Note 7 — RELIGION

As an example of this belief the following story, told to the writer by a Rephyim man, may be related. The man said: “The Road of the Dead in our village runs past the champo in which I used to sleep. One night when I was lying awake I heard someone go stumbling past towards Wokha Hill, groaning as he went. Then I heard him say, ‘Oh, oh, I cannot walk,’ and recognized the voice of my brother-in-law, who was very ill. I was frightened and shouted and woke all in the champo. My brother-in-law died next day, for his soul (omon) had already gone ahead.” The mongyi leaves a man at the moment of death and goes straight to the World of the Dead, where it joins the omon which has already gone on ahead except in cases of very sudden death. Some men do not distinguish omon and mongyi (lit. “stupid soul”). The fact is that the Lhota does not analyse the details of such an unpleasant certainty as death. The Lhotas also believe in a sort of personal evil destiny called nyok, and when looking at the corpse of a man who has died a violent death will hold bunches of leaves before their faces to prevent his nyok affecting them. It appears to correspond to the Angami temi or rhopfü (cf. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, pp. 98 and 183). A curious belief, apparently at variance with all their beliefs as to dead men walking to the Land of the Dead, is held by Lhotas in common with Semas and Aos. It is that if a man kills a flying squirrel during his life, at his death his soul will fly to the Land of the Dead under the shelter of the wings of the soul of the squirrel. Col. Shakespear records that the Lushais hold a similar belief with regard to a bird called vahluk.7 There are also traces of a belief in the reincarnation of the soul in some lower form of life. No member of a household in which a death has occurred may take the life of any creature, whether animal, bird, or insect, till the days of “genna” are accomplished and the soul has finally left for the Land of the Dead, in case the creature killed should be the dead man in another form. The Aos have a similar belief.8 The Land of the Dead (etchhili) lies under our world and has the bottom of our world for a sky, just as our world lies under the world of the Potsos. There the dead live exactly as men live here, those who have done good deeds here being rich and happy, and those who have done evil deeds being poor and miserable.9 As the sun passes under the earth every evening their day is our night. The entrance to it is a cave (etchhiku) on the precipitous eastern face of Wokha Hill. It is inaccessible and no living man has ever been into the cave, though the story goes that once a man desperate with grief at the death of his nine children from smallpox managed to scramble down to it. There on the floor he found spittle and on the side of the cave he found the smallpox scabs which had been rubbed off against the rock as his children passed in. He could not enter, for he was still alive, but he went away comforted, for he knew that his wife and children had really gone to the Land of the Dead, where he would meet them some day. The cave, which a telescope seems to show does really exist, lies at one end of a narrow, conspicuous stratum of white rock which looks exactly like a path and is known as the Road of the Dead (etchhililan).10 Below it is another similar stratum, also apparently terminating in a cave, which is believed to be the road used by the spirits of dead animals, for animals, too, go to the Land of the Dead. In Yemkha, from whence the roads are clearly seen, it is believed that sometimes at night lights can be observed moving on the upper road when the dead come out with torches to meet new-comers and light them on their way. Some say that the spirits of those who die “apotia,” or at the hands of enemies or by witchcraft, are earthbound and cannot go to the world of the dead. Others say that they go, but by some different road. The dead have knowledge of what goes on in this world and jealously watch the disposal of their property! They can even at times punish the living with sickness. They appear in dreams, sending their omon to the dreamer, for the dead man himself cannot leave the place where he is. As a sign that he has really been, the omon sometimes leaves a present of dead men’s rice (etchhitsok). Zambomo of Pangti still uses rice descended from such a present. It is occasionally necessary to appease the dead. A pig is killed and a share given to a dreamer (hahang), who offers it to the dead man in his dreams. This ceremony is called etchhienya, and is done by anyone who is heir to the whole of a dead man’s property, and when there have been many deaths in a family, or if children die one after the other. Though the dead themselves cannot leave their habitation, the deer they hunt, if hard pressed by dogs, sometimes come right through the earth and appear on the surface of the ground in the form of moles. That is why to find a mole above ground forebodes ill luck, and perhaps even death. Hence the consternation when the writer’s fox-terrier one day laid a dead mole at a Lhota’s feet.11 Similarly, the male of the Little Pied Flycatcher (Cyornis melanoleucus) is regarded as the hornbill of the dead.