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Chapter Twenty-seven. Return to Nagaland |
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power and purity of blood of the great Angs |
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The great Angs of such villages as Mon, Chui, or Tang are autocratic rulers of a type virtually absent among the tribal populations of the rest of India. The insistence on the purity of the royal blood as the indispensable condition for the recognition of high status reminds one of the sacred chiefs of Polynesia rather than of tribal rulers in any part of Southern Asia. The supreme position of the Konyak chiefs, which they maintained for countless generations by the careful arrangements of political marriage-alliances between the lineages of the highest rank, is no longer secure, however. |
