Note 155 — Chapter II · TABOOED DAYS AFTER A DEATH AND ON RELATED OCCASIONS

Hodson, Nāga Tribes, p. 88. “We find among the Naga tribes that, if a woman died in childbirth (an event of rare occurrence), the child was never allowed to live, because they believed it to be an evil spirit, a disembodied ghost, incarnated in the mother whose death it had caused” (idem, “Some Nāga Customs and Superstitions,” Folklore, 1910, xxi, 301). Among the Kabui Naga not only does the death of a woman in childbirth necessitate a five days’ village genna, but the same period of restriction is also imposed after the death of a child dying in infancy (J. Shakespear, “Customs at Death among the Manipuris and Cognate Clans,” Folklore, 1912, xxiii, 466 sqq.).