Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/591

 Festivals of the Hill Tribes South of Assam. 281

speaks of this in one place as the spirit of fertility per-ambulating the village, and in another says that the posts represent the man and wife of the giver of the feast. ^ These Y-shaped posts recur in connection with these feasts all through the hills, in conjunction sometimes with round topped ones as you will see in these slides. The slides showed post erected by Lushais, Chhinchhuan, Mangvung, Vuite, Tangkhul, Kawtlang, Semas, and the monoliths at Dimapur.

You see, then, that we find a chain of folk tales and of festivals extending from Demagri on the south to the Brahmaputra on the north, through a number of tribes which, as you have seen, are very superficially different. There has been no systematic recording of folk tales, nor have the festivals till recently been fully dealt with ; and I feel sure that further systematic enquiry will show that the links of the chain itself extends much further. It may well be found that one end rests in Tibet and the other in the isles of the Pacific.

J. Shakespear.

1 The Lhota Nagas, xxvi., p. 144 note i ; The Angami Nagas, p. 232.