Description

Life is stranger than fiction. Considerably so. Judge from this: The Javanese develop a feeling towards their afterbirth, wbich is not thrown away at birth in the heathenish Western way, but which gets a decent burial and has the name: ari-ari, younger brother (- sister) . I know of a Javanese schoolgirl who wTote in an essay: "How couldn't I have tender feelings towards the spot where my ari-ari lies buried?" The Balinese are in the happy position of having no less than four elder brothers (sisters). The 'concomitants of physical birth', being the amniotic fluid, the blood, the vernix caseosa and the afterbirth together are the baby's kanda mpat, bis four elder brothers, or her elder isters in the case of a girl. Though the first three, due to their liquid state, mostly disappear and receive little care, the ari-ari is carefully buried under a round riverstone of about one foot in diameter, for a boy at the one side of the steps leading to the sleeping house, for a girl at the other side. The innumerable writipgs, partially or completely dealing with the kanda mpat, do not weary from inculcating their readers that the four are helpful as long as one gives them the (material) food and reverential thoughts they are entitled to, in which case they from their side behave as true eIder brothers. U. however, one neglects and ignores them, they punish their younger brother.