The Lhota Nagas

by J. P. Mills

One very marked line of cleavage between Naga tribes and their neighbours is to be found in the methods of disposal of the dead. Burning is practised in this hill area only by the Hinduized Manipuris to the south and by the [[xxiv]]Singphos (or some of them)[19] to the north-east, but the other methods practised in disposing of the dead may be roughly classified as burial, exposure and, for want of a better term, desiccation.

Burial is practised by the Angami, Sema, Rengma, Lhota, Sangtam, Yachungr, Tangkhul and Kacha Nagas and by the Kukis, but the burial is not in all cases absolute. Thus the Kukis, in the case of rich or famous men, sometimes detach the head after decomposition and place it in a cleft or hole in the side of a cliff where it could be got at only with great difficulty. This practice is very rare, but certainly exists or existed among some or all clans of Thado Kukis. Again, the Yachungr and some of the Southern Sangtams bury their dead inside the house under the bed, and do not hesitate to disturb the grave and dig out the bones of its last occupant to make room for a new one. The Tangkhuls and some, at any rate, of the Naked Rengmas build small houses over their graves with little ladders up to them for the ghost to inhabit, while the Lhotas, Sangtams and Semas build thatched roofs over their graves, which perhaps suggests that they formerly exposed the bodies in the miniature houses, since Aos who have turned Christian, though they bury the body, build a thatched roof over the grave like that which would be put over a body exposed on a platform if they followed the custom of their unconverted fellow-tribesmen. North of the tribes mentioned exposure on a platform is the rule, the body being in some cases smoked first. Among Aos rich men are smoke-dried in their houses for two months. The platform usually consists of a bamboo shelf thatched over like a house and covered in at the ends, though some Konyaks use a wooden dug-out like a boat to contain the body, reminding one of the Lhota practice of using a dug-out boat-shaped coffin. In the case, however, of the tribes that practise exposure, the practice here again may be described as not absolute. [[xxv]]The Phoms and some Konyaks separate the head from the body, wrenching it off after decomposition, the latter in some cases collecting the skulls in pots in a separate place, and in others putting them out on stone platforms, while the Phoms put them in niches in the cliffs. Both Phoms and some Konyaks bring the heads of deceased men into their houses for a time (the Phoms for a year) and treat them while there with some ceremony.[20]

The Chang tribe occupies a midway position both geographically and culturally between the burying tribes and the exposing tribes, and practises both customs indiscriminately and in accordance with the fancy of the individual, though exposure is believed to be the newer form of treating the dead.[21]

To the north-east or east of the tribes already mentioned in this connection the Kalyo-Kengyu tribe, or part of that tribe, practises what I can only describe as “desiccation” of the dead. This custom of theirs has probably not before been placed on record. The dead are smoked in their houses for two months over a fire and then the smoke-dried body is retained as it is in a wooden coffin like a lidless box with a mat or bit of thatch to cover it, either inside the house or just outside the mat-work walling and immediately under the eaves at the point nearest to the hearth. Here it is kept until the next sowing, when on an appointed day all those who have died since last year’s sowing are brought out, their withered bodies broken up, and their bones picked out and counted by a number of persons of both sexes, not fewer than a fixed minimum, slightly less for a woman than a man. The bones of each corpse are placed in an earthen pot and put at the back of the family granary, where they remain untouched till they dissolve into dust or [[xxvi]]till the granary rots and falls on them, while the broken bits of body together with the coffin and its appurtenances are thrown away into the jungle, preferably over a steep place near the edge of the village.

When the implements and weapons of the tribes in the Naga Hills area are examined, it appears that while some are of marked northern form, others are clearly connected with Indonesian forms such as those in use among the Igorot of the Philippines, while other patterns seem to show a very clear connection with the Kol-Mon-Annam types. One type of northern origin is represented by the Kabui dancing dao and by a similar dao intended for real use. The latter is very rare, but I have one specimen picked up in a remote Kacha Naga village. It is precisely similar to a dao figured on page 190 of Major Butler’s Sketch of Assam (Smith, Elder & Co., 1847) as a Bhutanese weapon. One kind of obsolete Lhota yanthang is also a northern type.[22] Both these kinds of Naga daos are remarkable for the way in which the iron of the tang, which fastens the blade to the wooden handle, projects beyond the hilt into a sharp point, the object of which seems to be to facilitate sticking the dao in the ground by one’s side when sitting. The Garos use a similar type (and seem to be a tribe of northern origin), but so do the Khasis, and it is possible that the type may have some other source. In any case it is very marked and distinct from any kind of dao in general use among Naga tribes. Of weapons suggesting relationship with Philippine Island tribes there is a type of spear with ornamental barbs curving outwards from the shaft, of which some Angami patterns closely resemble the Igorot spear, while I have an old Kacha Naga spear with a head identical in shape with Igorot spear-heads. This barbed type seems not to occur north of the Angami country, though the Aos may at one time have used miniature imitations of such spears for money, and I have an obsolete Konyak spear-head with straight barbs closely [[xxvii]]resembling the straight-barbed Igorot type. Again, there is a rare Tangkhul dao with a long projection behind resembling a common type of Igorot dao, while the stone hammer used by all Naga smiths could scarcely be distinguished from a similar hammer from the Philippines.[23]

With the Kol-Mon-Annam family the shouldered hoe (see Gurdon, The Khasis, p. 12) has been intimately associated. The Yachungr Naga hoe (thoù), obtained from a tribe hitherto almost entirely isolated from regular intercourse with its neighbours, is almost identical with the miniature Khasi hoe used for hoeing sweet potatoes, and is very similar to the Mikir hoe of the same type, while Mr. Peal found shouldered hoes of a squarer type among some of the Konyak Nagas. Both these types closely resemble some Battak hoes from Sumatra in the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology (Ratzel, op. cit. I. p. 429) and are much the same shape as the Easter Island obsidian tanged blades.[24]

The question of the use of the bow is also to be considered. While the cross-bow is the weapon of Singphos, and has been adopted from them apparently by the Naga tribes of the north-east in direct or indirect communication with them, it is not in general use among the Naga tribes.[25] The simple bow is also not the natural weapon of a Naga. While the Kukis, before they acquired guns, relied, like the Khasis, principally on the bow, the Naga rarely uses it. The weapon was known to the Semas and is still employed by children as a toy, and the Angamis have learnt the use of the pellet-bow, possibly from the Kukis, and use it for [[xxviii]]killing small birds, but as a serious weapon the bow is not used by either tribe; and though the Semas believe that their ancestors used it, the Angamis appear never to have done so, a fact which is interesting in view of the apparent absence or scarcity of the bow in Borneo, Sumatra, and the Celebes (vide Ratzel’s Map, op. cit., Vol. I. p. 145).

Another point to be noticed is the use of the war drum. Sangtams, or rather Northern Sangtams, Aos and the Konyak tribes, and probably the Yachungr and Chang tribes in some degree, make enormous drums out of a whole tree hollowed through a narrow slit in the top, and the ends carved usually with a mithan head and hornbill tail respectively. This drum, when beaten by the young men who can line up to twenty or thirty or more on each side with drumsticks like dumb-bells, will send a challenge, a pæan of victory, or a dirge for the dead, for miles. But the Southern Nagas—Lhotas, Semas, South Sangtams, Rengmas, Angamis etc.—do not make these drums at all.[26]

Diversity of origin on the part of the Naga tribes is suggested again by a number of miscellaneous considerations. Most Nagas for instance reap with a reaping-hook, but the Sema, like the Manö and Southern Brè (Karens) of Burma,[27] and like the Garos,[28] use their hand only, stripping the grain from the stalk straight into the basket, a most painful method if it does save threshing.

The use of terraced cultivation forms a very marked point of distinction between Naga tribes. The various branches of the Angami tribe practise it in its most elaborate form, followed closely by some Khoirao and Kacha Naga (Nzemi) villages very strongly dominated by Angami culture, and followed in a quite appreciably less elaborate way by Naked Rengmas, Tangkhuls and Maram Nagas. Other tribes do not use irrigated terraces at all, if we except the Semas, among whom it has been deliberately introduced by Government, and who still only practise this form of cultivation in [[xxix]]a very small degree, save in a few villages who have adopted Angami culture in general. At the same time, even among the Angamis, the Chakroma villages have no terraces. It may be noted that the Angami system of terraces produces physical features exactly like the system of the Bontoc Igorot in the Philippines.