riteWho holds you still
Two assistants in Samoa, a circle of friends among the Shan, other women in Fiji
What it is
Nobody is tattooed alone. The room is part of the method.
The long version
Samoa: the 'au toso, two assistants, stretch the skin and wipe. Fiji: one older woman applies the marks and others hold the young woman still. Burma: the tattooist's own left hand is the rest for the tool, flat against the body. Shan: the friends sit in a circle for days afterwards, because the itching is worse than the work.
Inference — the skin has to be tight or the point wanders, which makes at least one extra pair of hands a technical requirement rather than a social one. The witnesses come free with it.
Connected to
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Peʻa — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Peʻa — Wikipedia (en)
- Veiqia — Wikipedia (en)
- The Burman: His Life and Notions — scanned by the Internet Archive
- Shans at Home — scanned by the Internet Archive
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there