i64 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



practice to which a parallel also existed among the head-hunting tribes 

 of Kafiristan, where rice was showered on returning warriors, no doubt 

 as a fertility rite comparable to the throwing of rice at a European wedding. 

 The wearing of hair and teeth taken from an enemy's head ^^ is reported 

 by Waterhouse from Fiji and, in the case of hair, is still practised by the 

 head-hunting tribes of Assam, who, at any rate in the case of the Konyak 

 Nagas, seem at one time also to have worn enemy teeth,^^ while they still 

 like the Fijian warriors wear bleached pandanus leaves ^^ on their legs. 

 In Fiji,^* as in the Naga hills,^^ a plantain tree is a common euphemism 

 for a human being for decapitation, etc., and the men over whom the 

 Fijian war canoes were launched were actually tied to plantain trees to 

 serve as rollers, which suggests a possible origin for the synonym. It was 

 usual in the Naga hills for a village making peace, when its tale of heads 

 was less than that of the other party to the negotiations, to demand so many 

 ' plantain trees ' to equalise matters, and to receive them in the form of 

 slaves, who were decapitated to make the numbers equal on each side. 



Many close parallels between Assam and Fiji are also to be found 

 associated in one form or another with the cult of the dead. Brewster 

 notes the existence in Fiji of a sort of ancestor worship combined with 

 phallic forms and in some cases with an origin from a phallic rock or 

 round water-worn stones. ^^ Identical cults exist in all parts of the Naga 

 hills ^'^ and are to be found as far south as the Arakan hill tracts. ^^ 

 Phallic stone cists are made for the skulls of the dead in some Naga 

 villages ^® and over these cists ceremonies are performed to obtain the 

 birth of children, just as in Fiji a barren woman oils and garlands a 

 phallic stone for the same purpose. Both in Fiji and in the Naga hills 

 ancestor spirits take the form of moths. In both areas there is a general 

 belief in the path to be followed by the dead souls to the other world and 

 in the perils that beset it,*° while the Fijian belief that the piercing of 

 ears is necessary for recognition by relatives in the next world, *i or at 

 least to avoid degradation therein, is reproduced by the Sema Nagas in 

 Assam,*^ just as the Ao ^^ reproduce the Fijian belief ** in the ultimate 

 fate of the unmarried who succumb to the demon beside the road, as a 

 defence against whom the Fijian buries a club with a dead warrior and 

 the Naga a spear or a dao. 



31 Waterhouse, II, 314. 



3- Owen, Notes on the Naga Tribes in communication with Assam (Calcutta, 

 1844), p. 15. 



33 Seemann, 31. 



3* Brewster, 75, 234. Cf. Ellis, III, 1, 317. Where the expression 'long 

 plantain ' is used in exactly the same way. 



8* Mills, II, 278, 279 n. 



^^ Brewster, 89 ; Waterhouse, I, 89. 



3' Hutton, V ; Mills, II, passim, [v. index, s.v. ' stones '). 



38 Fryer, G. B., 1878, ' Khyeng People of Sandoway,' Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 

 No. 1. 



39 Hutton, VIII. 



^" Williams, II, 243 sq. ; Brewster, 287; Hutton, I, 186, 414 sq., 417; II, 

 211 sq. ; Mills, I, n8 sqq. 



*i Brewster, 287 ; Williams, I, 322 ; II, 247. 



" Hutton, II, 235. ^3 Mills, II, 228. 



^' Frazer, I, 464 Williams, II, 243 sq. 



