Rest Days; A Sociological Study 17 



Land Dayak village has the effect of tabooing it, usually for a 

 single day (infra). When a village is under construction, weav- 

 ing the native cloth, settling quarrels, and going on the warpath 

 are forbidden ; to break these regulations would cause a death 

 in the village. ^° On the occasion of certain solemn perform- 

 ances of the medicine-man a three-days' taboo is declared and the 

 people rest from work.^' Such evidence indicates that the sea- 

 sons of restriction and abstinence marking the agricultural opera- 

 tions of the Borneo head-hunters are not to be explained solely 

 on utilitarian grounds. ^^ 



3. GENNA DAYS IX ASSAM 



Taboos remarkably similar to those of the Land Dayaks are 

 found among the various Tibeto-Burman tribes inhabiting the 

 hills of Assam. ^'^ These peoples are not truly primitive: even 

 the least advanced use iron implements and weave cloths. Some 

 have both permanent villages and agricultural fields, some move 

 both their villages and their fields every three or four years, 

 others still are permanent so far as their village sites are con- 



"Nyuak, op. cit., 181. 



^'' Idem, 412. 



^* In the cultivation of their paddy crop the Kandyans of Ceylon observe 

 a variety of ceremonies, some of them strikingly like the Dayak rites. 

 Thus the peasant, having selected a suitable site for farming first presents 

 himself to the village astrologer who names an auspicious day on which 

 to begin operations. Should the goiya, on the way to his land at the 

 time fixed, encounter any sights or sounds which portend failure — the 

 hoot of an owl, a house-lizard's cry, the growling of a dog, the sight of 

 persons carrying weapons capable of inflicting wounds — he will immedi- 

 ately turn back and again approach the diviner to determine a lucky day 

 (Kehelpannala, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1896, xxv. 

 104 sq.). 



"T. C. Hodson, "The Genua amongst the Tribes of Assam," Journal 

 of the Anthropological Institute, 1906, xxxvi. 92-103. See also idem, 

 " Some Naga Customs and Superstitions," Folk-Lorc, 1910, xxi. 296-312. 

 For almost identical observances among the tribes of Northern Arakan, 

 British Burma, cf. R. F. St. Andrew St. John, in Journal of the Anthro- 

 pological Institute, 1873, ii. 240. 



17 



