Hunting.
Guns being comparatively scarce, the Lhota still hunts deer with dogs and spear as his forefathers did before him. Sambhur (sepu) are chiefly found in the flat river valleys, [[64]]and when hunted invariably make for the water, which they cross and recross repeatedly. Tracks having shown that a sambhur is in a certain piece of jungle, the dogs are worked through it by their owner, who encourages them with a shout like a loud laugh. With him goes a thin line of spearmen to guard against a break back, while other spears wait at places where the quarry is likely to cross the stream. The dogs give tongue lustily enough as soon as they pick up the scent, so that the waiting spearmen can change their position according to the line which the deer seems to be taking. This goes on till the deer is either killed or gets clean away. The method of hunting serow (tsiyo) and barking deer (sanu) is the same, except that these animals are found in the little valleys running down the hills and are ambushed at the points where they try to get through into the next valley. The Lhota is a wonderful judge of the line a deer is going to take and can generally be relied upon to get his spear into a running target at twenty yards, so that these hunts are more often successful than unsuccessful. No hunting takes place on the day on which anyone has died in the village, not apparently from any idea of showing respect to the dead, but because it is regarded as a foregone conclusion that luck will be bad that day. If an animal killed is found to have died with its tongue hanging out of the left side of its mouth, hunting is probably stopped for the day, as it is believed that no more game will be killed; but to find the tongue hanging out of the right side of the mouth means that if the hunters go on they will rouse and kill another deer. Sityingo[24] is the jungle deity who owns all wild animals as a man owns domestic animals. If a hunting party kills a deer with a torn ear they will hunt no more that day, for have they not killed a deer whose ear Sityingo has snicked as a sign of ownership. The deer, however, can be eaten. Furthermore, the dogs must be purified before they can hunt again. Their owner orders his wife to prepare a little “madhu.” This she must do in silence. Next day no stranger from another village may enter his house, nor anyone who is doing [[65]]a “genna” of any kind. The following day water is added to the “madhu” and the “madhu” rice given to the dogs to eat. The owner, taking them with him, goes with an old man to a spot outside the village, where the latter makes a fire with a fire-stick, and lifting the dogs in his hands passes them through the smoke, uttering as he does so the following prayer to Sityingo: “We have made new ‘madhu’ and new fire, and have purified the dogs. May all the deer wherever they be come to our village and be hunted by these dogs.” He then watches to see what insects come near the fire. If big insects come the dogs will get sambhur. If small insects come they will get barking deer.
Much though he enjoys the sport, the Lhota hunts primarily to get meat. The division of the spoil is therefore carefully regulated by custom, which is strictly adhered to. In the case of deer the first spear gets a hind-leg, second spear a fore-leg, and the owner of the dogs a hind-leg, the head, liver and heart,[25] the remaining fore-leg going to the oldest man of the hunting party. The rest of the meat is divided among the remaining spearmen, the older men getting slightly bigger shares than the younger. A spear which only hits the animal in the face or on the hock does not count. Were the thrower to claim a share of the meat on the strength of such a hit it is believed that either he or one of his family would die. From every deer killed Sityingo is given his share. This consists of six little bits of liver wrapped in one leaf and five little bits in another. These are eaten by the oldest man in the village of the clan of the owner of the dogs. Wild pig (oni or lipung) are occasionally hunted with dogs, but generally are only speared if a man happens to meet one. The same applies to bears (sivan). A wounded bear is not generally followed up till next day. It is then relentlessly tracked, alike over soft ground where every footprint is plain and over rocky slopes where nothing but a few bent leaves show which [[66]]way it has gone, for a Lhota will pick up what, to European eyes, is a hardly perceptible trail as easily and quickly as he will follow an ordinary path. In the case of animals such as pig and bear killed without the aid of dogs, the first spear gets the head, hind-leg, fore-leg, liver and heart, and the second spear the other fore-leg and hind-leg. Remaining members of the party take the rest of the meat. There are no chiefs as there are among the Semas and Changs to get a share of the meat whether they join in the hunt or not. Dogs are also used to hunt porcupines (liso), an animal much sought after for its flesh, the skin of the back being especially esteemed. For a tiger (mharr) or leopard (mharrtero) hunt the whole male population of the village turns out with daos and shields and spears, and, in Moilang and its neighbours, wearing cane helmets. A rough circle is cleared round the piece of jungle in which the beast has been marked down, and a V-shaped palisade is built at the bottom. Outside this the old men wait with their spears ready poised, while the young men drive the animal downhill, cutting the jungle as they go. Any man who is charged falls with his shield over him, while a shower of spears distracts the tiger’s attention. Eventually if all goes well the tiger is driven into the palisading and speared by the old men waiting there. If a tiger happens to break a spear the shaft must either be left in the jungle or stuck in the ground under the head of the quarry when it is hung up after a successful hunt. If this is not done the owner will some day be killed by a tiger. The tiger’s head is cut off by a man who has done all social “gennas” and is a warrior of repute, and the paws by a man who belongs to a family a member of which has been killed by a tiger. This in a sense removes the curse from the family.[26] The head and paws are hung on a tree by the side of the path up to the village, and tsombhondhro leaves are stuffed in its mouth, some say to prevent it eating people in the Land of the Dead, and some say so that it may not be able to tell the dead what clan killed it. Under the head the hunters [[67]]jab the ground with their spear butts till it is thickly covered with little marks. If the spirit (omon) of the tiger comes wandering round it will see these marks and refrain from troubling a village which possesses such a mighty army of warriors. The man who cut off the tiger’s head must not eat beef, pork, goat’s flesh, jungle birds, taro or any boiled relish, or have intercourse with his wife for twelve days. A similar prohibition for one day applies to the other men of the village.
Monkeys such as Pithecus brahma (otham) and Macacus assamensis (kirango) are shot with the crossbow (olo) and arrows, but a tailless ground-monkey (Macacus arctoides, Lhota mitham) is driven with great success, the day’s bag sometimes totalling thirty or forty. A troop which takes up its abode in a jungly gully flanked by cultivated fields is doomed. All the men of the village surround the jungle, and a tunnel (vaksap) is built of interlaced jungle and brushwood at the lower end, like a duck-decoy tunnel on a small scale. The monkeys are driven from the upper end, and keeping to the ground enter the tunnel. Finding no exit at the lower end they completely lose their heads and cling to one another and whimper till they are killed.
Before the making of pitfalls (soku) was forbidden by Government large numbers of elephants, deer and wild pig were killed by means of them. Elephant-pits were huge affairs, but the ordinary pitfall was about ten feet deep, with the bottom covered with big jagged rocks and “panjis,” so that any animal which fell in was likely both to have its legs broken and to be impaled. Many kinds of snares are used, mostly for small animals and birds, though a running noose (putha or ozo) used to be used by the Southern Lhotas for deer. The commonest trap is the triangular trap (tsiri), which is also used by Aos, Changs, Semas and Angamis. It is set in runs or at holes in fences and is most effective. It consists of a triangle of bamboo, the base of which is extended to form a bow. The side nearest the bow is double. Through this is passed a noose which is set in such a way that any animal or bird trying to get through the triangle releases the bow and is caught by the noose [[68]]against the double side. Birds and small animals are also caught by running nooses (khükcha), platforms which release nooses when trodden on (chambo), and fall-traps (otyo). Are Yanthamo appears to be the only village which possesses a box-trap for leopards, though these contrivances are common among the Aos, from whom Are Yanthamo probably copied the one in question. It consists of a small low shed made of stout saplings securely tied in place and is divided into two compartments, in the hinder of which is put the bait, a live goat. The leopard enters, and in making for the goat treads on a little platform which releases a catch and drops a heavy wooden door behind it. Only once did a leopard enter the Are Yanthamo trap, and then it raged and roared in such an alarming way that the local Nimrods sat in the village and quaked, till it eventually managed to break its way out. A monkey is not an easy beast to snare, but a genius in Changbang invented a booby trap for monkeys which is said to have been very successful. He watched the line which monkeys took when chased off his fields. In their path he dug a pitfall, and over it at some height arranged a dry branch in such a way that monkeys would be sure to run along it in their flight. He cut this branch nearly through, so that the first monkey which used it snapped it off and came to an untimely end in the pitfall. Kabuis use a similar trap for monkeys.[27] Bird-lime (onyi) made of a mixture of the sap of the rubber tree (nitsütung) and Ficus religiosa (nitsotung) is extensively used. The two kinds of sap are boiled down in separate “chungas,” which are then split and the resulting rubber-like cakes extracted and cut into small pieces. The bits of thickened nitso sap are chewed to soften them and put in a broken potsherd. Then the pieces of nitsü juice are toasted over the fire on the end of an old umbrella stay and mixed with the nitso sap in the potsherd while they are hot. The resulting bird-lime is sometimes put on twigs stuck up by the side of pools at which birds come to drink, and sometimes put on twigs fixed on bushes and baited with a live cockroach impaled on a thorn. The use of decoy birds is [[69]]unknown. An accurate knowledge of its habits enables a snarer to catch even the Great Indian Hornbill (rücheng) with bird-lime. This bird never flies straight to the berries on which it is going to feed, but always first perches on the thick part of the branch and then hops out towards the end, raising its wings slightly at each hop. Limed twigs are therefore put along the side of the branch at such an angle that they will touch the bird’s body as it raises its wings. At such a touch it shuts its wing down on the limed twig and is helpless.
A word on the taking of bees’ and hornets’ nests may find a place under this section. There are men who for some curious reason appear to be immune from stings, but the ordinary Lhota either smokes out the nest he wishes to take, or else kills all the occupants by taking a handful of the pounded skin of the chalmăgra fruit (hmhmti) and blowing the fumes into the hole.[28] Honey or the juice of the pounded leaves and bark of a certain tree (tsungnung) is often rubbed on the body as a protection against bee stings. A man who intends to take a bees’ or hornets’ nest must remain chaste the night before. Both the honey and grubs are eaten, and a species of large bee (tsakmen) which builds under overhanging rocks and branches makes good wax. The other principal species are a medium-sized bee (takrhi), a small bee with a negligible sting (ndhrontso) and a very small bee with a severe sting (lungtsak). Hornets’ nests, which are sought for for the fat, juicy grubs they contain, are not so easily taken. The nest of one species (tsaktsü) is underground and the tiny hole by which it is entered is hard to find. Anyone, therefore, who has a craving for tsaktsü grubs puts out a bit of bad meat as a bait and catches the first hornet which settles on it. He carefully extracts its sting and ties a bit of cotton-wool or a white feather to its legs and lets it go. Hampered by the feather, which can be seen from a good distance, it flies slowly towards home and can generally be followed if the jungle is not too [[70]]thick. The nest once found a big fire is lighted over it at night when all the hornets have gone in and it is dug out. Another kind of hornet (chengkuku) with a red head and a fearful sting builds huge nests in the branches of trees. At night a fire is lighted underneath and burning straw held to the nest at the end of a bamboo. Any hornets which escape the burning straw drop into the fire and the nest can be safely taken.
Though Lhotas possess a wonderful sense of direction, it sometimes happens that a man out hunting loses his way in the jungle. Should this happen he cuts a stick and makes a few cuts in the bark to represent the pattern on a python’s skin. This stick he leaves on the ground and is then sure to be able to find his way without difficulty. The custom is connected with the belief that the python has a habit of leaving its saliva on leaves, and that anyone who touches one of these leaves by accident will go mad and lose his way.[29]