this is introduced when, as it happens sometimes, in the Trobriands, and in the Trobriands only, the vaygu’a is given by a chief to a commoner, in which case the commoner would take it into his hand, and show some appreciation of it. In all other cases, the valuable would be placed within the reach of the receiver, and an insignificant member of his following would pick it up.
It is not very easy to unravel the various motives which combine to make up this customary behaviour on receiving and giving a gift. The part played by the receiver is perhaps not so difficult to interpret. Right through their ceremonial and commercial give and take, there runs the crude and fundamental human dissatisfaction with the value received.
A native will always, when speaking about a transaction, insist on the magnitude and value of the gift he gave, and minimise those of the equivalent accepted. Side by side with this, there is the essential native reluctance to appear in want of anything, a reluctance which is most pronounced in the case of food, as we have said before (Chapter VI, Division IV). Both these motives combine to produce the, after all, very human and understandable attitude of disdain at the reception of a gift.
In the case of the donor, the histrionic anger with which he gives an object might be, in the first place, a direct expression of the natural human dislike of parting with a possession. Added to this, there is the attempt to enhance the apparent value of the gift by showing what a wrench it is to give it away.
This is the interpretation of the etiquette in giving and taking at which I have arrived after many observations of native behaviour, and through many conversations and casual remarks of the natives.
The two gifts of the Kula are also distinct in time. It is quite obvious this must be so in the case of an overseas expedition of an uvalaku type, on which no valuables whatever are taken with them by the visiting party, and so, any valuable received on such an occasion, whether as vaga or yotile, cannot therefore be exchanged at the same time. But even when the exchange takes place in the same village during an inland Kula, there must be an interval between the two gifts, of a few minutes at least.
There are also deep differences in the nature of