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Chapter Two. The Social Structure and its Units |
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village as ritual unit, village council |
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The village council also decided matters of ritual and ceremony and fixed the dates for communal agricultural rites. In ritual affairs, more than in any others, the village acted as a unit. The seasonal feasts and days of abstention from work '(genna)' were observed simultaneously by all wards of a village, and there were several ritual experts who acted on behalf of the entire village. Thus, in Wakching the 'niengba' of one of the five men's houses proclaimed the commencement of agrarian rites throughout the entire village, and when a captured human head was brought in, he performed the rites irrespective of the morung affiliation of the successful head-hunter. |
