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Chapter Two. The Social Structure and its Units |
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example of divided loyalties in village morungs |
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When several families of Tanhai, a village tributary to the Oukheang, emigrated from Tanhai to Tamlu, a village south of Wakching, they sought refuge in the Ang-ban ward as they passed through Wakching. The story runs that the Oukheang men had sworn to kill every Tanhai man who tried to leave their zone of influence, but a dense mist obscured the immigrants as they approached Wakching, and they reached the Ang morung undetected. There, they were safe from their infuriated overlords. As the path from Wakching to Tamlu belongs not to the Oukheang but to the Balang and Bala morungs, the Oukheang men could not prevent the Tanhai people from proceeding to Tamlu without provoking a conflict with the other Wakching morungs. |
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This tradition undoubtedly has a historical basis, for the people of one Tamlu morung still speak the Tanhai language. It highlights, moreover, the strain which the political independence and separate alliances of individual morungs must have on occasion imposed on the unity of a village. |
