The Myth-dream [i]

For a period of some seventy years leading up to the events narrated in the Prologue, then, Tangu were a developing political entity who suffered a series of crises traceable both to internal and external sources. Conflicts concerning the rules of descent and who were marriageable mates; a deterioration in the status of women combined with doubts as to the legitimacy of marriages contracted after the introduction on a large scale of manufactured dogs’ teeth, the medium in which bridewealth was paid; and an epidemic sickness seen by Tangu as an excessive increase in the activities of sorcerers seem to have been the main factors associated with the destruction of the major hinge of political, social, economic, and domestic relationships: stable marriage. Manufactured dogs’ teeth, with social not merely technological value, wrought vast changes in Tangu social relationships. Other goods of European origin, on the other hand, filled out traditional values without substantially affecting the totality of social relationships.