VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 185 



to kill, &c. There are also numerous verbal formative elements 

 given by Mr McCabe himself, so that Angami must clearly be 

 included in the agglutinating order. To this order also belongs 

 beyond all doubt the Kuki-Lushai of the neighbouring North 

 Kachar Hills and parts of Nagaland itself, the 



common speech in fact of the RangkJiols, Jansens, " 8 



Lushai, Roeys and other hill peoples, collectively 

 called Kuki by the lowlanders, and Dzo by themselves 1 . The 

 highly agglutinating character of this language is evident from 

 the numerous conjugations given by Mr Soppitt' 2 , for some of 

 which he has no names, but which may be called Acceleratives, 

 Retar datives, Complementatties, and so on. Thus with the root 

 ahong, come, and infix jam, slow, is formed the retardative ndng 

 ahongjdmrangmoh, " will-you-come-slowly ? " (rang, future, moh, 

 interrogative particle). 



These Kuki people have a curious theory of the Creation, 

 according to which the face of the earth was 

 originally covered with one vast sea, inhabited by 

 a gigantic worm. One day the Creator, passing 

 over this worm, dropped a small piece of clay, saying, " Of this 

 I mean to make a land and people it." The worm replied, 

 " What ! you think to make a habitable land of a small piece 

 like this ! Why, it is absurd. Look here, I can swallow it ! ' : 

 But the lump immediately passing out of his body grew and grew 

 until it became the world we now see. Then man sprang out of 

 the ground by the will of the gods, of whom there are three at the 

 head of the Kuki pantheon, Lambra, the creator, without whose 

 consent nothing can be done by the others ; Golarai, god of 



1 Almost hopeless confusion continues to prevail in the tribal nomenclature 

 of these multitudinous hill peoples. The official sanction given to the terms 

 Kuki and Lushai as collective names may be regretted, but seems now past 

 remedy. Kuki is unknown to the people themselves, while Lushai is only the 

 name of a single group proud of their head-hunting proclivities, hence they call 

 themselves, or perhaps are called Lu-Shai, "Head-Cutters," from lit head, 

 sha to cut (G. H. Damant). Other explanations suggested by Mr C. A. Soppitt 

 {Kuki-Lushai Tribes, with an Outline Grammar of the Rangkhol- Lushai 

 Language, Shillong, 1887) cannot be accepted. 



' 2 Op. cit. 



