Davis noted the beginnings of the degradation of this custom, and observed that the desire for head-hunting was more the fault of the women than of the men, who were laughed at if they turned out at the village festivals without the decorations assigned to the successful warrior.[1] I am myself inclined to believe that success in head-hunting was at one time, if not essential to marriage, regarded at least as a token of having passed from adolescence to maturity. At Maram I heard a folk-tale which is narrated by M'Culloch,[2] and which portrays the chief sending forth his sons, who claimed the inheritance, to take a head, and awarding the prize to the beloved but unwarlike elder son who had a head ready in a safe place, while the younger son, the bolder man, went far to win the trophy. The tale was doubtless invented primarily to explain the dual chiefship of this village, but, when we find among the Tangkhuls a custom which makes the marriage of the son the occasion for bringing into play the laws of inheritance and for necessitating the retirement of the village chief in favour of his son, a young vigorous man in the plenitude of health and strength,—thus securing for an important office a continuity of vigorous service to which the utmost value is attached,—we may agree that success on a head-hunting raid would fairly serve as a mark of manhood and as qualifying for promotion from one stage in tribal life to the higher stage of married man. Examination of the details of the village rites and structure shows quite clearly that we have, first, the necessary stage where the children are too young to leave maternal care and where they remain at home, then the stage where they leave home at night and sleep, and on high days and holidays eat, apart from their parents in separate houses, and then the matrimonial stage where they begin their married life with severe prohibitions
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Head-Hunting among Hill Tribes of Assam.
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