The Lushei Kuki Clans

by John Shakespear

Teknonymy is very common. The parents of a child called Thanga will generally be known as Thanga-Pa and Thanga-Nu, and I have come across old widows whose real names were unknown. There is a strong and general dislike among all Lushais to saying their own names. When we first occupied the hills, a man would not tell you his name; if asked he would refer to someone else and say, “You tell him.” The following explanation, given me by a Lushai, seems to me scarcely satisfactory:—“Lushais are shy of saying the name of their father and mother and their own names. Because it is their own name they are shy of saying it. Some people are shy because their names are bad. Their parents’ names—because they are their parents they never call them by their names, therefore they are shy of saying them. Their own names also they never say; just for that reason they are shy of saying them. The names of their brothers and friends they are always saying, therefore they are not shy of saying them.” Long ago another explanation was given me. When a man kills another, he calls out his own name: “I, Lalmanga, have killed you!” so that the spirit of the dying man may know whose slave he will be in Mithi-Khua, the dead man’s village; it was suggested that it was unlucky to say one’s name on less important occasions.

2. Weights and Measures. In every village there is a small flat basket, the size of which is fixed by the chief, which is used for all retail dealings in rice and such goods, but large quantities are measured by the number of loads, a load being about 50 lbs. After the harvest the unhusked rice is piled in a conical heap. A Lushai will tell you that his crop is “chhip-zawn,” that is, the heap is level with the top of his head; “silai-zawn,” that is, level with the end of his gun held up perpendicularly over his head. This is about a record crop; lesser quantities are denoted by the height of his hand or hoe or axe held up. Time he measures by the time a pot of rice takes to cook—i.e., about an hour—or by the time he can hold a sip of nicotine in his mouth; he has terms for each period of the day, denoting the usual occupation; he also divides the year according to the agricultural occupation proper to it. Terms expressing measures of length are very numerous. Short lengths are expressed by reference to the human body, as we speak of a span; but the Lushai has sixteen or seventeen of these, extending from “chang-khat”—i.e., from the tip to the first joint of the first finger—to “hlam,” which is the distance a man can stretch with both arms extended. Longer distances he expresses by terms such as the distance of the nearest jhum, the distance of the furthest jhum, the distance a mithan will wander during the day, the distance a man can travel before his mid-day meal, &c.—terms which, though well understood by the people, are a little perplexing to strangers. Measures of weight are scanty; a curious one is “chuai”—i.e., as much as can be supported if suspended from the tip of the first finger palm downwards. Many of the stars and constellations have received names; most of them have some story attached to them. The months are lunar months, and some have names, but these are but little known or used.

3. Villages. The Lushai likes to perch his village on the top of a ridge or spur, partly because, hillsides being steep, it is difficult to find sites elsewhere, partly for the sake of the climate, but chiefly, I think, in order to get a good defensive position. His migratory habits disinclining him to make the elaborate defences over which the Chins, Nagas, and other dwellers in permanent villages took so much pains, he therefore sought for a site which was difficult of approach. When we first occupied the country, every village was surrounded by one or more lines of stockade made of timber, with several rows of bamboo spikes outside it. At each gateway was a block house, and others were built at suitable places on the roads along which enemies were expected to come, and were occupied whenever an attack was apprehended. Tradition speaks of villages of 3,000 houses, and, though this is probably an exaggeration, still from an examination of the sites it is evident that they must have been very large, and even when we occupied the country villages of 400 and 500 houses were not uncommon, and there were two or three of 800 houses.

Now that all fear of being raided has gone for ever, people no longer feel the need of living together in large communities, and the size of villages is steadily decreasing. The peculiar vagabond strain in the blood of the Kuki-Lushai race, if not controlled, leads to villages splitting into hamlets and hamlets sub-dividing, till in the Manipur Hills we find single houses in the midst of dense jungle, several miles from the next habitation. This could never happen among tribes belonging to the Naga group, with whom intense love for the ancestral village site is a leading characteristic. A short distance outside the village by the roadside there generally are several platforms of logs with posts round them adorned with skulls of animals, gourds, rags, and old pots. These are memorials of deceased heroes, and will be more fully dealt with later on.

The gate itself was composed either of two large slabs of timber, or of a number of stout saplings suspended from a cross bar by holes cut through their upper ends; during the day these were drawn aside, but at night they hung perpendicularly in the gateways and were firmly secured between two cross bars. Passing through the gate, one finds oneself in a sort of irregular street leading up to the highest point of the village, where there is generally an open space, from which other streets branch off. On one side of this space will be the chiefs house, with the “zawlbuk,” or bachelors’ hall, opposite it. The villages of powerful chiefs are beautifully laid out in regular streets which follow the natural features of the ground. When Colonel Lister in 1850 captured the village of Shentlang he was so impressed with the regularity with which the villages within sight were laid out that he was easily led to believe these were cantonments inhabited solely by warriors. If the village is a large one and contains a mixed population, it is divided into several quarters, or “veng,” which are generally inhabited by people of the same clan, and each will have its zawlbuk, a large building constructed by the united labour of the men of the veng or the village. As the mithan or gyal (tame bison) belonging to the village pass the night under the zawlbuk, it is generally built on rather a steep hillside, so that the natural fall of the ground may allow ample room for the animals under the raised floor and ensure good drainage. It is built, as are all other buildings in the village, of timber and bamboos, tied together with cane and thatched with either cane leaves or grass—if the former, then the ridge of the roof is straight and gable-ended; if the latter, it is far higher in the centre, whence it curves down somewhat abruptly to each gable. Access to the building is obtained by a platform of rough logs at the uphill end, where the front wall commences some 3½ feet above the platform. Having stooped under this wall you are confronted by a low matting partition, surmounted by a huge log, the whole some 3 feet high, over which you scramble and find yourself in a large bare room varying from 15 to 50 feet long and 15 to 30 feet wide, according to the size of the village, with a square earthen hearth in the centre on which a few logs are always smouldering, and at the far end is a raised sleeping platform extending the whole width of the building. The young boys of the village have to keep up the supply of firewood for the zawlbuk, this duty continuing till they reach the age of puberty, when they cease sleeping in their parents’ houses and join the young men in the zawlbuk. Until that time they are under the orders of the eldest or most influential boy, who is their “hotu,” or superintendent. The zawlbuk is the particular property of the unmarried men of the village, who gather there in the evening to sing songs, tell stories, and make jokes till it is time to visit their sweethearts, after which they return there for the rest of the night. Travellers not having any friends in the village use the zawlbuk as a rest-house, but eating and drinking are seldom, if ever, carried on there. The zawlbuk is an institution common to many tribes, but among the clans I am dealing with it is confined to the Lushei and the clans most nearly allied to them. Its appearance among the Chiru and Vaiphei emphasises the close connection between these clans and the Lusheis.

Zawlbuk, or Young Men’s House.

The houses all abut on the street, but small gardens are often found at the back, in which sugar cane, beans, cucumbers, &c., are grown. The houses of the chief’s advisers and wealthy men are generally grouped near his, but should the chief have more than one wife, or should he have some less fortunate relations dependent on him, their houses will be found scattered through the village, each forming a centre of a quarter or a veng, from the inhabitants of which the chief allows them to collect the dues, which are his by right.

The steepness of the hillside is no obstacle to house building, and frequently the roof of one house will be lower than the floor of the one immediately above it. The Lushais have been nomadic ever since their ancestors started on their western trek some 200 years ago. The method of cultivation which they follow is very wasteful, and a large village soon uses up all the land within reach, and then a move becomes imperative. Their custom of burying their dead within the village tends to make a site unhealthy, especially as the water supply is usually so situated as to receive the drainage of the village, and when the rate of mortality rises unduly high, a move is at once made. In old times these moves were often of considerable length—sometimes as much as two or three days’ journey—and sometimes a halt for a whole season would be made at some temporary site, the people living in huts alongside their cultivation. The selection of a new site is a matter of much thought, and before a final decision is arrived at, a deputation of elders is sent to sleep at the proposed site, taking with them a cock. If the bird crows lustily an hour before daybreak, as all good cocks should, the site is approved of. Sites of villages which have been burnt by enemies are eschewed as unlucky, and a chief when re-occupying a site of some other chief’s village generally tries to establish himself slightly to one side or other, in hopes that the new site will bear his name for many years.

As soon as the move has been decided on, arrangements are made for cutting the jhums near the new site, and during the rains all the workers live either in the jhum houses, or in temporary shelters built near the new site, to which, after the harvest, they laboriously carry all their belongings on their own backs, as they own no beasts of burden. These constant moves have had a great share in moulding the Lushai character, for when you have to carry all your worldly goods from your old to your new house every four or five years, it is not strange if you are disinclined to amass more than is absolutely necessary, and gradually become content with very little, and prefer ease and idleness to toiling in the hopes of being able to add to your worldly possessions. This I believe to be the explanation of the difference between the Lushai and the Chins, the latter being eager to earn money by work or trade, while the former far prefer to lie smoking in the sun.