Understanding The Nagas: A Glimpse Into Their Lives
“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” — Theodore Roosevelt, statesman, politician, conservationist, naturalist, writer and the 26th president of the United States
This article is an attempt to familiarize the readers with the unusual yet intriguing world of the Nagas. Focused on the culture and tradition, it will try to provide some insights into the colorful life of these people.
Nagas are known to not travel much. They ornament themselves differently from the rest of the world, and to make this jewelry, they utilize a material that originates about 2,500 km away from their land. Aren’t these two points contradictory and interesting at the same time?
Tracing the Beginning
The question arises — from where these Nagas came? Located on the border of India (Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and some parts of Assam) and Myanmar, the Naga hills have been the home of these people with around 22 languages and 300 dialects.
Many scholars around the world are trying to develop an understanding of the lifestyle of the Nagas, and several have related them to far-off places such as the Solomon Islands, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Borneo.
One of the oldest pictures taken of a house situated at the Naga hills, in 1892, has a slogan in their native language which can be translated to — it is the house of a rich Angami (Angamis are a major Naga ethnic group). Among these people, this richness is not of the materialistic world, but of the cultural world. The person who lived in that place was a great warrior, brought the required fertility and prosperity to the village, and did well for the villagers. Such was the lifestyle of the Nagas!
Deciphering the Naga Culture
To understand the history of any community or region, one must start with the study of its cultural materials.
Almost all the essential information about the Nagas was hidden from the entire world for many, many years because of the introduction of the Inner Line Permit system in 1873. Moreover, actions like the repeated burning of villages and large scale collections of the cultural objects (that were crucial to the learning of the Naga origin and migration) from this area before it was closed for the outsiders in 1947, have created a huge gap in exploring and analyzing their history. But, since the last two decades, scholars from Nagaland University are doing interesting archaeological works in this place. Based on this, the northern Naga hills are dated to be older than the southern Naga hills, with a difference of more than 1000 years. To our fortune, several cultural objects and photographs, taken during the 18th and 19th centuries, are stored in different museums across Europe and the USA. These can be studied and analyzed to know more about the past of this region and its people.
The Secret of the Naga Ornaments
The Nagas were great hunters who went to the extent of taking human heads from enemy villages by risking their lives so that they can bring fertility to their village and earn the right to ornament themselves. These pieces not only fulfilled the decorative needs but also categorized them as heroes or commoners. Indicators of strict tradition, the Naga ornaments were markers of contact and long-distance trade and were probably the only commodities acquired from far-off places. Ornaments are a part of the identity of the Nagas (kind of a signature indicating from where they belong) and were very important to them. Therefore, these are a perfect means to answer critical questions regarding the origin and migration patterns of the Naga people.
In the present times, these ornaments are bought from the Bay of Bengal, the South Indian coast, Khambhat in Gujarat, and Dhaka. But, we are unaware of the places from where these were bought earlier — before the Nagas came in contact with the American missionaries and British administrators in the 1830s. Before that the world hardly had communication with the Naga hills, other than the ornaments originating from far off places getting traded to the Nagas!
If we know in detail about the dresses and ornaments of the Naga groups, we can differentiate one group from the other. The style to wear a dress and the selection of the raw material for making the ornaments and dresses are different in different groups. For example, if Sema people used a specific-shaped glass, the Angamis were partial about stone, and Tangkhuls liked organic seeds. Quartz was also popular in some groups. So beautiful is the diversity of these people…
Delving Deeper: A Look at the Burial Practices
An understanding of the grave practices of Nagas is another factor to know more about them. Sketches by S. E. Peal in 1882 and G. M. Godden in 1897 showed platform burial, which is identical in many areas of the northern Naga hills. There are bamboos, on top of which there is a platform. The dead body is inside and there is a covering of palm leaves on it. The grave goods like the ornaments (which are extremely important to the Naga people) are not buried but are hanged. In contrast, some other villages bury their dead. The body is kept within a square platform made of stones about 3–4 feet above the ground. The grave goods are hanged near the grave. Once the body decomposes, these goods are taken away. Moreover, some other Nagas decompose the corpse inside their houses. Groups like the Aos and Konyaks use boat-shaped coffins and there is evidence of smoke-drying the corpses inside their homes. Furthermore, holes are made in the utensils of the deceased to render them useless for thieves.
What do the Nagas think about the afterlife? They believe that the soul needs another body and hence, they build houses or wooden statues representing the former body. The soul can inhabit these objects on its journey to heaven. It is assumed that the time estimated for the completion of this voyage is equal to the time taken by the body to decompose.
In some places, after decomposition of the corpse, the skull is removed and thereafter, no ceremony or offering is made to the body. While in others, the skull is taken for secondary burial as it is considered more important. Before being buried again, it is cleaned and decorated. For decoration purposes, the Naga people make holes in the skull. For this second round of burial practice, commoners had pot burials. Such practices are prevalent in Niaunyu, New Guinea, Marquesas, Nicobar Islands, and Tonga. There is a vital aspect to understand here. The holes made in the skull can be a result of these burial practices. But, a paleopathologist, who does not have proper knowledge of these customs, can interpret these marks to arise from the use of weapons on the skull — a reason very different from the actual one!
An interesting point to mention here is that the offerings that go with the grave are most often the replicas of the ornaments (of people who died) and not the originals. Say, instead of craft-pieces made from elephant tusks, they put their wooden copies. At other times, after the mourning period, the ornaments, clothing, and weapons were brought back from the graves and were symbolically replaced by cheaper and old ones. This brings us face to face with some questions — how authentic are the Naga graves? How can the archaeologists say that whatever the person used during their life was the same as what they were buried with? In terms of studying these grave goods, we do not know if they still exist or some of them have been stolen, and this creates problems in exploring the rich Naga history.
Hurdles in the Way of Research
Wooden, tooth, bone, and bead ornaments and weapons found in the graves after all these years have been vital to identifying various aspects of the lifestyle of the Nagas. A lack of access to these objects hampers the fieldwork of many archaeologists, which in turn, leads to the spread of partial and incomplete information in the world.
Many Nagas have converted to Christianity, which has led to a change in their traditions. For them, burial activities take place according to the principles of the church, which discourage the offering of ornaments. Also, many people do not like death ceremonies to be documented since it is an emotional issue. Moreover, several others are not in favor of allowing the outsiders to enter and disturb the spirits of their dead. There is also the threat that outsiders can steal the expensive grave offerings!
To Conclude…
Many questions still need to be answered and many issues still need to be addressed — a lot of points are still required to be deciphered so that we can understand the world of the Nagas better. Their fascination for seashells indicates the possibility of bygone settlements near the sea, whereas, their specially designed spears are suggestive of relationships with Igorots and the Philippine Islands. On the one hand, traditions of headhuntings and platform burials connect them with Borneo and Dayaks, while on the other, the use of lion-loom associates them with Indonesia. These similarities can provide hints of what might have happened.
The best possible way, perhaps, to know more about the culturally and traditionally rich lives of the Nagas is to explore the aspects that are the last to change, such as their ornaments and customs associated with graves…
“Our knowledge of the past is only as good as our knowledge of the present.” — Lewis Binford, renowned archaeologist
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This article is based on one of the sessions (delivered by Alok Kumar Kanungo, faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline) of the Virtual Seminar Series by IIT Gandhinagar. It is an online program started by the Institute in the wake of the current pandemic as a means to engage the people so that they can learn about a diversity of topics from the comfort of their homes, in an interesting manner. (The 2nd article of this series can be found here. For the 4th article, please visit here.)
