FOLK-TALES AND SONGS
Folk-tales. Like all Nagas[1] the Lhotas possess a great store of traditional tales. The old men tell them and teach them to the younger generation, having themselves learnt them from their forefathers. Every tale is supposed to be told word for word as it has been handed down, but versions naturally vary from village to village. To a tale which most of them must know by heart the audience listens as if none of them had ever heard it before, greeting every joke with laughter and appreciating every point. A very popular class of story is that which explains the peculiarities of various animals. Some of these stories closely resemble those current among the Semas and other tribes. The following are typical examples. [[175]]
The Sambhur and the Hanuman Monkey.[2]
This is a tale of the old days before deer and other animals became so different one from the other. The sambhur and the hanuman monkey became sworn friends. In those days the sambhur had a long tail, while the hanuman monkey had no tail at all. One day the hanuman monkey asked the sambhur for his tail and said, “Friend, I want to put on your tail and see how it becomes me. Please lend it to me.” Then the sambhur said, “Put on my tail, friend, and see how it becomes you,” and gave him his tail. But the hanuman monkey, as soon as he had put on the sambhur’s tail, climbed away up into a tree. Then the sambhur said, “Come down, friend, and give me back my tail,” but the hanuman monkey would not. Then the sambhur, wondering how he should make himself a tail, pulled out his own liver and made a tail of it and put it on. Men say that that is why even nowadays sambhur tail is so good and tastes like liver to eat.
The Wild Boar and the Tiger.
The wild boar and the tiger were sworn friends. One day when they met in the jungle the wild boar said to the tiger, “My friend, let us two fight and see which will get the better of the other and which will fear the other. What will you take to protect yourself?” Then the tiger said to the boar, “I will take cane and wind it round my body,” but the boar said, “I shall smear clay all over myself.” They arranged that the fight should take place six days later. Then the boar for six days did nothing but smear clay over himself, letting it dry after each coating, and the tiger did nothing but cut lengths of cane and wind them round his body. Then when the six days were up they fell to and fought. Now whenever the tiger flew at the wild [[176]]boar and bit him, all he got was a mouthful of clay, but the boar, whenever he attacked and bit the tiger, bit through a piece of cane, till he had bitten them all through one by one and killed the tiger. But when the boar was going away after his victory a thin piece of bamboo ran into him. Then he said, “I have killed the tiger. What is this doing running into me?” and seized it in his mouth. But the thin bamboo cut his tongue off so that he died on the spot.[3] Then another tiger came along and saw the body and ate it. That is why nowadays tigers eat wild boars. Yet it is said that because the tiger could not beat the wild boar at first, a tiger cannot catch one now unless he bides his time and stalks it for two or three months.
Rivalling in popularity the stories of animals is a large group of stories about a mythical individual whom the Northern Lhotas call Apfuho and the Southern Lhotas Yampfuho. He is spoken of as having lived in the old, old days when men and animals spoke the same language.[4] In his day, it is believed, there was a terrible earthquake and the whole world became dark.[5] Apfuho clung to a rock, and when light came and the world as we know it had come into being he had been turned into stone. Some Lhotas say that the rock, with Apfuho’s petrified dao-holder, can still be seen near Lakhuti, but most people hold that it is not known where he met his end. He corresponds exactly to the Sema character Iki,[6] and many of the stories told of the two are identical. He is always represented as getting in and out of scrapes, and as tricking his fellow-villagers or his friend the tiger, usually in the meanest possible way. The name of his village is never mentioned and there is no tradition as to where he lived. The following are typical stories of his exploits. [[177]]