The Malays, as well as the men of Borneo, are circumcised. The Battos likewise perform the rite. Among the Islanders they sometimes ligate the prepuce so that it drops off. Among the Battos the same object is reached by small bamboo sticks, between which the prepuce is fastened. In New Caledonia and Tidshi the boys are circumcised in their seventh year. The Tonga Islanders split the prepuce on the dorsum with a piece of bamboo or of shell. In the Marquesas and Sandwich Islands the operation is superintended by the priests.[17]
INFIBULATION, MUZZLING, AND OTHER CURIOUS PRACTICES.
It seems a matter of controversy as to whether the Mexicans did or did not circumcise their children. That they had a blood-covenant is admitted by the historians, as well as the fact that this blood was taken from the prepuce; but that the prepuce was actually removed is something that is not agreed upon by all authorities. Las Casas and Mendieta state that it was practiced by the Aztecs and Totonacs, while Brasseur de Bourbourg found traces of its practice among the Mijes. Las Casas states that on the twenty-eighth or the twenty-ninth day the child was presented to the temple, when the high-priest and his assistants placed it upon a stone and cut off the prepuce, the excised part being afterward burnt in the ashes. Girls of the same age were deflowered by the finger of the high-priest, who ordered the operation to be repeated at the sixth year; and once a year, at the fifth month, all the children born during the year were scarified on the breast, stomach, or arms, to denote their reception as servants of their god. Clavigero, on the other hand, denies that circumcision was ever practiced. It was customary in Mexico, according to most authorities, to take the children while infants to the temple, where the priests made an incision in the ear of the females, and an incision in the ear and prepuce of the males.[18]