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Head-taker's drinking vessel (chunga). Cut in relief with figures of a male warrior with dao in right hand and human head in left, a gun beside him, a darter or snake bird standing on a pony, the head of a large mithan, a male figure with partly severed neck and legs and two parallel ridges symbolising a river. Background partly stained with black and red, a bare portion with black squiggles. Pricked patterning. Phom. |
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Made by Yakching to celebrate a recent head-taking raid on Sowa in which a Sowa man was cut up. In the raid guns were used. The river, symbolised by the two raised lines, was the Dikhu River separating the two villages. The pony is the sahib's pony introduced because WGA was about to come to the village. The black wiggly marks are the sahib's writing. The head of the mithan was inserted because Yakching himself had killed a mithan at the last spring festival. Yackching said he painted shapes on the bare background "because the space wanted them." |
