for ever compelled to remain beneath the post. This is the motif of the earthquake story of the Kabul Nāgas[1] in Manipur, who declare that once upon a time a father-in-law and a son-in-law quarrelled and fought, and the lady, seeing her husband and father locked in mortal combat, rushed on them and pulled them apart, and in so doing tore a lock of hair from her husband's head, which she threw into the fire. So the struggle still goes on, and they fight over the lost lock till parted once again. When I visited the headman who had done this evil thing to my unhappy Nāga, I had it in me to persuade him that the ghost of a stout buffalo would prop up his house as well as, possibly much better than, the thin wailing ghost of a half-starved Manipur Nāga. I succeeded in inducing him to avail himself of the law of substitution. Glimpse number two into the ethics of head-hunting was not long after followed by a rare and delicate compliment which was paid to me by the headman of an interesting village who, as a great and special favour, showed me the famous war-stone on which no woman may look and live, and to which, after a raid, the heads of the victims were shown in the bad old days, which are perhaps gone for ever, or till the next time.[2]
In Tangkhul villages are heaps of stones,—places of great sanctity—lai-pham as the Manipuris call them,—the abodes of a lai, a powerful mysterious entity,—not always nor necessarily anthropomorphised. On these
- ↑ See Plate V., in which notice may be taken of the leggings worn by the right-hand figure. In most cases white earth is smeared over the legs on ceremonial occasions, but is now sometimes replaced by white cotton leggings. The dao carried by the left-hand figure is of a peculiar pattern, quite unlike that in ordinary use.
- ↑ The photograph of a Mao Nāga chief, Plate VI., shows the strange attire affected by a warrior in full dress. He wears a headdress which bears some resemblance to horns, and a tail as an additional decoration. Are these distant reminiscences of "totemistic" belief? He has a doll in his left hand, which suggests a "head."
