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Description of Hebulimi with its mixed ethnic traits |
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18/2/1926 To Hebulimi. I let the coolies go round by Zulhami as they wanted to and said it was the easier route, it is certainly the longer and is about 10 miles. I went through Chesholimi, probably only 7 miles, but it includes two steep climbs and one very long and steep descent. I had a case to dispose of at Chesholimi but even so got in before all the coolies had arrived. It was raining but cleared up in the evening. |
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Hebulimi is a curious mixture of Sema and Angami. Nearly if not quite all the inhabitants are Sema by origin and Sema is their domestic language, but they wear Angami clothes for the most part and bore their ears and cut their hair like Angamis. Like Angamis they put up house-horns and like the Semas the Aghuza, bamboo poles carved with cane leaves. There is some other element I think which belongs to neither tribe. Some of the houses were built in the Rengma style with a low apse-like porch quite distinct from Angami or Sema houses, and they had a type of forked post which I have seen nowhere else. It is called ilikiba and is erected when a mithan sacrifice is accompanied by a dance of women. The forks each end in an ornament said to represent a hornbill's feather, thus reminding me rather of the Ao forked post in which the whole fork has evolved into a hornbill's feather. As, however, the Christians have now gained a footing in Hebulimi, what is left of their former culture may soon be expected to disappear. |
