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The Lhota Nagas

Chapter 14: Loans.
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About This Book

The author provides an ethnographic account of a Naga hill tribe, documenting settlement patterns, defensive works such as ridgetop sites, ditches, palisades and night gates, village-naming practices tied to landscape and incidents, paths and bridge construction linking villages, and the internal layout of long-street villages with communal ritual stones and household arrangements. The book describes social life including pig and cattle rearing, domestic sanitation practices, ceremonial observances for the dead, mechanisms of inter-village warfare and alliances, and material culture such as tools, bridges and housing, based on several years' residence and local informants.

[Contents]

Loans.

The rate of interest on loans varies according to the nature of the thing lent. That on money is usually 50 per cent. simple interest, running for two years only. The interest on rice is four baskets a year for every six baskets borrowed. The interest has to be paid year by year till the principal has been returned. A debt of seed paddy must be paid before all other debts. The highest rate of interest is demanded for salt, for which 100 per cent. per annum compound interest has to be paid. The result is that loans of salt are promptly repaid.