A youth of the Pachana family must marry a girl of the Tlangsha family.
A youth of the Tlangsha family must marry a girl of the Thimasha family.
A youth of the Thimasha family must marry a girl of the Khulpu-in family.
A youth of the Khulpu-in family must marry a girl of the Pachana family.
In both clans the young men sleep in any house, except their parents’, in which there are unmarried girls. The Ronte say that formerly they built zawlbuks like the Lushais.
The price of a Tarau girl is a gong or Rs. 30/-, or five years service in the girl’s father’s house. The Ronte maiden’s price is two gongs, and her proper husband is her maternal first cousin. In both clans a fowl has to be killed by the khulpu at the time of the marriage, and the Ronte tie some of its feathers round the necks of the couple. Should a Tarau maiden be led astray both parties are fined a pot of rice-beer, which the villagers share, and the seducer pays the girl’s father one pig. The child, when old enough to leave the mother, becomes the property of the father. A Ronte mother must not leave her house till five days after the birth of a daughter and seven after that of a son. On the day of the birth there is a feast, and on the fifth or seventh day, according to the sex of the child, a fowl is killed by the khulpu, and the child’s hair is cut, its ears pierced, and its name decided on, the choice being made from the names of its forefathers. The house is purified by being sprinkled with zu by the khulpu.
Among the Tarau, the period during which the mother may not leave her house is prolonged to ten days, at the expiry of which the khulpu kills a cock for male child and a hen for girl, and then purifies the house.
In both clans the dead are buried in a cemetery situated to the west of the village, while the corpses of those who have died unnatural deaths are buried elsewhere with no ceremony. Women dying in childbirth among the Tarau are buried by old men, who have no further hope of becoming fathers, far from the village, while persons being killed by wild animals, or by some accident, such as a fall from a tree, are buried where they die. Persons who are drowned are buried on the bank of the river where the body is found, the grave being dug at the spot where some water thrown up by hand from the river happens to fall. This custom also exists among the Shans of the Upper Chindwin, which lends some colour to the tradition that the Tarau sojourned in Burma before entering Manipur. Among the Ronte, women dying in childbirth, and all children dying under a year of age, are buried to the east of the village, while accidental deaths necessitate the burial being made to the south. The funeral takes place on the day of death except in the case of old men, whose corpses are kept for a day while their friends eat, drink, and dance before them. Whatever animals can be spared are killed in the honour of the deceased, and their sherh are buried with him, together with some rice. Every day till the “Papek” feast, in honour of those who have died within the year, rice and zu are placed on the grave. At Papek a platform of bamboo is constructed near the cemetery, and on it are placed such offering of flesh as the family can afford; much zu is drunk and all dance. The Ronte Sakhua sacrifice consists of a goat, dogs and mithan being prohibited.
Although the Tarau, from their language, are evidently closely allied to the Lushais, they are the only Old Kuki clan I have met which does not worship Pathian. They denied all knowledge of that name, affirming the name of their god was “Rāpu,” to whom the Manipuri name of “Sankhulairenma” has been given. Rāpu has a shrine just above the Burma road near to Tegnopal, where every year fish, rice, and zu are offered to him. When the rice begins to fill in the ear there is a five days’ feast in the village, during which time the young people dance and drink. A pig is killed, and the liver, ears, feet, and snout are offered to Rāpu. These are called “sar” (cf. Lushai “sherh”). Before the cutting of jhums commences a small pig or a fowl is sacrificed to Rāpu so that no one may be cut with a dao during the clearing of the jhums. Dogs are not eaten or sacrificed by the Tarau or the Ronte; the latter also consider the mithan unfit for a sacrifice. In these particulars they form an exception to the general custom of Kuki clans.
The Ronte have a feast called “Va-en-la,” which is given with the idea of enhancing the giver’s importance in this world and assuring him comfort in the next. A pig is killed and thirty pots of zu are prepared, and the whole village makes merry. A long bamboo is planted in front of the house of the giver of the feast. Throughout its length this bamboo is transfixed with crosspieces of bamboo about 18 inches long; from its end depends a bamboo representation of a bird, whence the name of the feast—“va,” in Ronte, as in Lushai, meaning “a bird,” and “en,” “to see.”