Note 6 — RELIGION

Respect rather than worship is paid to a huge boulder called Deolung on the north-west side of the path between Lakhuti and Akuk. Everyone who passes it lays a leaf on a stone in front of it. Lakhuti once sacrificed a chicken to it, but the experiment was followed by many deaths in the village and was not repeated. Formerly very solemn oaths were taken on this stone. The story goes that long, long ago Deolung was attacked by another huge boulder called Tarrlung, who cut his head off. But Deolung’s friend Matishi, another boulder, was near, to whom Deolung cried out, “Matishi, Matishi, Tarrlung has cut off my head. Go and waylay him.” So Matishi took a sharpened bamboo as a spear and waylaid Tarrlung and wounded him so seriously that he only had strength to stagger away and toppled into the Doyang near Morakcho. Deolung’s leg is supposed to be somewhere in the plains, but the wound where his head was cut off, and his head itself, now a rough piece of stone, are still pointed out. Close to Deolung and a little to the south is a flat slab of stone known as the grave of Orhendhromo, Deolung’s son, sometimes called Orhendhreni, his daughter. The little escarpment on which Deolung stands is called “Deolung’s wall” (Deolung piku). Matishi is now a big boulder a little distance below the Naga path and to the south-east of it between Deolung and Akuk. It is regarded both as Deolung’s friend still standing guard near him, and as his mithan. A lowing sound heard coming from it forebodes some great disaster. A mark in the sandstone in Akuk village is shown as the mithan’s track, and a natural hole through a rock there as the place where the mithan was tied up. Another rock called Napa is believed once to have been endowed with life and to have walked up from the bed of the Doyang to the place where it now stands on Pyopsü land.6