Food.
Rice is the staple food, but some relish, even if it be only jungle leaves boiled with chilies and salt, is always eaten with it. Meat is preferred if obtainable, but the Lhota will eat most things at a pinch. His diet includes the meat of all domestic animals and most wild animals and birds, fish, both fresh and dried, bee and hornet grubs, large spiders, a kind of beetle, white ants, cultivated plants and innumerable jungle leaves and berries. Certain things are forbidden, but villages near the plains are much less particular in this respect than those on the inner ranges. The general reason why certain animals and birds are not eaten is either that they are obviously unclean or because they are thought likely to impart their properties to the eater or to his children. Generally speaking old people can eat things which young people cannot, because it does not much matter what happens to them and in any case they will have no more children. Tigers and leopards are absolutely forbidden to all because they eat men. Leopard cats can be eaten by old people who no longer cultivate. Were a young man to eat it he would get poor crops. Wild dog [75]if eaten causes a raging thirst. Phiyosao of Akuk ate only a little of the skin of one, but he had to leave the village school because he could never sit through a lesson without going out for a drink. Whoever eats or even kills an otter will never be able to get his fields to burn properly.33 None but very old people may touch, much less eat, either the big or little flying squirrel (Petaurista yunnanensis and Pteromys aboniger). Anyone who does so will frequently be guilty of indecent behaviour with the opposite sex of his own clan. Several kinds of birds are forbidden. The Large Streaked Spiderhunter (Arachnothera magna) is only eaten by very old people “because it is such a very funny-looking bird, and has such a very long beak.” The local species of minivet (Pericrocotus brevirostris) is forbidden to all because the cocks are supposed to have got their scarlet markings from being splashed with human blood. The Velvet-fronted Blue Nuthatch (Sitta frontalis) goes about in little flocks and is such a confiding little bird that if one is killed the rest of the flock will wait near till they are killed too. Therefore if a man were to eat one, one death in his household would be followed by a series of deaths. A solitary old man or woman can, of course, eat this bird with impunity. The Whitecapped Redstart (Chimarrhornis leucocephalus) and Whiteheaded Babbler (Gampsorhynchus rufulus) are not eaten because they would cause the eater to become grey-headed. Parrots and crow-tits (Parodoxornis) are not eaten because of the shape of their beaks. The eater’s children would be everlastingly pinching their friends. Scimitar babblers (Pomatorhinus) if eaten would make the eater unable to remember his dreams and so deprive him of an important guide in life. The clan of anyone who ate a sun-bird (Æthopyga) would dwindle in numbers, for sun-birds used to be as big as fowls, but are now the smallest of all birds. Swiftlets and swallows are [76]never still. The children of anyone who ate the flesh of these birds would be idle and always wanting to run about and play. The flesh of the Tree or House Sparrow is said to cause the itch. The Red-headed Trogon (Harpactes erythrocephalus) is not eaten because it is supposed to have got its brilliant colouring from human blood. Owlets (Scops) are not eaten owing to the extraordinary belief that they hatch their eggs by lying on their backs on them. The nightjar when disturbed only flies a short way and then settles on the ground again as if inviting one to follow. In this way it used to lead men on and on like a will-o’-the-wisp till they found themselves in an ambush and were killed. Therefore nightjars are not eaten. The Green Magpie (Cissa chinensis) is not eaten owing to a supposed habit of sitting on the bamboo erections built over graves. The loud laughing cry of the Himalayan White-crested Laughing Thrush (Garrulax leucolophas) is particularly sudden and startling. Were a man to eat its flesh he would become nervous in the jungle and would jump whenever a twig or a leaf dropped near him. The cry of the Long-tailed Broadbill (Psarisomus dalhousiæ) is a sign of rain, and whoever eats its flesh will always have bad weather when he goes to work in his fields. The hoopoe is such a curious bird that to eat it might mean disaster to the clan. Hawks are continually dropping excreta. Whoever ate one would spit continually.34 The Rufous-bellied Hawk Eagle (Lophotriorchis kieneri) is forbidden to all but old people who expect to have no more children, for sores appear on the heads of the eater’s children. The two species of Racket-tailed Drongo (Dissemurus paradiseus and Bhringa remifer) are only eaten by old people, for as they have two very long conspicuous tail-feathers, so whoever ate their flesh would only have two children. The Indian Roller, commonly called the Blue Jay, is only eaten by old people, for the children of the eater would be as noisy as the bird itself. Ashy Swallow-Shrikes (Artamus fuscus) have a habit of sitting on branches in rows, each bird touching its neighbour. [77]It is therefore eaten by none but very old people, for were any young man or woman to eat it he or she would never be able to sit alone, but would always want to go and sit cuddled up against one of the other sex, a habit full of possibilities of trouble. The flesh of the Great Indian Hornbill (Dichoceros bicornis) is absolutely forbidden to members of the Tompyaktserre phratry, and is very rarely eaten by members of other phratries. The bird has a croaking note, and were a man to whom its flesh is forbidden to eat it he would die of violent hiccoughs. Of reptiles the python is eaten by all in the villages near the plains, but elsewhere it is only eaten by old people. (Even villages near the plains never speak of it as “python” (ongam) when talking of it as an article of diet, but always call it by the politer name of sosiyo, “long meat.”) It is believed that black marks are liable to appear on the back of the eater, who will be semi-paralysed and only able to move his body slowly like a python. A Rephyim man called Lobenthang is supposed to have been affected in this way. Snakes other than the python are forbidden to all. Old women may eat the same things as old men, but there are a few kinds of meat which men may eat, but young and middle-aged women may not. These include serow, wild mithan, buffalo, bear, elephant, monkey, white-browed gibbon (“huluk”) and pangolin. Most of these are forbidden for no reason which is known now,35 but gibbon is prohibited because these animals are supposed to have no more than a single young one once in nine years, and this peculiarity would assuredly pass to the eater. In some villages these prohibitions are only observed at the time of pregnancy. [78]
Rice is invariably cooked separately from the meat or whatever is to be eaten with it. Meat and vegetables are boiled together with a lavish allowance of chilies and salt. Practically all food is boiled, though maize is roasted and eaten cold and plantains are roasted in their skins. A very favourite relish is bamboo pickle (dhrüchong) made of the hearts of young bamboo shoots pounded up with water and then dried, and boiled again when required. Though the Lhota prefers his food fresh he will eat both meat and fish which is pretty far gone. The flesh, entrails, blood and skin of an animal are eaten—in fact, practically everything except the hair. The men who went to France with the Naga Labour Corps thought our method of cleaning an animal and throwing away the offal most wasteful. Meat is stored by cutting it into small pieces and smoking it over the fire. In this way it will keep for a year.