530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



the deer he killed, which started hostility between the man and the 

 tiger. This story is found in a more or less identical form among 

 the Angami, Sema, Lhota, and Rengma Naga tribes, the Sema 

 making the tiger search for the corpse of his dead mother to eat it. 



Man and the tiger are, however, still regarded as brothers, and if 

 an Angami kills a tiger he says, " The gods have killed a tiger in the 

 jungle," and never " I have killed a tiger," while the priest of the 

 village proclaims a day of abstention from work " on account of the 

 death of an elder brother." 



After killing a tiger or leopard the Angami wedges the mouth open 

 with a stick and puts the head into running water, so that if the 

 animal tries to tell the spirits the name of the man who killed him 

 all that can be heard is an inarticulate gurgling in the water. The 

 Sema puts a stone as well as a wedge into the mouth to prevent the 

 tiger lying in wait for him after death and devouring him on their 

 way to the abode of the dead, while he also becomes entitled to wear 

 a collar of boar's tusks, the insignia of a successful warrior, as though 

 he had killed a man. 



In some tribes whole clans are associated with the tiger; thus 

 among the Changs the whole Hagiyang Sept of the Chongpu clan is 

 in some vague way intimately connected with tigers (not in this 

 case with leopards) and is apparently of lycanthropic tendencies. 

 At the same time it is taboo for all true Changs to touch tigers at 

 all, far more to combine, as men of other tribes do, to hunt them. 

 If a Chang meet a tiger in the jungle, he will warn it to get out of 

 the way before throwing a spear or shooting at it. Should he kill 

 one, he is under a taboo for thirty days, and treats the head in the 

 same way as an Angami, putting it with its mouth wedged open 

 under falling water. 



The Chang will eat leopard flesh, but not, of course, that of the 

 tiger. The Sema will eat neither, the Angami both — but it must be 

 cooked outside the house. 



When it comes to the practice of lycanthropy, we find that the 

 Angami Nagas, though believing that the practice exists and can be 

 acquired, do not indulge in it themselves. Like other tribes, they 

 believe in a village far to the east peopled solely by lycanthropists, 

 a belief which is, perhaps, based on the claims of some clan like 

 the Chongpu-Hagiyang of the Changs, in which all members of the 

 community are believed to possess this faculty of taking tiger or 

 other forms in a greater or less degree. But the Angami also believe 

 in the existence of a spring, by some said to be of blood or of reddish- 

 colored water, from which whoso drinks becomes a lvcanthropist. 

 They believe that the people of the neighborhood know and shun 

 this spring, but that the danger to strangers is great. Moreover, 



