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Chapter Two. The Social Structure and its Units |
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corporate estate of the morungs, tangible and intangible |
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The corporateness of a morung community found expression in the joint ownership of a common estate consisting of tangible property as well as of a body of rights. The morung building, the land belonging to a morung, and the well-built, stone-paved path leading to the morung, as well as the stores of grain resulting from cooperative cultivation or received as tribute, were tangible possessions, but there were also numerous intangible rights in which all the members of a morung shared. Among these were the right to specific morung decorations, the right to dance certain dances and sing certain songs "owned" by the morung, the right to sleep with the girls of tributary villages and to kill and eat a specified number of pigs of those same villages. These rights were matched by obligations such as the duty to defend, and, if necessary, avenge, a morung member, to cooperate in the rebuilding of the morung and the cultivation of morung fields, and -- in the case of tributary obligations incurred by a morung -- to help in raising the annual payments. |
