MARITAL JEALOUSY 153 



Sexual hospitality of the kind already referred to is 

 provided by the Kyans and probably by some other 

 tribes of Sarawak. 1 Among the Timorese of Dawan it 

 is regarded as a great insult for a guest to refuse a wife 

 or daughter offered to him by his host. 2 



The Malagasy may be said to have reached the 

 stage of fatherright but they retain visible traces of 

 matrilineal descent. Their sensuality "is universal 

 and gross, though generally concealed. Continence 

 is not supposed to exist in either sex before marriage ; 

 consequently it is not expected and its absence is not 

 regarded as a vice." Indeed so great is the desire for 

 children that not merely is sterility regarded as a mis- 

 fortune or an opprobrium, but a girl who has already 

 become a mother is looked upon as an advantageous 

 match. There is no word in the Malagasy language 

 to express a virgin ; the word mpitbvo commonly 

 used means only an unmarried girl. The negative 

 evidence of words is proverbially fallacious. If we 

 had only that afforded by the absence of a word for 

 virgin we might hesitate to believe in the common 

 incontinence of unmarried girls in Madagascar. It is, 

 however, abundantly attested by European observers. 



simply by desertion, and on the slightest pretext. Many men and 

 women marry seven or even eight times before they finally settle 

 down. Id. 56. 



1 Ling Roth, Sarawak -, i. 117, quoting Low. Bastian (/m&w^s/Vw, 

 iv. 24), apparently referring primarily to the Tandjoeng Bantang 

 Dyak, states that the Dyak makes use of his wife to obtain wealth 

 by means of compensation for her adulteries. But, as usual, his 

 authority does not appear. From the interior of Peling he reports 

 (op. cit. 43) a practice of hiring the wife to strangers ; but this would 

 seem rather a case of demoralisation arising from contact with 

 strangers. Here again no authority is cited. 



2 Post, Studien, 345, citing Riedel. 



