ABSTRACT
It may be helpful to describe an aspect of this logical system with reference to a diagram which summarizes the food prohibitions. For women, as can be seen, the blood is the barrier against fish. This is corroborated by the fact that a woman expecting a child, who therefore no longer bleeds, can eat only fishpaste. She cannot eat meat or other hard foods which are considered bad for the unborn child (this is discussed later). For men, the stages of death are the points of reference for proscriptions in both dietary and other forms. The strictest prohibitions are those relating to ritual death. The same total immobility and silence are imposed on a child who has just had his ears pierced and on a warrior who has killed a man. They lie in both cases in a hammock with their arms and legs straightened out. A greater licence is allowed those in the state of temporary death. Here the new father and the adolescent boy in seclusion are confined to a limited space and are able to speak only in whispers. More liberal still are the rules concerning rebirth, when the youth in seclusion leaves his shelter progressively finally to enter into adult society. Before this, his parents fish for him and he is allowed to eat boiled fish only; after rebirth, he fishes for himself and can eat whatever he catches. Blood and death - situations in which food prohibitions operate also separate what the Trumai can savouries from insipid food; salt and pepper are described roughly in their language as 'having taste', and everything lacking this taste is considered to be unpalatable, difficult to eat - in
Salt: peppery roast fish, boiled fishy monkeyy jowly turtle eggSy manioc pap
a\\: =tispan, that is to say 'prohibitive prescription', 'limit of permission'. b: The limit of proscription -from prohibition to permission - regulates equally
(and together with other domains of life) sexual consummation and the use of various types of language.
