Note 130 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

A connection between individuals, apparently based on the idea that they have a common life, has been noticed in other cases. Thus at the commencement of the patriarchal state of society, when the child is believed to derive its life from its father, any carelessness in the father’s conduct may injuriously affect the child. Sir E.B. Tylor notes this among the tribes of South America. After the birth of a child among the Indians of South America the father would eat no regular cooked food, not suitable for children, as he feared that if he did this his child would die.130 “Among the Arawaks of Surinam for some time after the birth of a child the father must fell no tree, fire no gun, hunt no large game; he may stay near home, shoot little birds with a bow and arrow, and angle for little fish; but his time hanging heavy on his hands the only comfortable thing he can do is to lounge in his hammock.”131 On another occasion a savage who had lately become a father, refused snuff, of which he was very fond, because his sneezing would endanger the life of his newly-born child. They believed that any intemperance or carelessness of the father, such as drinking, eating large quantities of meat, swimming in cold weather, riding till he was tired and sweated, would endanger the child’s life, and if the child died, the father was bitterly reproached with having caused its death by some such indiscretion.132 Here the idea clearly seems to be that the father’s and child’s life are one, the latter being derived from and part of the former. The custom of the Couvade may therefore perhaps be assigned to the early patriarchal stage. The first belief was that the child derived its life from its mother, and apparently that the weakness and debility of the mother after childbirth were due to the fact that she had given up a part of her life to the child. When the system of female descent changed to male descent, the woman was taken from another clan into her husband’s; the child, being born in its father’s clan, obviously could not draw its life from its mother, who was originally of a different clan. The inference was that it drew its life from its father; consequently the father, having parted with a part of his life to his child, had to imitate the conduct of the mother after childbirth, abstain from any violent exertion, and sometimes feign weakness and lie up in the house, so as not to place any undue strain on the severed fraction of his life in his child, which would be simultaneously affected with his own, but was much more fragile.