587 



of a conditional curse called Ondga. When an owner is afraid 

 of his coconuts being stolen, or suspects that they have been 

 interfered with, he utters a spell and binds the coconut<s 

 together (with a piece of their own fibre, torn off the husks). 

 The man who has stolen, or who should intend to steal, gets 

 boils and swellings all over his body, and dies from this com- 

 plaint, which also is called Ondga. I was not able to record 

 the spell, nor to obtain any details concerning similar protec- 

 tive measures which were said to be sometimes applied in the 

 case of bananas and taro. 



It is obvious that the native classification of facts 

 embodied in the term Gora is by no means adequate from a 

 scientific point of view. It brings together those which are 

 only superficially similar and discriminates between essentially 

 kindred phenomena. But this very circumstance makes the 

 adduced data rather interesting, for undoubtedly such a quaint, 

 and obviously antiquated, mode of using words and classifying 

 facts points to a previous state of things which differs from the 

 present. And linguistic survivals are perhaps the most trust- 

 worthy, since a word may be used in a somewhat inadequate 

 sense without practical inconvenience. On the other hand, 

 a social institution, when its function changes, must either 

 adapt itself fairly completely to its new form of existence, and 

 hence vary in its essentials, or it withers and becomes 

 obliterated, I will not speculate upon the nature of the 

 survivals embodied in the Mailu conception of Gora, and I 

 wish only to point out briefly some of its peculiarities. 



Gora, in its broadest and most abstract meaning, means 

 taboo, rule, prohibition ; it is distinctly the conception cover- 

 ing what we would call law in our society. In the more 

 restricted and concrete sense, it implies a legal arrangement 

 allowing certain goods to be protected against all consumption, 

 and thus to be reserved for ceremonial religious purposes. It 

 is never a symbol of proprietorship or a simple form of protec- 

 tion of private property, the latter function being performed 

 I)y the Ondga. On the other hand, some Goras, the Tona gora 

 and the fish and betelnut Goras, have a distinct magical 

 function. One of them, the betelnut Gora, has hardly any 

 legal aspect ; the fish Gora involves a prohibition, and the 

 Tona gora is, in its legal aspect, only a sign that there are 

 prohibitory measures elsewhere. The Moto gora has, again, ■ 

 neither legal nor magical aspect. 



A few more words must be said about the previously men- 

 tioned food taboos, which the natives comprise under another 

 word, Tora. These taboos are met with on very many sides of 

 social life — during feasts and economic activities ; in some of the 

 critical moments of human life, like initiation, puberty, and 



