[18] In some Lhota villages—e.g. Lungithang—specially made wooden clubs were kept for use in village rows, and no doubt also fights of this sort, to avoid recourse to edged tools. The Yachungrr tribe does the same, clubs being made for women as well as men in this tribe, and I have known Kacha Nagas (Maruongmai) also to use made clubs, long and flat, for village riots.—J. H. H. [↑]
PART IV
RELIGION
Religion—Deities and Spirits—The Soul and Life after Death—Magic—Religious Officials—Public Ceremonies—Individual Ceremonies—Ceremonies for Illness—Social “gennas”—Birth—Marriage—Divorce—Death—Miscellaneous Beliefs.
The religion of the Lhota is of that type which is vaguely termed Animism. He believes in no Supreme Being who rewards the good and punishes the evil. The deities to whom he sacrifices are some of them neutral, if kept in a good temper with the proper offerings, and some of them definitely malicious. Yet he is very far indeed from being devil-ridden and haunted with ghostly fears. He cheerfully carries out what he conceives to be his religious duties and meets his end like a man when the time comes.
Deities and Spirits. The nearest equivalent to gods is an order of beings called Potso,[1] who live in a world like ours, of the earthy floor of which our sky is the underside. The world of the Potsos in turn has a sky which supports yet another Potso world, and so on for an unknown number of layers. The only Potsos who affect us are those in the world immediately above our sky. They resemble men in appearance and have hosts of attendants who are sometimes regarded as their servants and sometimes as their relations. It is believed that just as the Lhotas have their Potsos, so the Semas, Aos and other tribes have theirs. The language of Potsos is different from that of men. Some members of the Tsoboi clan are said to claim to know it. Potsos are believed to visit earth from time to time and hold converse with the village seer (ratsen), coming in pairs with a train of attendants [[114]]and bringing articles symbolical of the fortune the village is going to enjoy during the year. They send a servant ahead who appears to the ratsen in a dream and tells him that his masters will come on such and such a day. From the time when the warning is received till the Potsos come nothing must be killed in the ratsen’s house, and between these dates he must not go outside the village land, or indulge in sexual intercourse, or eat the flesh of anything killed after he received the warning, though he may eat meat dried before. For their visit he makes ready “pita madhu” (etha soko) and some small fish and rice, and has plantain leaves brought up from the fields for use as cups. On the night when the Potsos are expected all in the village must go to bed early and shut their doors. The ratsen himself sleeps in a room separate from the rest of his family. The Potsos then come and speak to him in a voice which no one else can hear, and show him symbolical articles from which the future can be foretold. In the morning the marks of the spear butts of the Potsos and their servants can be seen outside the ratsen’s door. They are easily distinguishable, it is said, from the ordinary marks of spear butts, for they are much smaller and deeper. This belief seems to show that the Potsos are regarded as coming in material form. The objects brought by the Potsos are generally believed to be taken back by them, but Niroyo village claim that some of their rice is from seed rice given to a ratsen by a Potso. A typical instance of this curious belief that these beings from another world sometimes visit the earth is the supposed visit of Potsos to the ratsen ’Nchemo of Illimyo in April 1919. ’Nchemo reported that two Potsos came with fourteen attendants and brought with them reeds, meaning sunny weather, part of a railway carriage (!), meaning elephants would give trouble, two loads of dark blue thread, meaning that someone would die “apotia,” and a broom, meaning that wind would damage the crops. The day after a village is visited by Potsos is kept as an emung both by the village to which they came and by its neighbours. Formerly if any village was visited in this way all Lhota villages, however distant, kept one day’s emung when [[115]]they heard the news. Apart from special ceremonies performed to appease or gain the favour of the Rangsis, Sityingo and such-like godlings, it is to the Potsos that prayers are offered in sacrifices. Just as in England huge circular depressions in the hills are often called Devil’s Punchbowls, so the Lhota tends to assign big or curious things to the Potsos. For instance, the polished stone celts which are sometimes found in the fields are regarded as thunderbolts and are called “Potso’s axes” (Potsophü). The long flat seed-case, too, of a certain tree is called “Potso’s weaving-sword” (Potsotsitam).[2]
Sityingo is regarded as the lord of wild animals, which he keeps just as men keep pigs and cattle. Sometimes he can be heard calling the wild pig, but to hear him is very unlucky. He lives in the jungle and is like a small man, with his head twisted to one side. By his favour men have luck in hunting. Okisityingo (“house-sityingo”) is the good genius of the house. He is like a man, but has enormously long fingers and is spotted all over. He is only seen by men in delirium. So long as he is in a good temper his influence is good, but he can be harmful if due respect is not shown him. It is very unlucky if he leaves the house. Ngazo is another jungle spirit, practically identical with Sityingo. To every village and every man is attached a Rangsi, by whose favour the crops are good. No one has ever seen one or knows what one is like to look at. Just as crops and wild game have their genii, so have the rivers and streams in Tchhüpfu (“water-master”[3]), a being like a man with hair of enormous length, who lives at the bottom of deep pools and uses human skulls as hearth-stones. Small offerings are made to him by some villages after doing the oyantsoa ceremony. One is believed to inhabit a pool called Tchhüpfu izzü in the Doyang below Morakcho. In the days when men first came out of the earth they were persecuted by a fiend called [[116]]Khyuham, who ate their children and carried the skulls of his victims about in a basket on his back. Rankhanda, one of the ancestors of the Lhota tribe, managed to shut him up in a hole in the earth, the entrance of which he blocked, some say with a stone, others with a mithan horn. Yet even now a yearly ceremony called Epuetha is performed by every family in order to ward off the evil influence of Khyuham. Almost every illness is put down to the unhallowed attentions of Tsandhramo, invisible fiends who out of sheer malice make men sick by detaining their souls or by introducing hair or bits of wood or small stones into their bodies, making it necessary to call in a ratsen to extract them. The bright rust-coloured mud which is often seen oozing out of cliffs is regarded as the excreta of Tsandhramo. If these patches are sprinkled with dogs’ teeth the fiends will abandon the place. In Lakhuti the custom obtains of leaving a spear sticking through the roof of a house from inside when an inmate is ill. This is supposed to ward off further attacks of evil spirits. During the influenza outbreak of 1918 the village simply bristled with spears. The jungle is believed to be haunted by wailing fiends called Nangkamo. A famous haunt is below the village of Akuk on the northern slope of the range. Men are tempted to follow the wailing. If they do they will be affected with such madness that they will think level ground is steep ground, and steep ground level ground.[4] Ramphan, the great Lhota hero, once speared one of these fiends with a red-hot spear, and buried it. In the morning he dug it up and found that though when speared it had the appearance of a man it was now a lizard.[5]
Respect rather than worship is paid to a huge boulder [[117]]called Deolung on the north-west side of the path between Lakhuti and Akuk. Everyone who passes it lays a leaf on a stone in front of it. Lakhuti once sacrificed a chicken to it, but the experiment was followed by many deaths in the village and was not repeated. Formerly very solemn oaths were taken on this stone. The story goes that long, long ago Deolung was attacked by another huge boulder called Tarrlung, who cut his head off. But Deolung’s friend Matishi, another boulder, was near, to whom Deolung cried out, “Matishi, Matishi, Tarrlung has cut off my head. Go and waylay him.” So Matishi took a sharpened bamboo as a spear and waylaid Tarrlung and wounded him so seriously that he only had strength to stagger away and toppled into the Doyang near Morakcho. Deolung’s leg is supposed to be somewhere in the plains, but the wound where his head was cut off, and his head itself, now a rough piece of stone, are still pointed out. Close to Deolung and a little to the south is a flat slab of stone known as the grave of Orhendhromo, Deolung’s son, sometimes called Orhendhreni, his daughter. The little escarpment on which Deolung stands is called “Deolung’s wall” (Deolung piku). Matishi is now a big boulder a little distance below the Naga path and to the south-east of it between Deolung and Akuk. It is regarded both as Deolung’s friend still standing guard near him, and as his mithan. A lowing sound heard coming from it forebodes some great disaster. A mark in the sandstone in Akuk village is shown as the mithan’s track, and a natural hole through a rock there as the place where the mithan was tied up. Another rock called Napa is believed once to have been endowed with life and to have walked up from the bed of the Doyang to the place where it now stands on Pyopsü land.[6] [[118]]
Beliefs concerning the Soul and the Life after Death. The Lhota usually regards himself as having two distinct souls called respectively omon and mongyi. The omon, which is visible in the form of the man’s shadow and shows its good sense by disappearing into him when the sky is cloudy and rain threatens, leaves the man some time before death in cases of serious illness. It may just wander about, in which case it can often be induced by the proper ceremonies to return, or it may go straight along the Road of the Dead to the next world, in which case the man dies.