The Nagas

Hill Peoples of Northeast India

Project Introduction The Naga Database

manuscript - Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, Naga diary two

caption: Yonglong to do the initiation ceremony; pig sacrifice
medium: diaries
person: ShankokYongang/ of WakchingYonglong/ of Wakching
ethnicgroup: Konyak
location: Wakching
date: 23.10.1936
production:
person: Furer-Haimendorf
date: 2.6.1936-11.7.1937
note: translated from german by Dr Ruth Barnes
acquirer:
person: School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London
text: Meanwhile several of his relatives brought a chunga of rice each as an addition to the feast. Yonglong who later did the initiation ceremony had already been here but now had gone to Shankok's house. We too are going there now where several men sit down together eating pig meat and rice in the back room of the house not in the large living room where the hearth is. Yonglong is among them, a middle aged man who does not seem exactly imposing. (155) The pig's head already intended for him is hanging on the wall. Only three of the six people whose sons or brothers are entering the morung can afford to kill a pig. The three pigs heads are now carried to Yonglong's house by Yongang, Shankok and a third man who had slaughtered a pig. Each of the three has a banana leaf bowl in his hand filled with rice beer, and in it a longish leaf. His mother comes out of Yonglong's house, takes the head and has ready a chunga into which the three empty their bowls of rice beer. Then she pours water into the empty bowls. The three now stand in a triangle to each other, wave the bowls towards each other and say "He, He, He, Ha, Ha, Ha. May my rice beer increase. May my rice increase. May all enemies, all head-hunters, all Angs, eat of it". This means may I feed their (that is captured head) with it. Then they tear up the bowls and allow the water to drip on the ground.