1 86 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



death, and Dudukal, generally benevolent, operating through his 

 wife Fapite. 



"The other Kuki tribes," writes Mr Soppitt, "have much the 

 same religious belief, though the head gods are 

 _ differently named. In fact in those of all the semi- 



liefs no Proof savage tribes a great similarity is invariably found 



of Affinity. . J 3 . . 



a head god, his assistants, other powerful deities, 

 working for the good and evil of mankind, and their aids minor 

 gods ; means of propitiation, sacrifice. This similarity cannot be 

 said to carry much weight in an argument in favour of a common 

 origin of many of these tribes, for the reason that the beliefs and 

 superstitions are those that would naturally be acquired by a 

 people living in the same way, more or less in the same kind 

 of country, and subject to the same diseases, epidemical visitations 

 and calamities ____ A tribe settling in a new country would soon 

 change its belief, especially when that belief was a crude and 

 more or less unformed one. Thus removing to a part of a 

 province where storms were unusually severe, a people would 

 naturally adopt a 'god of storms' 1 ." These views, confirming 

 those advanced in Ethnology, p. 216 sq., may be recommended to 

 those ethnologists who still contend for the common origin of 

 widely separated branches of mankind, the American for instance 

 and the Mongol or Japanese, on the ground of resemblances in 

 their religious beliefs. All this will never prove anything but 

 the common psychic unity of all members of the human family. 

 Through these Naga and Kuki aborigines we pass without any 

 break of continuity from the Bhotiya populations 

 Himalayan slopes to those of Indo-China. 



tions in indo- Here also, as indeed in nearly all semi-civilised 



China. 



lands, peoples at various grades of culture are 

 found dwelling for ages side by side rude and savage groups 

 on the uplands or in the more dense wooded tracts, settled 

 communities with a large measure of political unity (in fact 

 nations and peoples in the strict sense of those terms), on the 

 lowlands, and especially along the rich alluvial riverine plains of 

 this well watered region. The common theory is that the wild 



1 Op. dt. p. 13. 



