Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/474

438 level; then he placed two more pegs, with a cross-bar, behind the iron plate to keep it in position. The hole was then carefully filled in, partly with earth taken out of it, and partly with fresh earth dug from a spot close by. (The object of placing the plate was to keep off evil influences.) The pig and the cock were now taken behind some bushes and killed there by two men of the Muntuk (Tikhup) clan. The entrails and liver were examined, for from them the future can be foretold. The discs used by the Raja were buried beside his stone. The maiba took all the offerings, including the buffalo, but the pig and the fowl were eaten by the two men who killed them. The ceremony of erecting a stone is the same, except that the stone is laid on a cloth beside the offerings to Santhong and his Lairema, and after the Moirang ningthau's oration it is placed in position by the Raja and the maiba. In Plate XIII. the six stones appear under the cloth, and the first three figures from left to right are the Raja, the Moirang keirungba, and the Moirang ningthau, with the cloth 18 in. front of them.

I was told that shortly after the performance of these ceremonies the Raja's stone rose about two inches out of the ground, which was looked on as a very good omen. The custom of erecting a stone or a post or some other object during one's lifetime, in order, as the people say, "to make your name big," is very common among the inhabitants of these hills, and I think these stones at Santhong's lai-pham must be classed among such memorials, though the ceremonies connected with them have a more distinctly religious flavour than is found among those of cognate clans. From Moirang we went to Shuganu. Before any ceremonies could take place, a new hangjaba had to be appointed, for Wāngpurel is said to reside in the hangjaba of Shuganu and without his permission it is dangerous to approach the sacred places. I may here mention that every Umanglai is supposed to reside in