Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/616

306 a Kuki weapon, and I fancy that it has been borrowed by the Angami from the Kuki.

Between the bow and bullet-bow of the Kukis and the crossbow of the Singphos there seems to be a marked gap in which no bow is in use at all. Generally speaking, I should say that the bow was not a weapon naturally resorted to by Nagas, who prefer the throwing spear, and was unknown to or unused by a very large proportion of them.

As regards arrow poisons, the Chang, Kalyo-kengyu and some Konyak tribes are acquainted with a poison which is perhaps aconite, though this could not be definitely ascertained by the Indian Museum people to whom I sent some, and their tests seemed rather to point to the contrary. All that reaches the administered tribes comes from the east and is adulterated with gum by each village that passes it on. The accounts of the plant from which it is obtained were all therefore secondhand. It is described as a sort of Upas tree, which can only be approached down wind and smoking a pipe and after the observance of a strict genna, otherwise the poison hunter would be destroyed entirely by the noisome exhalations of the tree, near which animals and vegetables alike cannot remain and live. The poison is believed to be made from the sap. Right at the other end of the district in the south a similar poison was known to the Thados, and during the late Kuki rising I collected a number of poisoned arrows, but they (and the poison on them) were all two or three generations old, and no one could say what the poison was or where it came from, and my Kukis all agreed that it could no longer be obtained.

It might be worth mentioning that the Naga tribes do not resort to poison ordeals, but, nevertheless, I struck only the other day a belief among Semas that if a man was given poison he would recover all right if he could vomit; if not he must ultimately die, though it might not be for months or even years, and though he might experience little or no inconvenience in the meantime.