Note 14 — DOMESTIC LIFE

The eating of first-fruits. Just before the crop begins to ripen the ceremony of eating the first-fruits (Mshe etak) is performed, by the Puthi first, and after him by the other households in the village. From the day on which the Puthi announces that he is preparing his “madhu” to that on which the last man does the ceremony, no stranger may enter the Puthi’s house, and selling and killing of fowls and animals and the bringing of meat into the village are prohibited as they are before the Lanvung ceremony. On the day of the ceremony the Puthi kills a little boar outside his house. He does not eat this meat but distributes it to all the houses in the village in which there has been a death during the year. These portions are offered to the dead in the Etchhienya ceremony. After killing the pig he goes into his house accompanied by his Yenga and the second Puthi if there be one, and in the presence of his family strangles a hen, with a prayer to the Rangsi that there may be good crops, no accidents, no raids by enemies, and no prowling tigers. He then takes the omens from the excreta and entrails in the ordinary way. The Puthi’s wife,14 or the Puthi himself if he be a widower, now goes and cuts the rice sown in the garden plot at the Thruven ceremony, no matter how unripe it may be. This the Puthi husks in silence. He may be helped by the assistant Puthi but by no one else. He puts a little of the grain on the sickle, on both his feet, against his forehead and finally on the hearth-stones. What is left he wraps up in a leaf and half boils. This he pretends, to eat, praying that squirrels, rats and birds may find the rice of the village crops bitter. It is then thrown away, but the hen is eaten. During the next day or two everyone goes down to his fields and brings up a little rice, with which he performs the same ceremony, except that no hen or pig is killed. A little of this rice is preserved and kept wrapped in a leaf at the bottom of the “chunga” or other receptacle in which the day’s supply of grain is put every morning. Such is the custom among the Northern Lhotas. Among the Southern Lhotas no rice is put on the sickle, feet, hearth, etc., but the rice is eaten by the whole family with crabs as a relish.