Virgin Birth

Author(s): David M. Schneider and E. R. Leach

Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 126-129
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2799418
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I26

CORRESPONDENCE

within the scope of my own assessment)is

admittedly pleonastic, but as an English
sentence it is certainly not 'nonsensical';
there is nothing in it, on logical grounds, to
put the readeron the alert against the translation. He might disapprovethe author'sstyle
of exposition,but so he might justifiablydisapprovethe style of thought in the rendering
proposed by Mr Stewart, which is just as
pleonasticand logically inferior. (In my view
indeed,it is the originalFrenchsentencewhich
might ratherbe reproached.)For a translator
as
to representone feminine noun (tendance)
the subject(elle),insteadof the other feminine
in the samesentence,is open
noun (orientation)
to disputeor correction,but it does not make
the translationa bad one. It does not, that is,
distort or impede an essentialunderstanding
of the progressof the argumentof which the
sentence forms part, and in this sense it is
inconsequential.
More briefly, the second passageis clumsy
but again not nonsensicalor gravely inimical
to the meaning. The third is a misrendering,
and we may be gratefulfor its detection.But
if this is the worst that Mr Stewartcan do, by
way of demonstrationthat the translationas a
whole is patentlybad, then I do not consider
that he has madehis case.(I assume,of course,
that upon reflection he would not wish to
press his even more extreme charge that he
can tell that the translationis wrong 'without
even referringto the Frenchoriginal'.) There
aredoubtlessothermistakesandunsatisfactory
renditions,but as a working translatorI can
only say that I have constantly been struck
by the skill and fluency with which, for the
most part,this exceedinglyintricateand often
obscurework has been put into English.
It is regrettable,of course,that there should
be any mistakesat all, and that it should be
possibleto form such opposed views as those
of Mr Stewart and myself, but even more
deplorable are the circumstancesin which
this translationof an importantwork hasbeen
published. Dr Wolfram worked on a draft
translationover a period of three years, and
presumablythe publishedversion must owe
much to her, yet she considersit to be very
seriouslydefective.ProfessorLevi-Strausshas
not in fact given it 'some sortof imprimatur',
but has saidmerely that he can 'recognise' his
book in the English edition; and his dismayingly hurtfuland ungenerousaspersionupon
Dr Wolfram's protracted labours on his
behalf(Man(N.S.) 2, 464) cannotattachto her
complete and final translation, which, to
judge by her own letter,he never saw. So it is
not publicly known even who is responsible
for the translation,or what degreeof authority
it possesses.
It is most desirablethat this untidy situation
be cleared up. What is needed is that the

translatorsshould be named, and their respective implicationsdescribed;Dr Wolfram

with the
should documenther dissatisfactions
publishedtext, againsther own renderingsas
submitted to the publishers; and Professor
Levi-Straussmight statewith more precision
what he thinks of the way in which his
argumentshave been conveyed. Critics such
as Professor Geertz and Mr Stewart, and
reviewerssuch as myself, would then be in a
position to conduct a debate, not inconclusivelyamong themselves,but more usefully
with those responsiblefor the work.
Rodney Needham
Universityof Oxford

Virgin birth
SIR,

Edmund Leach, in his Henry Myers

Lectureon virgin birth (LeachI966), fails to
mention two referenceswhich in fact support
one of the points he makes there. I cannot
blameDr Leachfor overlookingthis sincethe
first reference(SchneiderI953) consistsof a
five line note and the second(Schneideri962)
is of only thirteenlines.
But so that Dr Leach and any others who
may find thismatterof interestmay havethese
datafully at theircommandwhen considering
this vital process,and so that these data may
be on record where it might do the most
good, I will provide here some of the
immediatelyrelevantmaterialfrom Yap.
It will be simpler if I begin by simply
quoting the essentialsof the aforementioned
thirteenline note:
Prior to the German administrationof
Yap, the ideology was that coitus had no
bearing on conception. Conception was
the reward arranged by happy ancestral
ghosts, who intervened with a particular
spirit to bestow pregnancyon a deserving
woman . . . Even in I947 this ideology had
not been gravelyaltered.Despitethe knowledge impartedby Germans,Japaneseand
Americans,the officialline on this matter
had not been altered in any significant
degree, partlybecausethe Yaps themselves
tended to take an attitude of indifference
toward it. It was an interesting piece of
informationwhich might well be true, but
it was irrelevantto any mattersof significanceon Yap and it was not integratedinto
the ideology of patrilinealrelationshipsat
the time I was there (SchneiderI962: 5-6).
I first came upon this informationearly in
my stay while working on ancestralghosts.
At this point in my work my commandof the
languagewas not at all good, the nativesdid
not trust me, and the whole matterwas side-

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CORRESPONDENCE

steppedin various ways. One way in which

this was done was to say that this was the belief held long, long ago, that theJapanesehad
explainedeverything,andthatthey were now
quitewell informedon the whole subject.The
other was to withdraw from any discussion
by sendingme to experts-the old men.
So I droppedthe matterand only took it up
again some months laterwhen my command
of the languagewas much betterandwhen the
people I worked with knew thatI was anxious
to learnand could be trustedneither to make
troublefor them, or to laugh at them. For the
Germans had explained to them that they
were primitive people, fixed at a very early,
matrilineal,stage of development and that
they needed much instruction before they
could be brought anywherenear the German
level of civilisation,if this were ever possible.
The Japanesehad not bothered much with
explanations,but had merely derided their
stupidity, ignorance and backwardnessand
had exploited them all the more for it. Nor
were these experienceslost on the natives,for
many felt it imperativethat they should not
betray ignorance or be found adhering to
beliefs or customs which had been so effectively denigratedby so many foreigners.
Not only the olderpeople, but many of the
younger ones too held the belief cited. But
here I must repeatfor the benefitof Dr Leach,
since it so clearly supportshis position, that
they viewed the whole matter in a context
radically different from the context of
westernEuropeanthought which I, of course,
unconsciouslyfollowed, and that their view
of the whole matter was one of indifference
biased toward the position that it was
probably not true that coitus had anyt-hing
to do with pregnancy, but that it did not
matter much in any case.
But I pursuedthe matter in my own way,
guided, as I have said,by my own version of
the forms of westernEuropeanthought.
There was first the simple question of
whether coitus did or did not resultin pregnancy. The answer of some of the sharper
older men and of the knowledgeableyounger
men was to draw up a list of those women
whom everyone knew to be promiscuousbut
who were childless.And, they added, quite
properly too, for women as promiscuousas
they could never be rewarded for such
behaviour. This clearly took care of one
quadrantof the two-by-two table which I
unconsciously used to guide my questions.
The list of promiscuous but sterile women
was, I had to admit, rather impressive.
The opposite quadrant was not so well
populated, but was clearly there. There was
one young woman whose face was so badly
disfiguredby yaws that I conceded that she
was far too repulsive and too horrible for

127

anyone even to think of having sexual

relationswith her. Part of her nose was gone
and a section of her upper lip as well, exposing her teeth in a sort of perpetualsnarl,
while the wet pink of the raw tissue glistened
in a way which we all (we were all men in
that discussion)agreed was repulsivebeyond
words. We all agreed on anotherpoint; she
was a good woman. She worked hard, cared
for her old mother and father, never said a
mean word to anyone-and she had two
thriving children.
I did what I could with that case, but the
factswere all againstme. Surely, I suggested,
the children came before the yaws. No, the
children followed the yaws. Well, I countered,if she was not married,and she was not,
how could her husband's ancestral ghosts
appreciate her goodness and reward her?
They didn't becauseshe had no husband.But
her own ancestralghosts did. Normally, of
course,it is the husband'sghosts who get the
spirit to bestow the pregnancy; but if there
are no husband's ghosts, a woman's own
ghosts attend to this matter. Neither could I
argue that this was the only case, for I found
two others like it.
So I explored ghosts, the meaning of
sexualrelations,restrictionson sexualrelations,
and a host of subjects which I felt were
related.But in the end mattersstood essentially
as I have statedthem.
One fine day, walking along a path I did
not often take, I came upon four large men
removing the testiclesof a smallpig. Always
the anthropologist,I did not assume that I
knew why; I asked.Makesthe pig grow much
bigger, they said. But, said I slyly, could a
sow ever get pregnantfrom such a boar?Not
from that one! they affirmed. It needed a
boar whose testicleshad not been removed.
I was unnerved, I admit. So I went back
over the whole matter slowly and carefully.
Castratethe pig and he grows larger than if
he is not castrated.Right! But a castrated
pig cannot get a sow pregnant.Right! And
then they addedonce again,if you want a sow
pregnantyou must get her to a boar which
hasnot been castrated.They copulate,the sow
gets pregnant,the pigs arebom.
But, I protested,everyone has been telling
me that coitus does not make women
pregnant.That is correct,they said. But they
were puzzled,andso was I. We did not understand one another. I had presentedthem, I
felt, with logically inconsistent statements
that fairly cried out for some explanation.
They could not see what my problem was
since they had provided me with the full
arrayof necessary,correct facts and to them
there was no problem.
So we kept at it until I again put the
contradictionto them; if you castratea pig

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CORRESPONDENCE

he cannot get a sow pregnant. Surely that

proved that copulation causes pregnancy!
But suddenlyone manisaw what my problem
was, for he put it plainly and emphatically:
'But people are not pigs!'. Once that point
was made, the rest followed in happy, logical
order. I had obviously assumed that biological processesoperate for all animalsand
had includedman among them. But they had
assumedthat no one but a fool would equate
people and pigs, for there were innumerable
differencesof which the fundamentalone was
simply that people have ancestralghosts and
pigs do not. I should have known this, for I
had had a nastyrow with the young man who
did my cooking. I had picked up a stray,
unwanted pup and named her Maria. This,
he said, was a person'sname even though it
was not a Yap name. Person'snames are for
people and it is 'very bad' to give animals
people'snames.But he couldnot explainwhy,
or he would not, and so I agreed not to call
the dog Maria-at least in his hearing.
His reasons were provided by others.
People are named after ancestralghosts. To
give the name which some ancestralghost
has to a personnot only honoursthat ghostfor he therebylives again, in a way, through
that person-but also obligates that ghost to
help the person in any way he can. To give
a person'sname to an animal-which must
be the name of some ghost somewhere,
otherwise it would not even exist-would
hardlydo honour to a ghost who might well
make it his businessto demonstratehis displeasure. So animals with names had the
names of things, not persons. My cook's
dog, for instance, was called 'Kambess'
which I leamed meant compass.
Now all was well. People, having ancestral
ghosts, are not pigs. People, having ancestral
ghostsand therebyaccessto the spirits,do not
depend on the same processesthat animals
must. Coitus makes pigs pregnant,but with
people-itis different.
But I had not reallypinned down the exact
processesor the physiology or theology of
what went on amongst people. In point of
fact, I was too busy mapping the land of the
village and working out ownership and
inheritance and other such matters. The
absenceof this informationis a seriousdefect
in this reportwhich I hope to repairsome day.
Thinking the matter settled, I put it aside
again. But again I was wrong. After I left
Yap, the smouldering domestic situation of
one of my informants exploded. His wife
left with one of their two childrenand went
to a districtquite far away. Then, some time
later, her brother murderedthe husband.
The brother was tried in a court run on
American standards,and I was able to read
the testimonyof the trial.It appearedthat the

husband had said publicly that the first

child his wife bore had been the resultof her
incestuousrelationshipwith her brother.
The accusationof incest between brother
and sister was certainly the most offensive
thing he could possibly have said. But what
an odd way to put it, particularlyfor a man
who had spent a good deal of time explaining to me how vital ancestralghosts
were and how irrelevantcoitus was. Since I
read this in a transcriptthousandsof miles
away therewasno chanceto follow up matters
with furtherinquiry.
I offer a guess, however, whiclh is also
consistentwith Dr Leach'spaper.For me and
for other westem Europeanscoitus plays the
decisive role in conception, and the biological link between father and child (as
between mother and child) is held to be, in
itself, the basis for the social relationship
between them. Hence it is a fundamental
conditionthat we see coitus directlylinkedto
conception,which is directlylinked to the set
of social bonds which we call the parentchild relationship.
In point of fact, of course,our thinkingon
this subjectis quite as non-logical as is that of
any other savage. Put plainly to a man of
science who is expert on the subject, the
proposition 'coitus causes conception' must
be qualified by a long series of specific
conditionsregardingthe fertility of the egg,
the sperm,the pH of the medium at the time
of fertilisation,and so forth. Yet when we
think about it, to guide the questionswe put
to the natives, we tend to come up with
simple-minded, cause-effect formulations
between coitus and conception which yield
us-as it plainly yielded me-incomplete and
not entirelycomprehensibledata.
As I have shown elsewhere (Schneider
I962), the father-child bond on Yap is
explicitly framed in terms of reciprocalcare
while the mother-child bond is explicitly
framedin terms of biological identity. What
makes a woman a mother on Yap is that she
bore the child. What makes a man a father
on Yap is that he providesfor his child who
later providesfor him. Whether the fatheris
biologically linked to his child is quite as
irrelevantas is his height, his weight or his
accent.
Why, then, did my informantsay that his
wife's child was her brotlher'sand not his?
I would guessthat this was one among many
differentways in which he fought his war with
his wife and her brother and that such
phrasingwas readily available to him from
German,Japaneseand Americaninformation
andwas simplyone more way of affirmingher
infidelity to him. From all of the material
I had from this informant,I have very good
reason to conclude that his interestin coitus

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129

CORRESPONDENCE

did not include its possible consequencesin

conception but focused on other consequencesentirely.This questionof the relationship between coitus and conception had no
intellectualor practicalinterest for him and
was, for all the time I knew him, practicallya
meaninglessquestionfor him.
David M. Schneider
Universityof Chicago
Leach, E. R. I966. Virgin birth. Proc. R.
Anthrop.Inst. I966, 39-49.
Schneider,D. M. I953. Yap kinship terminology and kin-groups. Am. Anthrop.
55, 2I7-I8.

I962. Double descent on Yap. J.

Polyn. Soc. 71, 5-6.

SIR,
. ProfessorSchneiderhas a point. My Henry
Myers lecturedoes, I think, give the impression that the ideology of virgin birth can be
fully 'explained' by seeing how the dichotomy pater/genitorfits in with the social
context in which the ideology is found. But
Schneider'sYap informantswere presenting
a different argument: 'Since men are not
beasts,why should we expect human sex to
functionin the sameway as animalsex?' i.e.,
the ideology of virgin birth may serve to
express the dogmatic difference between
animality and humanity. In another paper
(still I think unpublished) Schneider has
drawnattentionto the fact that in Englishwe
call an illegitimate child a, 'natural child'.
Now Jesus was certainly an 'Unnatural
Child' but neverthelesshe was legitimate!
Could we put it this way. The English
language categories are: type of child:
sexual-legalstatus of mother: legal status of
child. These give us the following:
(i) no child: unsullied-unmarried:
no status
(ii) 'naturalchild': sullied-unmarried:
illegitimate
(iii) 'normal child' (human being): sulliedmarried:legitimate
(iv) 'unnatural child' (god): unsulliedmarried: legitimate.

Spirits and the sex war

SIR,

Wilson (Man(N.S.) 2, 365-78) raisesvalid

criticisms of Lewis's discussion of spirit
possession(Man (N.S.) I, 307-29). He purports, however, to suggest another explanation 'which ... fits the factsmore closely ...
using the same examplescited by Lewis . . .'
(Wilson I967: 366). Only one example, the
Kalanga,is discussedby Lewiswhen he writes,
in his static terms, of a cult that is 'more
central to the upholding of tribal morality'
(Lewis I966: 3I9). Wilson does not discuss
this example.Nor does he explainit, when he
commentson what he rightly labelsa 'vague'
distinctionof Lewis's.
As I have shown for Kalanga (Werbner
I964), sex war simplificationsor notions of
female deprivation, pace Lewis, do not
account for possession.I am glad to see that
Wilson follows thisargument.Unfortunately,
he does not go far enough in discriminating
various modes and contexts of possession.
These are still lumped together into a single
' complex of spiritpossession'.Wilson, moreover, bases his argument on the lowest
common denominator-the most common
category of the possessed, according to
marital statusand sex. Primarilystressedare
marriedwomen and their domestic competition. This stress leads him to present the
maritalrelationshipsof wives removed from
any connexion with their natal or kinship
ones. Wives, marriedinto a community not
their own, are relegated to the domestic
realm, excluded from relationshipsof corporate significance,admitted 'into relationships more particularlyon a dyadic basis'
(Wilson I967: 373). They must suffer from
statusambiguityand alliedtensions,especially
in polygyny, because they can only derive
their 'very socialidentity' from that of their
husbands'.
For comparative purposes, Wilson relies
on a reduction,the 'peripherality'of the inmarryingwife. LikeLewis,he coversthe most
dissimilarcaseswith a notion to which other
writershave given a more specificreference.
Faron, for example, characterisedthe inmarrying shaman as 'peripheral' among
the Mapuche; 'She stands outside the
structure of kinship and marriage in any
concrete set of relationships,and she is unimportant with respect to the governing
principles of patrilineal descent and patripotestality in both the worldly and otherworldly spheres of Mapuche life' (Faron

Therefore, Mary must be an unsullied

virgin as well as a marriedmother. Q.E.D.
This style of mythologicallogic is of much
the same kind as that which I proposed,but
I think it is slightly different. Anyway,
Schneider's material confirms my general
thesisthat what seems logical common sense
is determined by context-by cultural cir- I964: I30).
Such a notion of 'peripherality'is inadecumstancenot scientificfact.
E. R. Leach quate for the comparativeanalysis of spirit
possessionwhich Wilson attempts.There are
King'sCallege,
two main reasonsfor this. Firstit is irrelevant
Cambridge
5 + M.

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