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Mongsemdi: morungs, pig slaughter, cotton, fire-making, jhuming, dhan |
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We stayed at Mongsemdi all day & a second night. Mills went off to try to bag a Barking deer (muntjak), but without success. I spent most of the morning & afternoon in the village, sketching & photographing. I visited another morung, quite a fine one, in the Ao style, with carved pillar before the angle-bow front. I photo'd this morung from the left side. At the back was a built-up platform, & inside the front entrance there was the characteristic transverse rampart |
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Passing along the main 'street' I came upon a pig-killing operation. The unfortunate beast was tied up to a carrying pole, & having been turned so that the right side was uppermost, it was being despatched by forcing a bamboo skewer into its heart - very deliberately - a most unpleasant sight - and sound. When I returned, not long after, the pig was already partly cooked & was being divided up according to rule. I photo'd part of the main 'street', and also the 'Tortoise Rock', a huge, rounded rock, resembling a tortoise & situated in the main 'street'. Offerings are made to this rock particularly after harvest & when new jhums are being made. Several women were weaving white cotton cloth, cleaning cotton from seeds & flicking it out with a small bow, the string of which was plucked with the fingers. |
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In the gaonbura's house I saw a youth making fire with stick & cane thong. He failed a few times, but eventually he got a spark in 25 seconds. I brought his apparatus away. I went down to some jhum fields before lunch. The crops had been reaped, the long stubble was standing. Small dhan houses were dotted about the fields, with a fenced-off compartment for temporary storing & a roofed-over space in front, open at the sides, used as a threshing floor, the grain being trodden out by women. A horizontal steadying bar is used, & this must never be destroyed. Fences and rough hedges bound the fields. Late into the evening in the village several men were pounding dhan in double wooden mortars with |
