MARITAL JEALOUSY 211 



skin is thrown over them both. Husband and wife 

 then make each a slight perpendicular cut with a razor 

 under the navel of the other. With the blood which 

 follows each mixes a little medicine and rubs it into 

 the cut in the other's abdomen. The purification is 

 then complete and the ritual coition may be proceeded 

 with. But if the husband be away from home and 

 unable to return for the ceremony, the wife is entitled 

 to proceed to the ritual coition with some other man. 

 When the husband returns he has to undergo the 

 purification ; but even after that he cannot have 

 sexual intercourse with her until the next year's cere- 

 mony. If, on the other hand, she have ventured to 

 postpone the ritual coition until her husband's return 

 it is then performed without the purification ceremony. 

 The husband appears to have no right to complain of 

 his wife's performance of ritual coition, in his absence, 

 with another man : it is he, not she, who is thereby 

 placed under a ban and until he is purified by fumiga- 

 tion and the rest of it, his very shadow would be fatal 

 to her or to his children. 1 So far as the meaning 

 of this ceremony can be read, it seems to be a yearly 

 renewal of sexual relations of marriage between 

 husband and wife ; indeed it is wider than that, it is a 

 yearly renewal of sexual life. Unless the full ceremony 

 be performed the party omitting it, though involun- 

 tarily, is subject to the direst supernatural penalties. 

 Attention may be specially drawn to the fact that not 

 only is the wife entitled to perform it in her husband's 

 absence with another man, but that she positively 

 incurs a risk for her husband's sake in postponing 

 it until his return. Moreover no penalty is incurred 

 1 Rev, W. C, Willoughby,/. A. I, xxxv. 311, 



