The religion of the Lhota is of that type which is vaguely termed Animism. He believes in no Supreme Being who rewards the good and punishes the evil. The deities to whom he sacrifices are some of them neutral, if kept in a good temper with the proper offerings, and some of them definitely malicious. Yet he is very far indeed from being devil-ridden and haunted with ghostly fears. He cheerfully carries out what he conceives to be his religious duties and meets his end like a man when the time comes.

Deities and Spirits. The nearest equivalent to gods is an order of beings called Potso,1 who live in a world like ours, of the earthy floor of which our sky is the underside. The world of the Potsos in turn has a sky which supports yet another Potso world, and so on for an unknown number of layers. The only Potsos who affect us are those in the world immediately above our sky. They resemble men in appearance and have hosts of attendants who are sometimes regarded as their servants and sometimes as their relations. It is believed that just as the Lhotas have their Potsos, so the Semas, Aos and other tribes have theirs. The language of Potsos is different from that of men. Some members of the Tsoboi clan are said to claim to know it. Potsos are believed to visit earth from time to time and hold converse with the village seer (ratsen), coming in pairs with a train of attendants [114]and bringing articles symbolical of the fortune the village is going to enjoy during the year. They send a servant ahead who appears to the ratsen in a dream and tells him that his masters will come on such and such a day. From the time when the warning is received till the Potsos come nothing must be killed in the ratsen’s house, and between these dates he must not go outside the village land, or indulge in sexual intercourse, or eat the flesh of anything killed after he received the warning, though he may eat meat dried before. For their visit he makes ready “pita madhu” (etha soko) and some small fish and rice, and has plantain leaves brought up from the fields for use as cups. On the night when the Potsos are expected all in the village must go to bed early and shut their doors. The ratsen himself sleeps in a room separate from the rest of his family. The Potsos then come and speak to him in a voice which no one else can hear, and show him symbolical articles from which the future can be foretold. In the morning the marks of the spear butts of the Potsos and their servants can be seen outside the ratsen’s door. They are easily distinguishable, it is said, from the ordinary marks of spear butts, for they are much smaller and deeper. This belief seems to show that the Potsos are regarded as coming in material form. The objects brought by the Potsos are generally believed to be taken back by them, but Niroyo village claim that some of their rice is from seed rice given to a ratsen by a Potso. A typical instance of this curious belief that these beings from another world sometimes visit the earth is the supposed visit of Potsos to the ratsen ’Nchemo of Illimyo in April 1919. ’Nchemo reported that two Potsos came with fourteen attendants and brought with them reeds, meaning sunny weather, part of a railway carriage (!), meaning elephants would give trouble, two loads of dark blue thread, meaning that someone would die “apotia,” and a broom, meaning that wind would damage the crops. The day after a village is visited by Potsos is kept as an emung both by the village to which they came and by its neighbours. Formerly if any village was visited in this way all Lhota villages, however distant, kept one day’s emung when [115]they heard the news. Apart from special ceremonies performed to appease or gain the favour of the Rangsis, Sityingo and such-like godlings, it is to the Potsos that prayers are offered in sacrifices. Just as in England huge circular depressions in the hills are often called Devil’s Punchbowls, so the Lhota tends to assign big or curious things to the Potsos. For instance, the polished stone celts which are sometimes found in the fields are regarded as thunderbolts and are called “Potso’s axes” (Potsophü). The long flat seed-case, too, of a certain tree is called “Potso’s weaving-sword” (Potsotsitam).2

Sityingo is regarded as the lord of wild animals, which he keeps just as men keep pigs and cattle. Sometimes he can be heard calling the wild pig, but to hear him is very unlucky. He lives in the jungle and is like a small man, with his head twisted to one side. By his favour men have luck in hunting. Okisityingo (“house-sityingo”) is the good genius of the house. He is like a man, but has enormously long fingers and is spotted all over. He is only seen by men in delirium. So long as he is in a good temper his influence is good, but he can be harmful if due respect is not shown him. It is very unlucky if he leaves the house. Ngazo is another jungle spirit, practically identical with Sityingo. To every village and every man is attached a Rangsi, by whose favour the crops are good. No one has ever seen one or knows what one is like to look at. Just as crops and wild game have their genii, so have the rivers and streams in Tchhüpfu (“water-master”3), a being like a man with hair of enormous length, who lives at the bottom of deep pools and uses human skulls as hearth-stones. Small offerings are made to him by some villages after doing the oyantsoa ceremony. One is believed to inhabit a pool called Tchhüpfu izzü in the Doyang below Morakcho. In the days when men first came out of the earth they were persecuted by a fiend called [116]Khyuham, who ate their children and carried the skulls of his victims about in a basket on his back. Rankhanda, one of the ancestors of the Lhota tribe, managed to shut him up in a hole in the earth, the entrance of which he blocked, some say with a stone, others with a mithan horn. Yet even now a yearly ceremony called Epuetha is performed by every family in order to ward off the evil influence of Khyuham. Almost every illness is put down to the unhallowed attentions of Tsandhramo, invisible fiends who out of sheer malice make men sick by detaining their souls or by introducing hair or bits of wood or small stones into their bodies, making it necessary to call in a ratsen to extract them. The bright rust-coloured mud which is often seen oozing out of cliffs is regarded as the excreta of Tsandhramo. If these patches are sprinkled with dogs’ teeth the fiends will abandon the place. In Lakhuti the custom obtains of leaving a spear sticking through the roof of a house from inside when an inmate is ill. This is supposed to ward off further attacks of evil spirits. During the influenza outbreak of 1918 the village simply bristled with spears. The jungle is believed to be haunted by wailing fiends called Nangkamo. A famous haunt is below the village of Akuk on the northern slope of the range. Men are tempted to follow the wailing. If they do they will be affected with such madness that they will think level ground is steep ground, and steep ground level ground.4 Ramphan, the great Lhota hero, once speared one of these fiends with a red-hot spear, and buried it. In the morning he dug it up and found that though when speared it had the appearance of a man it was now a lizard.5

Respect rather than worship is paid to a huge boulder [117]called Deolung on the north-west side of the path between Lakhuti and Akuk. Everyone who passes it lays a leaf on a stone in front of it. Lakhuti once sacrificed a chicken to it, but the experiment was followed by many deaths in the village and was not repeated. Formerly very solemn oaths were taken on this stone. The story goes that long, long ago Deolung was attacked by another huge boulder called Tarrlung, who cut his head off. But Deolung’s friend Matishi, another boulder, was near, to whom Deolung cried out, “Matishi, Matishi, Tarrlung has cut off my head. Go and waylay him.” So Matishi took a sharpened bamboo as a spear and waylaid Tarrlung and wounded him so seriously that he only had strength to stagger away and toppled into the Doyang near Morakcho. Deolung’s leg is supposed to be somewhere in the plains, but the wound where his head was cut off, and his head itself, now a rough piece of stone, are still pointed out. Close to Deolung and a little to the south is a flat slab of stone known as the grave of Orhendhromo, Deolung’s son, sometimes called Orhendhreni, his daughter. The little escarpment on which Deolung stands is called “Deolung’s wall” (Deolung piku). Matishi is now a big boulder a little distance below the Naga path and to the south-east of it between Deolung and Akuk. It is regarded both as Deolung’s friend still standing guard near him, and as his mithan. A lowing sound heard coming from it forebodes some great disaster. A mark in the sandstone in Akuk village is shown as the mithan’s track, and a natural hole through a rock there as the place where the mithan was tied up. Another rock called Napa is believed once to have been endowed with life and to have walked up from the bed of the Doyang to the place where it now stands on Pyopsü land.6 [118]

Beliefs concerning the Soul and the Life after Death. The Lhota usually regards himself as having two distinct souls called respectively omon and mongyi. The omon, which is visible in the form of the man’s shadow and shows its good sense by disappearing into him when the sky is cloudy and rain threatens, leaves the man some time before death in cases of serious illness. It may just wander about, in which case it can often be induced by the proper ceremonies to return, or it may go straight along the Road of the Dead to the next world, in which case the man dies.

As an example of this belief the following story, told to the writer by a Rephyim man, may be related. The man said: “The Road of the Dead in our village runs past the champo in which I used to sleep. One night when I was lying awake I heard someone go stumbling past towards Wokha Hill, groaning as he went. Then I heard him say, ‘Oh, oh, I cannot walk,’ and recognized the voice of my brother-in-law, who was very ill. I was frightened and shouted and woke all in the champo. My brother-in-law died next day, for his soul (omon) had already gone ahead.” The mongyi leaves a man at the moment of death and goes straight to the World of the Dead, where it joins the omon which has already gone on ahead except in cases of very sudden death. Some men do not distinguish omon and mongyi (lit. “stupid soul”). The fact is that the Lhota does not analyse the details of such an unpleasant certainty as death. The Lhotas also believe in a sort of personal evil destiny called nyok, and when looking at the corpse of a man who has died a violent death will hold bunches of leaves before their faces to prevent his nyok affecting them. It appears to correspond to the Angami temi or rhopfü (cf. Hutton, The Angami Nagas, pp. 98 and 183). A curious belief, apparently at variance with all their beliefs as to dead men walking to the Land of the Dead, is held by Lhotas in common with Semas and Aos. It is that if a man kills a flying squirrel during his life, at his death his soul will fly to the Land of the Dead under the shelter of the wings of the soul of the squirrel. Col. Shakespear records that the Lushais hold a similar belief with regard [119]to a bird called vahluk.7 There are also traces of a belief in the reincarnation of the soul in some lower form of life. No member of a household in which a death has occurred may take the life of any creature, whether animal, bird, or insect, till the days of “genna” are accomplished and the soul has finally left for the Land of the Dead, in case the creature killed should be the dead man in another form. The Aos have a similar belief.8 The Land of the Dead (etchhili) lies under our world and has the bottom of our world for a sky, just as our world lies under the world of the Potsos. There the dead live exactly as men live here, those who have done good deeds here being rich and happy, and those who have done evil deeds being poor and miserable.9 As the sun passes under the earth every evening their day is our night. The entrance to it is a cave (etchhiku) on the precipitous eastern face of Wokha Hill. It is inaccessible and no living man has ever been into the cave, though the story goes that once a man desperate with grief at the death of his nine children from smallpox managed to scramble down to it. There on the floor he found spittle and on the side of the cave he found the smallpox scabs which had been rubbed off against the rock as his children passed in. He could not enter, for he was still alive, but he went away comforted, for he knew that his wife and children had really gone to the Land of the Dead, where he would meet them some day. The cave, which a telescope seems to show does really exist, lies at one end of a narrow, conspicuous stratum of white rock which looks exactly like a path and is known as the Road of the Dead (etchhililan).10 Below it is another [120]similar stratum, also apparently terminating in a cave, which is believed to be the road used by the spirits of dead animals, for animals, too, go to the Land of the Dead. In Yemkha, from whence the roads are clearly seen, it is believed that sometimes at night lights can be observed moving on the upper road when the dead come out with torches to meet new-comers and light them on their way. Some say that the spirits of those who die “apotia,” or at the hands of enemies or by witchcraft, are earthbound and cannot go to the world of the dead. Others say that they go, but by some different road. The dead have knowledge of what goes on in this world and jealously watch the disposal of their property! They can even at times punish the living with sickness. They appear in dreams, sending their omon to the dreamer, for the dead man himself cannot leave the place where he is. As a sign that he has really been, the omon sometimes leaves a present of dead men’s rice (etchhitsok). Zambomo of Pangti still uses rice descended from such a present. It is occasionally necessary to appease the dead. A pig is killed and a share given to a dreamer (hahang), who offers it to the dead man in his dreams. This ceremony is called etchhienya, and is done by anyone who is heir to the whole of a dead man’s property, and when there have been many deaths in a family, or if children die one after the other. Though the dead themselves cannot leave their habitation, the deer they hunt, if hard pressed by dogs, sometimes come right through the earth and appear on the surface of the ground in the form of moles. That is why to find a mole above ground forebodes ill luck, and perhaps even death. Hence the consternation when the writer’s fox-terrier one day laid a dead mole at a Lhota’s feet.11 Similarly, the male of the Little Pied Flycatcher (Cyornis melanoleucus) is regarded as the hornbill of the dead.

Life in the Land of the Dead is certainly not regarded as everlasting, but the Lhota is very vague as to what the next stage is—the truth being that he does not worry [121]himself about the matter. One theory is that men die again and become flies. Another theory is that every man passes through nine successive lives12 and then ceases to exist.

Religion and Magic. The religion of the Lhota teaches no moral code. The blessings it offers him are material, not spiritual. Yet many, many Lhotas lead clean, straight, honest lives and are ever ready to help a lame dog over a stile. It is true that virtue in this world is vaguely believed to be rewarded with happiness in the next, but this belief weighs little with a Naga, who rarely turns his thoughts to what is in store for him after he dies. Whatever it be which causes so many Lhotas to lead virtuous lives it is not their religion. His religion presents itself to a Lhota as a series of ceremonies and observances laid down by custom, any one of which it would be dangerous to omit. Mingled with this idea is the belief in the to the Lhota self-evident maxim that like produces like. If children squirt water from their mouths rain will fall. To pretend that you are carrying a heavy load of rice up to the village will ensure good crops! And so on in every department of life.