584 



however, have no other direct social punishment to bear ; he 

 would not be exposed either to ridicule, contempt, or anger. 



The 2jr///;f/ faar object of the Gora, admitted by the 

 natives and apparent in its most obvious function, is to prevent 

 the coconuts from being eaten and then to ensure a plentiful 

 supply of nuts for the mortuary feasts. It must be remarked, 

 however, that the Gora arrangement overshoots its mark, as 

 an enormous amount of nuts become damaged and absolutely 

 useless before the feast comes on. 



So far we have spoken about the Gora and X eh urn — i.e., 

 taboos imposed upon coconuts on the death of a man, 

 symbolized either by the man's body and grave, or by a special 

 sign enforced by the man's own ghost or by a spell-bound 

 ancestral spirit — both of which, in a purely mechanical rnd 

 automatic manner, and unmoved by propitiation or deflected 

 by wrath or insult, work certain mischief upon the offender. 



Similar taboos are imposed when there is a big feast, 

 independently of the death of anybody of importance. In 

 that case there is no intrinsic reason why the coconuts should 

 be respected by the whole village or by a clan, and a substitute 

 for such a reason is created by erecting a big taboo sign in the 

 village. This sign is also a Gora, called Tona e/ora. The erec- 

 tion of the Tona f/6ra is asociated with the construction of a 

 series of simple Goras in the palmgroves of the people who- 

 have to contribute to the feast. 



When a big Mad una feast (comp. chap, v., sec. 3) is to 

 be held, a fevv^ months before the first festivities — i.e., roughly 

 a year or more before the main feast, the Ton^a gora is erected 

 in the village street, in front of the house of the Maduna 

 master. He gives a small feast in his house, and then the 

 trumpet-shell is blown and an incantation is uttered. In this 

 they utter the names of different places, where coconuts are 

 plentiful, and invoke the coconuts to congregate and be plenti- 

 ful in their village. This is the spell: — 



"Gadaisiu dnia ee e (long drawn) 



Bona bona d^na ee e (long drawn) 



Ge'ar/ea dma ee e (long drawn) 



Dah tini dma ee~ — e (long drawn) 



Gdna dma fseri'dda 



Evara aiha 



Woi/du ligo ivoydu I age." 



The first words in the first four lines are names of place^3 ; 

 A nin means coconut : Gdna dma fseri'dda means all coconuts. 



I did not obtain the full literal translation of the text, 

 but the general meaning is obvious ; the names of places rich 

 in coconuts are called out — a kind of sympathetic verbal 



