Note 42 — INTRODUCTION

The other conclusions I would suggest are some of them frankly speculative, but are perhaps not at variance with current views on the history of Indonesia in general. I should deduce a stage at which some race of Kol-Mon-Annam or Mon-Khmêr affinities was in occupation, leaving traces of that occupation in certain implements, weapons and perhaps in some folk-tales. I should describe the immigration from the north-west or west as definitely Bodo in character, and ascribe to this origin the erection of Y-shaped posts42 and the practice of reaping by hand, and the indications of the more recent existence of a matrilineal system. Beyond this, whatever the Singphos and Kacharis may be, an admixture of Tai blood from the east is beyond dispute. It is the nature of the immigration from the south which is most intriguing. No one who has had much to do with the Angamis could fail to perceive the difference of disposition and character between them and the other Naga tribes, though it is very difficult to state in what it actually consists, and it is certainly not so great as to constitute an entire distinction between the Angamis and the rest of their fellow-Nagas. My own view is that the Angamis contain a very much greater proportion of blood bequeathed by a mixed body of immigrants from the south (some of them at any rate nearly related either in blood or culture or both to the Igorot of the Philippine Islands), who already consisted perhaps of two races of which the weaker and less numerous was a race of settled habits and developed civilization, while the stronger was of more barbarous but warlike type.43 The inhabitants they found already in occupation would be either absorbed into one of the two divisions of this mixed tribe or make a third class where they survived in sufficient numbers, and to this source I would ascribe the social institutions of the Western Naga tribes. I would ascribe the elaborate system of terracing to the more civilized of the southern immigrants, and to these southern immigrants in general the use of elaborate stone-work in building and the erection of stone monoliths and perhaps the practice of burying their dead—the Angamis even bury the heads of their enemies—and also perhaps the use of ultra-democratic institutions. If these deductions be correct I should regard the Semas as having received chiefs from the more barbarous of the southerners, and in the Lhotas I should see the result of a more intimate contact of both southern elements with the tribe at present represented by the Sangtams, who seem to have at one time occupied much more of the Naga Hills than they do now that a large and still increasing proportion of their tribe has been absorbed by the more virile Sema. The Khoiraos, Kacha Nagas, Tangkhuls and Marami have all been much more strongly influenced by the culture of these southern immigrants, than have the other tribes north of the Angami country, and have accepted their culture to varying degrees.