TRADING IN SILENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 20

TRADING IN SILENCE

STRANGE CUSTOMS OF OTHER LANDS.

Trade is associated in our minds with such a vast amount of noiso that it is refreshing to turn to those quarters of the globe where a bargain is often carried through not only without a single word being spoken but without the parties even glimpsing each other, writes Lieut.-Colonel P. T. Ethcrton, author of "In the Heart of Asia," in the "Daily Mail."

In the Malay Archipelago you will find a tribe who shrink from exchanging words with those they trade with; it is supposed to bring bad luck. If you wish to make a really good bargain, you place your goods in silence opposite the articles you desire in exchange, and if either party considers the amount offered insufficient they adjust their clashing interests by means of signs. Colerity in making up one's mind iB essential, for a pause is interpreted as agreement, and your goods pass from you for over.

On the African coast, down by the Gulf of Guinea, the natives draw a line upon the river bank or the seashore, placing their goods upon one side of it. Those with whom they are bartering do the same on the opposite side of the line, and after inspection the satisfied parties take up the respective articles, often without a word having been spoken. ,

In Alaska you meet with a quaint tribe of Indians who rarely transact any business except through the medium of a third party. An auction is unknown because they decline to outbid each other, a curious fact that I was never able to fathom. The price is fixed by a third party, upon whom also rests the onus of satisfying tho seller. If, however, there is any disagreement, the articles are returned and luck is tried elsewhere. ■

Often the silent .rade is carried on through force of circumstances, as, for example, in the far south of India, where caste comes into play.- The governing rules of caste are rigid and inflexible; if you are a member of one caste you cannot marry into another, you cannot eat together, and to touch food prepared by nn inferior is eternal defilement. So it may happen that one of the parties to a commercial transaction is a high caste Brahmin, an aristocrat among the Hindus, and the other may be the son of a grocer, a butcher, or, worse still, a potter, who must not approach within 24 paces of the Brahmin, or 12 paces' if the latter be a Sudra, or lesser Brahmin. • The potter and the grocer are naturally at a disadvantage, for the Brahmins see to it that they do not suffer in the bargain. In some cases the silent trade is due to excessive shyness. A wild tribe of Gonds in Central India shun fhe world beyond the dense forests that hem them in, and prefer to carry on trade without seeing or speaking to each other. Indeed, it is almost impossible to deal with them directly, and the tax-gatherer who collects the annual dues does so by announcing his advent by beat of. drum, the amount assessed being then placed in a given spot where the representative of the law appropriates it and retires until next settlement day. How many people know that a wild tribe exist in South-eastern Spain who have for centuries kept themselves aloof from all mankind? Their ancestors wore smugglers and wreckers, and they trade under conditions similar to those I have described", paying their revenue fixed by the Spanish Government as the Gonds do in Central India. In their case a guard goes with the Spanish tax-gatherer in case the required sum has not been put out. They have hitherto resisted all attempts to modernise them or to'alter the mode of life they have followed for more than twelve hundred years.