Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/482

418 dam-doi or hlō, and dam-ei or vaï-hlo. In Meithei, the one word hidāk means magic, medicine, and tobacco. Its primary sense, I venture to believe, is that of the material apparatus used in magic. In a secondary and derived sense, it means medicine and anything which produces strange mysterious effects, such as the narcotisation due to the use of roughly cured native tobacco. All these terms are applied to material objects, but the influence of Hindu ideas, which is so strong among the Meitheis, has doubtless touched the Anals and Hiroi Lamgangs, who are in close contact with their Meithei overlords. Hidāk, (or doi, or hlō), seems to have acquired the meaning of magical virtue. In Hindu philosophy, gun or virtue is the abstract quality inherent in anything which produces remarkable effects/ It is gun, the personal power, which enables one to do things. It is a term of philosophical abstraction, and the Tibeto-Burman languages are notably poor in abstractions.

The tale about the lightning has a parallel among the Thādos. The Rain God, a mighty hunter, comes home hot and weary from the chase, and finds that his wife has forgotten to get the zu ready. He stamps about, and swears at her, thus making the thunder, and draws his dao in anger upon her, the flash of which is the lightning. But in Thādo the word for thunder is wān aghin, the clang of the high arch of heaven; wān is the round vault, anything rounded; bān in Meithei compounds has the same force. The Thādo word for lightning is mei aying, fire in darkness. Among the Meitheis we have the tale lost to popular memory, but preserved in their vocabulary, for their word for thunder is nong khongha, the noise of the rain, and for lightning nōng-thāng-kup-pa, which means the flash of the rain dao. Nōng means Rain God, thāng means dao, and kup is a root meaning to flash, to be