Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/587

 Festivals of the Hill Tribes South of Assam, i-j-j

lines ; but no one knew what a performer of Pahling Tauba might wear.

You will see that to earn the highest honours in Maring society is not a very simple matter, and that in the aspirant's passage to fame he affords a good deal of pleasure to the whole of the rest of the community — especially to the lads and lasses ; so that no one will grudge him his striped cloths nor the more comfortable quarters in the Land of the Dead which are said to await him.

Although I have said that similar feasts will be found in every tribe from the south Lushai hills to plains of Assam, it must not be thought that there is a monotonous similarity in the method of carrying them out or in the insignia granted to those who perform them. In one tribe (Rangte) the greatest feast includes the guests forming a ring round the giver's house, while he goes from one to another, greasing their heads with pigs' fat. In some (Kolhen and Aimol), the making of a ceremonial drum from a log of wood forms an important item. But in all there is the idea of enter- taining the community, and where there is more than one feast they grow in size and expense.

The idea of the soul of the performer gaining advantages after death is very marked among the Lushais, where it is firmly believed the Pupawla, " this man who died first," sits at a point where the seven roads to the land of the dead meet, and shoots with his big pellet bow at the poor souls as they hurry by ; and those he hits cannot cross the Pial river, but are doomed to stay on this side where existence is troublesome. But at Thangchhuah he may not shoot. This idea is less well marked in other tribes, though present among many of them ; and I gather from Mr. Hutton's and Mr. Mill's accounts it is absent in the tribes they deal with. Mr. Mills in conversation said to me that the Lhotas did not speculate much about the hereafter, but he thought they had a vague feeling that those who achieved greatness in this w-^orld would also be great in the next.