Note 82 — Chapter I · TABOOED DAYS AT CRITICAL EPOCHS

Ibid., i, 160. The Sea Dyak make an interesting distinction between mali and penti, the former absolutely forbidding certain kinds of work to a person under the ban, the latter allowing it to be undertaken, if started by some one not subject to the taboo. For instance, though both parents are penti during the wife’s pregnancy, the expectant mother may engage in basket-making and mat-weaving, provided some other woman begins the work for her; and the husband may dig a trench or erect a post, if the hands of others are first set to the task. Taboos of this sort prevail until the child cuts its first teeth (F. W. Leggatt, in Roth, op. cit., i, 98).