[2] Konyaks, after rebuilding a “morung,” immediately go into the jungle and try to kill a monkey, the hand of which is tied to the main post. Failing a monkey, anything, even a little bird, will do, but something must be killed, and the hunting party returns home singing as if they had taken a head. [↑]
[3] The word emung, which corresponds exactly to the Ao term amung, means literally “gathered together.” On an emung day no one may go down to the fields to work, or go farther from the village than is necessary to get water and firewood. [↑]
[4] In some villages the head and trunk of the dog are tied up on the main post (humtse tachungo) of the “morung” and left there to rot. [↑]
[5] Lt.-Col. R. G. Woodthorpe’s sketch on Pl. XVIII., Vol. xi., of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1888, shows what the mingetung of Phiro looked like in the old days. [↑]
[6] The spot where this was done is called Rāmākātī or mān yōnchopfĕ́ the latter meaning the “Burmese iron-foundry.” It is a small outcrop of very shaly coal. Possibly the ancestor of the Thangwe Eni clan caught in the jungle by the Eni who adopted him was a Burman, like the ancestor of the Tephri-Methama sept of the Methama clan in the Angami village of Chichama.—J. H. H. [↑]
[7] It is with the same idea, perhaps, that an Angami selling an ancestral field retains as his own a sod or two which remain nominally his.—J. H. H. [↑]
[8] The process described below is that employed in the case of ordinary land. On the very poor soil the jungle is often cut in July and burnt at the beginning of December. The soil then gets a longer exposure to the air. [↑]
[9] The Kayans of Borneo, who have several cultural affinities with Nagas, follow the same practice. They give as their reason the necessity of providing abiding places for the spirits (toh) of the locality. (Hose and McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, II. 23, quoted Sir J. G. Frazer, Folk-lore in the Old Testament, III. 70.) The value of the practice is obvious, as it gives the trees a chance of seeding and so of restocking the cleared ground and making it fit for jhuming again.—J. H. H. [↑]
[11] See Man, July 1917, “Some Types of Native Hoes, Naga Hills,” by H. Balfour, M.A.—J. H. H. [↑]