Note 12 — GENERAL

The style of hair-cutting resembles that of the Semas, Aos and other tribes. The back and sides of the head are shaved all round up to a point level with the top of the ears, the hair on the crown of the head being left long enough to reach to the top of the shaven portion.12 When asked why they have adopted this style of hair-cutting they say that their forefathers used to wear their hair long, but took to cutting it in the present fashion because it kept getting into their eyes and catching in the jungle. The custom obtaining in the Southern Sangtam village of Phulangrr perhaps gives the clue to the real origin of the fashion. There no man is allowed to shave the back and sides of his head till he has killed an enemy in war. Till then he wears his hair cut more or less like a European. Little Lhota girls have their heads completely shaved till they are about seven years old, when the hair is allowed to grow. Women wear their hair in an untidy bun on the nape of the neck, tied round with a bunch of strings of their own hair.