226
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
the pocrest among these Kukis. When a death takes place, the whole village turns out weeping, the corpse is washed, flowers are put on his breast, a dish of rice is prepared, and the wife or nearest female relative raises the dead man to a sitting posture, and embracing him places a few grains of rice between his lips; this done, the body is carried to the banks of the river, and burnt.
A
piece of cloth, curiously punctured in fine holes, giving it at a distance the appearance of fine damask work, is suspended on a long bamboo, and the ceremony of cremation is over. But by far the worst and most offensive feature of the Kuki people, especially of those of the Tipera hills, is the amount of disease with which they are almost universally infected, and its hideous variety. Hill tribes, generally, are notoriously filthy in their habits and entire mode of life, but the Tipera Kukis surpass them all in this respect.
Their excessive filthiness
generates numerous diseases, of which the cutaneous affections constitute the mildest type. Most of them are more or less infected with leprosy, ele phantiasis, cancer, or some other inveterate skin disease. The elephantiasis prevalent among them is generally accompanied with grapes at the angle between the foot and the leg. The universal pre
[July 5, 1872.
in the map of the country. Two years hence you look for the village, and it is not to be found. The twenty, or two hundred souls that formed it have gone miles away, and built dwellings for themselves in some new and unknown spot. Grass and bam boos are plentiful everywhere in the hills, and a new village requiring little else may be run up in two or three days. The nature of the cultivation among these people is quite in keeping with the uncertain mode of their loca tion. The bamboo jungle is first felled, and al lowed to dry in the sun ; this takes about a fort night; it is then set on fire, after which the stumps are removed. No sooner has a good shower
of rain fallen than men, women, and children pro ceed with tools and seed to these plots, which are generally at long distances from their hamlets.
Their principal tools are daos, with which oblique cuts are made by single strokes, and in the pits so formed, which rarely exceed three to four inches in depth, the seeds are dropped, either paddy by itself, or paddy, cotton, and corn altogether, in the same pit, just as the cultivators feel disposed to grow, or may happen to require. It is our firm conviction that, to bring these people within the range of civil lized influence, we must begin, not with an attempt
valence of disease of some sort or other, besides
to teach them to read and to write, but to instruct
being attributable, as we said, to want of cleanliness and indiscriminate feeding, is also due, though only secondarily, to bad air and bad water. Dogs, elephants, snakes, poisonous insects, and poisoned fish are regarded as legitimate food, and even coveted. There is a certain tree in the jungles, the
them and persuade them to adopt a certain and re munerative style of cultivation, and then we may
branches of which are cut down and thrown into
the Lushais have a dialect of their own which is
the first pool of water, natural or artificial, having fish ; these in a little time die, and both the fish and the poisoned water are used by the Kukis and the Tiperas. Although we have no accurate data to go upon, yet we may safely assume that with a people like the Kukis, whose filthy habits produce such ineffably loathsome and hideous disease, it is not likely that the rules of morality are strictly ob served. For, daring as savage natures generally are, and conscious of their physical superiority to the frail inhabitants of the contiguous plains, the Ku kis are, nevertheless, a degenerate race, and it is not, therefore, difficult to understand how vice should
more or less intelligible all over the hills of Tipera and Chatagong.—Bengal Times.
prevail among them to so fearful and unblushing an extent, as to re-act, with deadly power, upon the entire population. Nor has any systematic attempt, that we are aware of, been made to bring civilizing influences to bear upon their savage state. A great drawback to any such attempt, we suppose, is the restless, roving disposition that is constantly urging them to shift from place to place ; and the very crude and unsatisfactory mode of cultivation com mon among them, is but in keeping with their migratory tendencies. For instance, here stands a Kuki village to-day ; its relative position is ascer tained ; it is surveyed, and its name carefully noted
be sure that, the fields on which care is bestowed
will not be readily abandoned for new and untried spots as now, and the adoption of a settled mode of life will follow as a matter of course.
Our friends
THE TRIWYAR FESTIVAL.
At the annual festival, known as the Sabathas tanam thousands upon thousands of people, taking advantage of the cheap return tickets granted by the
Great Southern of India Railway, crowd to Trivyar, a place about eight miles from Tanjor, to take part in the festivities in honour of Tirunanthi, the presid
ing deity. To estimate the number of visitors and devotees on such an occasion would be next to im
possible, for not only from Tanjor itself and its su
burbs, but from places far distant do these worship pers come, to bathe in the sacred waters known as
the Pancha nathi, rendered ten times more sacred
by the occasion, and superstitiously believed to pos sess all healing qualities. The sacred temple at Trivyar, in the court-yard of which the sacred tank containing the Pancha mathi is situated, was built by a Rishi named Nyamisar, at the divine cost.
This Rishi, we are told, was once doing penance before a Siva Lingam situated beneath a Vilca
maram, supposed to have existed from eternity, as no one knew how it came there, for planted it was not. During his severe penance the Rishi contem
