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Notwithstanding all my previous experience of hill-men, I was quite unprepared to find such a total absence of cleanliness among (64) these tribes: as Dr Brown remarks "their bodies are ingrained with the accumulated smoke, mud, and filth of a lifetime", and, with the exception of the Sehmahs, they are perpetually smoking dirty clay or wooden pipes, made on a similar principle to that of a Lushai woman's pipe, i.e., the bowl is fitted with a small bamboo receptacle beneath for the tobacco juice, which is collected, mixed with a little water, and carried about in a small tube from which sips are occasionally taken. |
