”,which consists of a text written in Raga (the language of North Raga) by
the late Rev. David Tevimule in 1966, with its English translation as well as an
introduction showing the data collected during my field research on the same topic.
Although there have been several experimental trials with respect to writing
ethnographies, a new and general way to describe another culture has yet to be
established(cf. Crapanzano 1980, Marcus and Fischer 1985). In this paper, I present
a way of describing another culture: I describe the culture of North Raga by providing
two texts. Of these two texts, one was written in the Raga language by a native
intellectual; the other, based on my field research in North Raga, I have authored.
The concept of polyphonic description was proposed by Clifford, who insisted
that the voice of a native informant should be directly cited in an ethnography,
so as not to be extinguished by the monophonic voice of the ethnographer (Clifford,
1988). However, it is difficult for most readers of ethnography to understand the
meaning of a native speaking in his or her own language, even if it has been
translated literally into the language of the reader, because of conceptual gaps
between the two languages. The ethnographer, therefore, should transform the raw
information provided by a native in his or her language into an interpreted
translation that the reader can understand; however, this process tends to result,
ultimately, in a monophonic description on the part of the ethnographer. To avoid
inappropriately processing the raw material in this series of papers, I have
translated the Ragan text word-for-word into English; detailed notes supplement
the translation, so that the reader can understand the meaning of the literal
translation.
　　North Raga is located in the northern part of Raga, or Pentecost Island, in
Vanuatu, where I conducted anthropological field research in 1974, in 1981 and
1982, and in 1985 and 1997. Almost all of the people there are Christian, and
their existence depends primarily on slash-and-burn cultivation of taro and yam.
The Rev. David Tevimule was born and raised in North Raga. After his marriage,
he went to the Solomon Islands to train as an Anglican priest. He then returned to
Vanuatu as a priest and began to teach at the Anglican School in Central Pentecost.
After retiring from teaching at the school, he returned to North Raga and lived in
the village of Tasvarongo. In spite of his long life outside of North Raga, he was
well known to the local people for his extensive knowledge of local customs. To
our deep regret, he passed away in 1984.
　　The original title of his text, which was written in the form of a hand-copied
book, is Vevhurin Raga, whichi means “The Story of Raga”. It consists of twenty
chapters and concerns various aspects of North Raga culture: its origin myth, kin
relations, grade-taking ceremony, chiefs, initiation rites, and customs concerning
birth, marriage, and death. In this paper, I translate Chapters 10 and 11, in
which Rev. David Tevimule describes man-woman relationships in North Raga as well
as customs concerning birth. In this introduction, I will discuss the sexual
relationship and some of the birth customs in North Raga.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　�T

　　There are many words that are used in private that mean “to have sexual
intercourse”; these include, wali, waliwali, and sarisari. These words are not used
in public meeting places; people use bulu or lagi when they want to refer to sexual
intercourse in public. Bulu is a general word meaning “to gather together", or “to
stick", while lagi means “to marry". In North Raga, to have sexual intercourse
ideally means to marry, because sexual intercourse before marriage was, and still
is, publicly prohibited. As discussed in “The Story of Raga II", a woman's only
marriageable choices are persons in the category known as her sibi, which means
that those individuals are the only persons with whom she may have sexual
intercourse. However, she must avoid contact with her male sibi, as demonstrated by
the custom that she hide herself if she sees one of them near her; this custom
makes it easier for her not to have sexual intercourse before marriage. The
concept of lagiana (marriage) is constructed from these ideal norms.
　　Of course, the reality sometimes deviates from the ideal. In North Raga, the
concepts of bonaga and tangatanga are used to describe deviations from the ideal
norms for sexual intercourse. Bonaga, in the narrow sense, means, “to have
intercourse between true parents and children or between true brothers and
sisters", which creates an aversion to these people, while in the broad sense it
means “to marry a person of a non-marriageable category", which is sometimes
tolerated if the relationship between the man and the woman is not regarded as serious
bonaga. In North Raga, there are exogamous moieties, and marriage within these groups
is treated as a serious deviation, similar to bonaga in the narrow sense. Throughout
the periods of my field research, I was unable to identify such a case that was not
based on rumor. On the other hand, bonaga between moieties, which means a marriage or
sexual intercourse between a man and his vwavwa, sibi, or nitu (a woman and her tama, mabi,
or nitu), is criticized but not treated as a serious case(1). Since sexual intercourse
before marriage is called tangatanga, the case mentioned above is not only bonaga but
also tangatanga. Although such a tangatanga is an offense against the rules for sexual
activity and married life in North Raga, it usually results in marriage, in which case
it is still considered to be wrong, although it is tolerated.
　　Tangatanga applies not only to sexual intercourse before marriage but also to
adultery, which has a serious impact on a married couple. Adultery is punished by a
fine of a pig, the type of which varies depending on the nature of the case. In one
case involving a married man and an unmarried woman, the married man gave a pig called
a bobibia to the woman's father, while the latter handed a pig called a tavsiri over to
the married man's wife. In a case involving a married man and a married woman, the
former gave livoala to the latter's husband and a certain amount of money to his wife,
while the latter gave tavsiri to the wife of the former(2). Although the relationship
between the offenders and the villagers is fully restored, as long as the fines are
paid, the relationship between husband and wife is not so easily restored. When the
marital relationship becomes worse, or if it has not been good from the start of the
marriage, it is not unusual for the wife to leave home and for people to call her vavin
toa (a fowl woman); this is explained further in Section 4 of Chapter 10 in this paper.
It is generally thought that a “fowl woman" will return home in the course of
time, that is, after two or three years, although she has had the freedom in this time
to wander anywhere she wants to go. In the past, a husband was said to have brought his
wife back tied by a string, as if she were a pig, although today men do no such thing
and wait patiently at home for a “fowl woman" to return. It is not a wise policy for a
woman who leaves home to take refuge in her father's house (not only her true father,
but also one of her classificatory fathers) because it is her father's duty to return
her to her husband with some kind of payment by way of a fine. In one case, a father
brought a daughter back to her husband, together with a large red mat and a meal of
taro and yam as a fine payment. There are certainly cases in which the “fowl woman"
does not return to her husband, and the divorce is approved after a conference of the
fathers of the husband and the wife(3).
　　Tangatanga is also used for cases of attempted or accomplished violations, the
former of which is settled when the offender's side pays a fine to the father of the
victim. In one case, a young man tried to force a young woman down to an isolated
seashore, but she managed to run away. In the village court, held by the village chiefs,
this young man was publicly accused by the woman's father and was sentenced to pay a
fine of one pig, called a bobibia, to the woman's father. After the court's decision, a
kava party(4) was held, at which the offender and the father of the victim drank kava
together, meaning that the offender's crime had been forgiven. In fact, the young man
continued his life as before, following this incident.
　　The case of an accomplished violation is beyond the limits of today's village
courts, although every type of this kind of crime had been judged there in the past. In
today's North Raga, a serious crime, such as a rape, is judged in the national court,
and an offender who is punished by the law of Vanuatu goes to jail if he or she is
found guilty.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　II

　　Although many women of North Raga today give birth to children in the hospital, in
the past it was common for childbirth to occur in the house of the expectant parents.
The woman giving birth and a midwife remained in this house while the husband was
obliged to wait in the meeting house called the gamali. There was no special house
assigned for childbirth. It was said that a woman became pregnant(5) when she missed a
menstrual period(6). Several foods were prohibited for pregnant women, including birds,
fish, flying fox, octopus, and hermit crab. Although, according to Codrington
(Codrington, 1891:229), the husband should not eat marine products such as hermit crab
lest a swelling appear on the body of their child, as far as I know, husbands generally
appeared to be free of such prohibitions. In addition, it is said that there are no
special customs in cases of twins or of babies born buttocks first(7).
　　After the birth of a child, bwaraitoa was and is performed. Bwaraitoa is a kind of
joking ritual that is performed by one's classificatory tama (father), vwavwa (father's
sister) or sibi (mother's father and mother's father's sister) in which they celebrate
the birth of the child or express joy. It is also made in marriage ceremonies and the
bolololi ceremony. On occasions of childbirth, people perform two kinds of bwaraitoa, one
of which is called togotogoi and the other is called ngoingoi. Although it has been said
that only the baby's father's sisters performed this behavior in the past, the
classificatory fathers of the baby also do so today. The joking ritual called togotogoi
involves the stealing of some possessions of no great value, such as fowls, from the
true father of a newborn by its father's sisters and the classificatory fathers. The
ngoingoi involves placing a leaf of the ti-tree on the yam, taro, kava, or other farm
products of the true father of the baby; the baby's father's sisters and the
classificatory fathers perform this action. Ngoingoi is a kind of taboo that prohibits
the true father from harvesting these products. The relatives tie the tip of the leaf
and the leafstalk in order to make a knot when a male child is born, while the tip of
the knotted leaf is pushed into the knot when a female child is born.
Bwaraitoa is usually performed by several of the father's sisters and
classificatory fathers who have a close relationship with the true father of the baby.
The ritual is usually performed for the first child born. However, I know of a case in
which bwaraitoa was performed when a man's fifth child was born. This occurred because
his fifth child was the first male child. He and his sisters and brothers were
extremely glad and the father's sisters and the classificatory fathers of the baby
performed bwaraitoa.
　　In the past, it was customary for the mother and her baby to stay inside the house
for ten days after childbirth. On the tenth day, one of the mother's brothers would put
a piglet or a large red mat in front of the house, and would say, “I let you out of
the house," after which the mother and baby could leave the house and walk freely
around the village. The red mat or the piglet was a kind of gift, called tabeana(8), to
the child by its mother's brother. At present, such a custom seems to have disappeared,
and it appears that a woman who gives birth to a child in her house rather than in the
hospital is able to walk freely around the village even after three days if she has
recovered her strength.
　　One of the most important rituals for a newborn child has been the hunhuniana. This
represented his or her first huhuni, in which the end of an unfolded large, red mat was
put over his or her head and handed to his or her classificatory father or father's
sister. According to Codrington, hunhuniana (in his word huhuni) was held on the tenth
day after the birth of the first-born child, after the baby had remained in the house
with its mother for those ten days. Although hunhuniana is sometimes held today, it does
not appear necessary to perform this ritual when the first child is born. In one case I
encountered, the ritual was held for the third-born child, and mats were given to three
classificatory fathers and three of the child's father's sisters.
　　Codrington has noted that on the tenth day after childbirth, the father of the
baby gives many large red mats and as much food as he can to those relatives, who
have fed his confined wife for ten days; at the same time, the relatives put numerous
large red mats and strings that are tethering pigs on the head of the baby to give to
its father. Codrington called this ritual huhuni. He explained that these mats and pigs
were given as the testimony that the relatives would act as surrogate parents to the
newborn child (Codrington 1891:230-231). This is inconsistent with my description,
because Codrington insisted that the mat-provider who puts mats over the head of the
newborn plays a role similar to that of a guardian to the baby; however, I was told by
the people of North Raga that the mat-receiver played such a role.
　　The placement of a mat over an individual's head is said to be spiritual, because
the head is believed to be the source of a supernatural power called rorongo. In the
past, rorongo played a central part in the religious life of the people, who believed
that this power was found not only in animals but also in inanimate objects, such as a
special stone called rabwe. In the case of animals the power was thought to be lodged
in their heads while in the case of inanimate objects, it was believed that a spirit
called vui that stayed in the rabwe possessed the power. Traditionally, there were many
kinds of rabwe; a stone of thunder (rabwen bahilo), a stone of rain (rabwen uhe), and a
stone of hurricanes (rabwen siritano), among others. The spirit in such a stone did not
work spontaneously, but only worked when a man with a strong rorongo cast a spell on it.
Although rorongo plays a smaller role in the religious life of contemporary Christian
people than it did in the past, they believe today that it is a source of the ability
to speak well, kill many pigs, and earn people's trust.
　　Placing a mat on the head may, in effect, carry rorongo over to the mat-receiver,
rather than convey it to the mat-provider; the mat-receiver may be the classificatory
father acting as a substitute for the true father, or the receiver may be the father's
sister acting as a female father. It seems reasonable to suppose that the mat-receiver,
not the mat-giver, as Codrington insisted, should be treated as a surrogate parent of
the newborn.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　Notes to the Introduction

(1) The members comprising the opposite half of the male ego are the tama (father,
father's sister's son, father's sister's daughter's son, etc.), vwavwa (father's sister,
father's sister's daughter, father's sister's daughter's daughter, etc.), sibi (mother's
father, mother's father's sister, mother's father's sister's child, mother's father's
sister's daughter's child, etc.), mabi (mother's brother's daughter's child, etc.) and
nitu (son, daughter, mother's brother's child, etc.). For a detailed description of the
kin relationships, see “The Story of Raga　�U".
(2) Bobibia is a boar whose tusks curve upwards towards its cheeks, tavisiri is a boar
whose tusks come out of its mouth and pierce the upper lip, and livoala is a boar whose
tusks curve around to draw a second arc. For a detailed description of the kinds of
pigs, see Yoshioka, 1998.
(3) There is no Ragan word for divorce. As mentioned in Chapter 10 in this study, the
divorce is completed when the bride price is returned.
(4) Kava is a beverage prepared from the roots of the plant of the same name (Piper
methysticum). See the Introduction in “The Story of Raga �V”.
(5) In the Raga language, “she is pregnant” is expressed as “mawa ros atatu” (mwa =
she, ros = to carry, atatu = a man) .
(6) In the Raga language, menstruation is called “harov non vavine” (harov = sick, non=
of, vavine = woman).
(7) Twins are called malava and a baby born buttocks first “mwa bora hantai” (mwa = he
or she, bora = to be born, hantai = bad).
(8) As described in “The Story of Raga �V,” tabeana is a gift that does not require a
return gift.