Re: Laos circa 1640's part II

pleased to rear dogs, others horses and still others wild beasts-that these people do the same, not only to satisfy their brutal nature, but by a certau ambition of affected greatness, and have a group of women, some hay, more than others, each according to his means.

The Lao King has more than one hundred wives.

The reigning King has more than one hundred. And he is not satisfied with the women he already has, so that he continually attempts to further increase the number. In this way, the poor unfortunates who are [thus] subjugated, as the other wives' are, find themselves as securely constrained as they are badly married, Nevertheless, there is only one which they call the principal wife, who is the first with whom one has contracted for marriage; all the others are ranked as second only. And in order to testify to their wish that the marriage they have contracted is not for a certain time only, they usually carry out the marriage ceremony with a certain pomp signifying a solid tie.

The ceremony that is observed when contracting for marriage.

They choose two persons who have lived the longest time in marriage, in perfect friendship. These persons receive, as irreproachable eyewitnesses, the promise of husband and wife, who promise to live together until death in perfect understanding as the former did. Nevertheless, often these good promises do not last long and usually they break them for trivial reasons, of which the husband makes use to find another wife and the wife another husband. In view of their intemperance and their libertarian behavior which parents have transferred to them by birth and in which they have beenj educated since the cradle, without ever having been instructed in a contrary, behavior, they are astonished as with an incredible and very extraordinary event, when we tell them that in our Europe there are an infinite number of religious men and women who live in sacred abstention and perpetual chastity. They protest that nothing so surprising has ever been heard ofin their Kingdom. The little care given here to the education of children, leaving them to pursue their own inclinations, even allow that girls and boys stay together and often visit each other with no one becoming worried about the consequences that may ensue, does not contribute only a little to their superstitions in regard to women who have just given birth. The most dangerous circumstances happen during the time of the wakes which is held for a month in the house of a women who recently gave birth, hen the whole family is usually gathered to have fun, to dance and to play kinds of games for the purpose of scaring away the sorcerers and magicians ld to stop them from making the mother lose her milk and from bewitching the child with their charms-as very often happens, even resulting in the eath of the child. In this way, with their natural penchant for coarse behavior, they would enter in licentious conversations, would abandon Ihemselves in all kinds of criminal behavior and live in abominable dissolution.

Their behavior towards the dead.

In order to give the same importance to the days of birth and death, they hold another feast that lasts a month for I Ihe death of their relatives, whose funerals they celebrate with great pomp and splendor, as much to assuage and distract themselves from their sorrows as to honor the souls of the deceased. There is a big meal everyday. The deceased is buried and enclosed in a coffin which is coated all around with some kind of asphalt, to decorate it and in order to prevent the escape of some bad odors. Only the monks are invited to a vigil of the dead, but they Igothere less to cry over the dead than to fill their stomachs. Nevertheless, they spend a great deal of time reciting certain chants specific to these occasions, by means of which they claim they instruct the soul about the road to Heaven so that she does not get lost in this unknown country.

They spend a lot on their funerals.

The month having expired, they erect a rather voluminous pyramid adorned with an infinite number of ornaments and well-made low reliefs, according to the rank of the person, to which, after having enclosed the body in it, they light a fire and reduce it to ashes which they then gather carefully to bring it to their Temple of Gods which is filled with splendid mausoleums, on the construction of which the richest people happily spend several thousand crowns. The belief in transmigration being firmly rooted here, after such a ceremony the deceased is not recalled and they never mention him because they believe that the soul has passed

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