The Ceremony of Erecting a Megalith among the Angami Nagas
1966; Routledge; Volume: 77; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0015587x.1966.9717061
ISSN1469-8315
Autores Tópico(s)Indian History and Philosophy
ResumoDURING the now almost legendary slump of the early 1920's, for two cold-weather seasons I found myself out of a job as a Tea Planter in Assam where I had returned after War service in the Indian Army. So my wife and I decided to 'take to the hills'. We would get to know the tribes people and study their hand-spinning and weaving, vegetable dyes, poisons, methods of slash-and-burn cultivation and so on. This fitted in well with my wife's hobby of hand-loom weaving, learned from followers of William Morris, Luther Hooper and others after World War I, as well as my interest in Archaeology and Anthropology. During the cold weather of 1921-2, we lived among the Mikirs, the most unwarlike of all tribes either North or South of the Brahmaputra. And from them we heard much of their traditional foes, the Angami Nagas, erstwhile Head-hunters of the Barail Range that lay to the South. One day a couple of Angamis who had managed to slip past the Police Post with their spears suddenly appeared in the village, much to the consternation of the Mikirs. But they were on a peaceful trading expedition. During the next Monsoon I resumed duty on the Tea Gardens, but the next cold weather I was again free. I knew the Angamis still erected megalithic monuments from time to time when they could afford the outlay, so hoping for the best, I got a permit from the Commissioner to travel to and live in Kohima, a large and important village. In the War against the Japs Kohima later became famous for the hard battles that were fought there. Should we be able to see the ceremony known as Chisu, or stone-pulling? Who could tell. If we were lucky there might be one during our stay. Any Angami who was rich enough to rise in the social scale had to perform several ceremonies, spend his surplus wealth, and entertain his clan. The members of the clan would do the hard
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