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Yimchungr marriage and sleeping arrangements |
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Monogamy because from early times the ancestors found that if a man married more than one wife, one of the wives always dies - therefore a taboo on more than one wife. Aos have same sanction re monogamy. Semas - polygamy because of chief's need of a large family - in may cases because the first wife is childless - and uneconomic to divorce her after paying a big bride price - Unlike Sangtams, intercourse after betrothal and before marriage is forbidden - the boy may visit the girl's house but is not allowed to sleep with her. |
| text: |
Yimchungr sleeping arrangements - a family all sleeps in the same room - the parents and the little children at one end, the older girls one side, the older boys another - in rich houses where a son is married and lives on in the house for 2-3 years, the boy and his wife sleep at one end and his parents at another - no cubicles - the one big room - 'They let the others go to sleep. it is quite dark. Then they do it'. - No undue awareness of the 'primal scene' - pitch blackness of a Yimchungr room - after the fire has died down - the children could only hear intercourse and not see it. |
