Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/514

 480 Collectanea.

misunderstood, and the people below cut away the foundations, so the building fell and killed numbers : a mound of stones and pot- sherds is shown to this day, and the tribe concerned (now extinct) were called Na-ong, or ' the blind fools ' " ( The Gazetteer of Sikhhn, Calcutta, 1894, p. 42). The following tale is current among the Kuki Chins of Burma : " Many centuries ago all the Chins lived in one large village, somewhere south of Haka. They all spoke the same language, and had the same customs. One day, at a big council, it was decided that the moon should be ' captured, and made to shine permanently. By this means a great deal of unnecessary expense and bother would be saved in lighting. In consequence, the construction of a tower was begun, which was to reach to the moon. After years of labour, the tower got so high that it took days of hard marching for the people working at the top to come down and get provisions. It was therefore decided that, as stage upon stage was built, it should be inhabited, and that food and other necessaries should be passed up from below from stage to stage. Thus the people of the different stages had very little intercourse, and gradually acquired different manners, languages, and customs. At last, when the structure was all but finished, the nat [spirit] in the moon fell into a rage at the audacity of the Chins, and raised a fearful storm which brought down the tower. It fell from south to north. The people inhabiting the different stages were consequently strewn over the land, and built villages where they fell. Hence the different clans and tribes varying in language and customs. The stones and building materials which formed the huge tower now form the Chin Hills" (Sir J. G. Scott, Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information^ London, 1906, p. 103 sq.). The Kafirs explain the difference of languages by the tale that "after Imra created the world, Baba Adam and his wife were in Kashmir. They and their forty children were on one occasion sleeping in pairs, and when they woke no single pair understood the language of another pair. They were then ordered by Imra to march off in couples and populate the world" (Sir G. S. Robertson, The Kafirs of the HifiduKushj'LoTidon, 1896, p. 386). For similar tales, one from the Tharus of Bengal, see Encyclopaedia Britantiica, i ith ed.^ vol. iii., p. 91.