Note 47 — Chapter VI · Magic Rites as affecting the Life of Man (continued 3)
Reading edition
“At the age of about eight or nine they bore the ears and file the teeth of the female children; which are ceremonies that must necessarily precede their marriage. The former they call betendĕ, and the latter bedabong; and these operations are regarded in the family as the occasion of a festival. They do not here, as in some of the adjacent islands (of Nias in particular), increase the aperture of the ear to a monstrous size, so as in many instances to be large enough to admit the hand, the lower parts being stretched till they touch the shoulders. Their ear-rings are mostly of gold filagree, and fastened, not with a clasp, but in the manner of a rivet or nut screwed to the inner part.”—Marsden, Hist. of Sumatra (ed. 1811), p. 53. ↑