gift to a sorcerer is described by the verb ibudipeta , and there are many more special names. The gifts to the specialists are called vewoulo —the initial gift; yomelu —a gift of food given after the object has been ceremonially handed over to the owner; karibudaboda —a substantial gift of yams given at the next harvest. The gifts of food, made while the work is in progress are called vakapula ; but this latter term has much wider application, as it covers all the presents of cooked or raw food given to workers by the man, for whom they work. The sexual gifts are called buwana or sebuwana . I shall not enumerate the various terminological distinctions of sagali gifts, as this would be impossible to do, without entering upon the enormous subject of mortuary duties and distributions.
The classification of love gifts and sagali gifts in the same category with gifts to magicians and specialists, is a generalisation in which the natives would not be able to follow us. For them, the gifts given at sagali form a class in themselves and so do the love gifts. We may say that, from the economic point of view, we were correct in classing all these gifts together, because they all represent a definite type of equivalence; also they correspond to the native idea that every service has to be paid for, an idea documented by the linguistic use of the word mapula. But within this class, the sub-divisions corresponding to native terminology represent important distinctions made by the natives between the three sub-classes; love gifts, sagali gifts, and gifts for magical and professional services.
- Gifts returned in economically equivalent form.—We are enumerating the various types of exchange, as they gradually assume the appearance of trade. In this fourth class have been put such gifts as must be re-paid with almost strict equivalence. But it must be stressed that strict equivalence of two gifts does not assimilate them to trade altogether. There can be no more perfect equivalence between gift and counter-gift, than when A gives to B an object, and B on the same day returns the very same object to A. At a certain stage of the mortuary proceedings, such a gift is given and received back again by a deceased man’s kinsmen and his widow’s brothers. Yet it is obvious at once that no transaction could be further removed from trade. The above described gifts at the presentation of new canoes (kabigidoya) belong to this class. So do also numerous presents given to one community by another, on visits which are going to be returned soon. Payments for the lease of a garden plot are at least in certain districts of the Trobriands returned by a gift of equivalent value.
Sociologically, this class of gifts is characteristic of the relationship between friends (luba’i). Thus the kabigidoya takes place between friends, the Kula takes place between overseas partners and inland friends, but of course relations-in-law also belong par excellence to this category.
Other types of equivalent gifts which have to be mentioned here shortly, are the presents given by one household to another, at the milamala, the festive period associated with the return of the ancestral spirits to their villages. Offerings of cooked food are ceremonially exposed in houses for the use of the spirits, and after these have consumed the spiritual substance, the material one is given to a neighbouring household. These gifts are always reciprocal.
Again, a series of mutual gifts exchanged immediately after marriage between a man and his wife’s father (not matrilineal