In the olden days, cases of dying during childbirth were not uncommon. With lack of modern medical knowledge and hygiene, it was not rare for women to experience complications while giving birth.
Most cultures around the world have their own taboos and customs for women who died during labour.
For instance in Japan, one traditional custom for the burial of a deceased pregnant woman was commonly practiced.
According to Manami Yasui in her paper Research Notes: On Burial Customs, Maternal Spirits, and the Fetus in Japan (2003), the burial custom was to open the abdomen of the deceased woman, remove the fetus, and bury the two – now separated – bodies together in the same graves.
It is said that this custom was practiced so that the pregnant women would not turn into ‘ubume’.
Ubume are Japanese yokai or spirits of pregnant women. Legend has it that the ubume would ask a passerby to hold her child for just a moment, disappearing when her unsuspecting victims take the swaddled baby.
The baby then becomes increasingly heavy until it is impossible to hold. It is then revealed not to be a human child but a rock or a stone image of Jizo (a bodhisattva revered in East Asian Buddhism).
Meanwhile in Borneo, different indigenous groups each has its own belief when comes to women who died in childbirth.
In order to ensure these poor mothers have safe journeys into the afterlife, there were taboos or customs that needed to be followed.
So here are some forgotten taboos and customs of death during childbirth among Borneo natives:
1.Iban
Anthropologist Clifford Sather in his paper The Malevolent Koklir: Iban Concepts of Sexual Peril and the Dangers of Childbirth detailed the ritual of death during childbirth among the Iban people.
“The death of a woman in childbirth is regarded as especially grievous because it typically claims a woman in her prime, or middle years, whose loss seriously disrupts her family, usually leaving a widower and possibly motherless children.
As a ritual defence, to cripple the ghost and prevent the woman who has died in childbirth from wandering abroad as a koklir, the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands are pierced diagonally with citrus thorns (duri limau) immediately before her body is removed from her bilek apartment and placed inside the sapat enclosure on the gallery prior to burial. Plants have generally a life-sustaining meaning to the Iban and thorns are frequently used, as here, as a protective instrument against demonic spirits.
Piercing the soles and palms is felt to be an unpleasant task and generally falls to one of the women’s closest female relatives, usually her mother or a sister; it is performed surreptitiously so as not to be seen by other mourners, and is accompanied by a brief prayer in which the dead woman is requested to accept her fate and not cause further grief to her family and others.
Some informants say that the woman’s tongue may also be pierced with a needle or porcupine quill. Otherwise, she is given a normal burial, except that citrus branches are sometimes placed upon her grave. But owing to the especially grievous nature of her death, it is considered to be abnormally ill-lucked, and her soul is believed in consequence to suffer a separate fate in the other world, different from that of those who have died ordinary deaths.”
Now comes the question of what happens to the baby once the mother has died.
Sadly, according to one old custom, this child – although alive – would share the same fate as his dead mother.
Reverend Frederick William Leggatt came to Sarawak in 1884 and had worked among the Ibans at Banting (1885-1887), Skrang (1887-1898) and lastly Lundu (1898-1908).
This is an example case infanticide that he observed following the death of the mother.
“Sea Dyaks custom required (until a civilised government interfered to prevent such atrocious murders), that if the death of a mother followed in consequence of delivery, the child should pay the penalty (i) as being the cause of the mother’s death, (ii) because no one remained to nurse and care for it. Therefore the child was placed alive in the coffin with the mother, and both buried together, not unfrequently without consulting the father, who might venture to dare custom and be willing to spare his child. No woman would consent to suckle such an orphan lest it should bring misfortune upon her own children.
“One case I am acquainted with where the mother, in the father’s absence, gave birth to twins and died immediately afterwards. By the grandfather’s orders (the paternal grandfather) both children were buried with the mother.”
2.Dayak Embaloh
Victor T. King in his paper Cursing, Special Death and Spirits in Embaloh Society explained how the death of a woman during delivery is handled traditionally among the Dayak Embaloh of the West Kalimantan.
“Pregnancy and childbirth are hedged round with all kinds of taboo. In Embaloh society a high percentage of deaths is the result of complications in childbirth and pregnancy, and women, their husbands and the immediate family are confined by taboos (tata’) relating to food, to certain work and action, and to avoidance of certain animals. If a woman should die in childbirth her soul invariably becomes a much-feared, malevolent spirit called antu anak.
This spirit delights in seeking revenge and bringing sickness and sometimes death to pregnant women, as well as to mothers and their small children. It can also attack men at night and devour their genitals, the symbol and ultimate cause of the spirit’s demise in life. To a man the antu anak frequently appears in the guise of a beautiful woman, but it can also change into a variety of furry animals such as the monkey, squirrel and civet cat.
“The corpse of a woman who dies in delivery or when pregnant is wrapped in a rattan mat, taken as quickly as possible from the village and buried in the jungle away from the death-house. There are no ceremonies, the soul does not go to Telung, and any status a woman may have had in life is immediately cancelled. She is, in fact condemned to an eternity as an evil jungle spirit.”
3.Kayan
According to Jerome Rousseau in his book Kayan Religion, a Kayan woman who dies in childbirth should be buried immediately because she becomes a particularly fearsome spirit.
“People often fled after a sudden death, leaving old men and women to dispose of the corpse.”
The spirits of children and mothers who died in childbirth are known as the to’ ka’.
Explaining about these fearsome spirit, Rousseau stated, “These angry spirits tear off young men’s testicles and eat them. They can take the form of wild or domestic fowl, a mousedeer, or a civet cat.”
The fear of to’ ka’ is might be the reason why this now-extinct practice existed among the Kayans back then.
As what Spenser St John recorded in his book, “Among the Kayans I may mention one inhuman custom, which is, that women who appear to be dying in childbirth are taken to the woods and placed in a hastily-constructed hut; they are looked upon as interdicted and none but the meanest slaves may approach them, either to give them food or to attend to them.”
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