210 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



morals are allowed to become very lax ; prostitution 

 is freely indulged in, and adultery is not viewed with 

 any sense of heinousness on account of the surround- 

 ings." The practices of the Basuto of the same 

 district are similar : candidates and visitors alike are 

 encouraged in eating drinking and licentiousness. 1 

 Among the Kaffirs of the south marriages are similar 

 occasions of licence. 2 



A curious purification ceremony is performed by the 

 Bechuana in the month of January. The exact day is 

 fixed by the chief and a gathering of all the adult 

 males is held in the great kraal of the tribe. The 

 leaves of a species of gourd are crushed in the hand 

 and the big toes and navel are anointed with the juice. 

 Every man then goes home to his own kraal and the 

 ceremony is there repeated, the head of the family 

 smearing every member with the juice. Some more 

 leaves are pounded, mixed with milk in a wooden dish 

 and the dogs are called to drink it. That night every 

 man ritually sleeps with his chief wife. If the wife 

 however have been guilty of infidelity during the 

 year she must first confess it to her husband, and 

 must be purified. The purification, if necessary, is 

 performed on the following morning. The husband's 

 father presides at the ceremony, which is performed 

 by a witch-doctor. It consists in fumigating the 

 woman and her husband with the smoke of a bean- 

 plant placed in a pot between the woman's knees 

 as she sits on the ground. Her husband sits opposite 

 her with her knees between his and a kaross of ox- 



1 Wheelwright,/. A. 7. xxxv. 254, 255; Gottschling, Ibid. 372; 

 Zeits. f. Ethnol. xxviii. Verhandl. 364. 



2 Zeits. f. Ethnol. xiv, Verhandl, 209. 



