Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/340

302 that I lean to the suspicion that Nāga ideas as to the conception and procreation of children might not be found to be altogether in accord with modern gynæcology.

Age and physical and social maturity mark important stages of social cleavage. McCulloch noted that children up to eleven or twelve years of age and old people in Manipur are exempt from Hindu laws of dietary, and throughout this area the stages of society are reckoned by age, and physical and social maturity are marked by external and characteristic distinctions of coiffure, costume, and ornament.

Up to puberty the children are marked by having their hair closely cut all over, except for a tuft at the point of the skull. At puberty boys and girls alike let their hair grow, and it is often said that it is disgraceful for a girl to have a baby of her own before she has got long hair. Among the Tangkhuls, in those villages in the north where the women are still tattooed, this is done at puberty. The girls generally go to another village, if possible one in which they have a maternal uncle. They are kept under strict tabus, and the operation is so painful that it is often done in instalments. The object of the practice of tattooing the women was given to me as the desire to identify their wives in the afterworld. It is therefore a pre-nuptial or quasi-initiatory rite. If women do not go to heaven, the practice would fail to achieve its object. This inconsistency may be more apparent than real. Perhaps there is a side door to heaven,—"For ladies only." Since the men of the northern Tangkhul villages were renowned for their prowess, it was observed that their daughters were eagerly sought in marriage, as any harm to them was immediately and fiercely avenged. I was once touring among the Southern Tangkhuls, and met some lads wearing their hair combed down in front in the way of