Our arrival in the country put a stop in certain cases to this process of absorption. For instance, many chiefs held considerable numbers of Paihte or Vuite and Khawtlang in a species of semi-slavery. These were captives or descendants of captives made in war, and nearly all have availed themselves of the Pax Britannica to return to their own people. Again, we found certain villages ruled over by non-Lushei chiefs, who were living under the protection of powerful Lushei chiefs. In the process of pacification these non-Lushei chiefs regained their independence and have gathered round them many of their clansmen, who formerly were scattered among the Lushei villages, and who, if we may judge by what has undoubtedly happened in other cases, would in a short time have become completely absorbed. Inquiries lasting over many years have convinced me that these clans are little more than enlarged families. In most cases the dialects of the minor clans have been entirely forgotten, and the only differences remaining are the manner of performing the “sakhua” or domestic sacrifice, the position occupied by the corpse at the funeral feast, and such other minor points.
A stranger might live for a long time in a Lushai village without knowing that such divisions existed. Every clan is further subdivided into families and branches. Thus the Lushei clan has several families. One of these is the Thangur, and the Thangur family has six branches—Rokum, Zādeng, Rivung, Thangluah, Pallian, and Sailo—but none of these branches has any further sub-division, though the descendants of certain powerful chiefs are sometimes collectively spoken of by their ancestor’s name, showing how these clan, family, and branch names have arisen.
During the census of 1901 an unsuccessful attempt was made to get a complete list of the clan families and branches. The causes of the failure were the ignorance of the people themselves as to what clan or family they belonged to and the tendency to claim to be true Lushais.
Everyone knew the name of the branch to which he belonged, and as a rule the family name would be correctly given, but in many cases the clan name was altogether omitted, or Lushei was entered against families which had no real claim to that distinction.
An old Lushai once asked me why I was troubling myself about family and branch names, and on my explaining that I hoped to make a complete list of them he muttered, “Can you count the grains in that basket of rice?” and turned from me to the zu-pot.
As a sample of the constitution of a clan I give in the Appendix a list of all the families and branches of the Lushei clan.
My enquiries lead me to believe that practically all the clan and a great many of the family and branch names are eponyms. In some cases the name of a village site has been given to its inhabitants, first probably by outsiders and eventually adopted by the people themselves, but even in these cases as often as not enquiry will show that the village site was first named after some famous chief who lived there.
Before the Thangur chiefs had risen to their present predominant position there were many consanguineous communities scattered over the hills, living under headmen of their own and each using a dialect of its own. Some of these communities appear to have had separate corporate existence for long periods and in consequence to have been sub-divided into many families and branches, while others were quickly absorbed by the Thangur and consequently have few sub-divisions.
I have been accused of deriving “Lushei” from “lu,” head, and “shei,” long. If in the salad days of my sojourn among these folks I was ever guilty of this folly, I hereby publicly repudiate it. There is no doubt that Lushei, in common with the other clan names, is an eponym.
A versatile and imaginative writer has recently derived “Sailo,” the name of the branch of the Lushai clan to which the present chiefs belong, from “sai” elephant, and “lo,” a jhum, alleging that because the elephant is the biggest animal, therefore “Sailo” means the biggest jhum and that the name refers to the excellence of the jhum land between Burkhal and the source of the Kornaphuli river, where he says the Sailos formerly lived. There are some objections to this theory; to begin with, the Lushais never use “sai” as a prefix meaning greatness, and secondly half the area mentioned was never inhabited by Sailo chiefs, and thirdly only a small and little considered branch of the great Sailo family ever entered this land of fatness and not till long after the family name had been generally accepted; further the name of the common ancestor of all the Sailo chiefs is known to have been Sailova, which is a common name still in the family.