One of the tribes currently maintaining the ancient, mystical and magical practice is the Danai tribe of New Guinea. Here, women express their grief to their dead husband by cutting off their own fingers , the Ripleys news site on September 4 updated.
Danai tribe women.
The death of a loved one, especially a husband, is the most profound loss to the women of the Danai tribe , New Guinea. They are not only grieving mentally, but also physically. According to Danai custom, a widow’s self-isolation after her husband’s death is not enough, but when her husband dies, the women must also undergo a ritual that causes physical pain by cutting off their own fingers. me.
Finger cutting is performed with a sharp stone blade, made from obsidian, which is abundant in volcanically active areas. The woman chopped off at least two of her fingers. This stone blade was found in 1930, the relic marks a ritual that was used by the Danai tribe long before that.
The stone blade used to chop the Danai woman’s finger.
When the ceremony was performed, a list of women who had their turn cut off their fingers was made. Those in turn will use the stone blade to cut off their own fingers. The tight position is usually between the knuckles so that the finger when healed forms an onion shape. After cutting, there will be no more fingerprints, the fingers will be numb, affecting daily work. Many documents show that these fingers were dried, worn around the neck or buried according to a serious ritual.
According to the beliefs of the Danai people, this ritual is to express the grief of a wife to her deceased husband, and to ward off evil spirits and demons. According to Western anthropologists, this is a ritual to help women avoid sadness and depression.
However, this practice is not always exclusive to widows. Recently, it has been discovered that Danai women cut up to 6 fingers on their own in memory of her dead husband, and her children have left their mother. Because the custom of cutting off your own knuckles when a husband or loved one dies thousands of years ago, but still exists today, people call the Danai tribe the Stone Age inhabitants in the heart of the modern world.
This Danai woman cut off up to 6 fingers to remember her husband and children who died.
New Guinea (former name Papua) is the second largest island in the world, after Greenland, with an area of 786,000km² located in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, discovered by Spanish explorers in the 16th century and now belongs to the territory of New Guinea. Indonesia.