Note 3 — LANGUAGE

Nagas are always ready to give garbled, not to say scandalous, accounts of the customs of their neighbours, and there can be little doubt that Major Butler was misled by his Angami informants. Lhotas, in common with other tribes, believe in a vague sort of way that the taking of a head brings prosperity to the taker’s village, and the boy was probably killed and his body cut up and distributed, as was done more recently in the case of the Nankam slave bought by Akuk. But there is no tradition that it was ever the custom to torture victims before death, and I think the Lhotas must be acquitted of this charge. It would, further, be clean contrary to their customs to put pieces of human flesh in their rice, which would thereby become polluted rather than blessed.3