178 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



and sacrosanct chiefs ; chiefs who have to be carried sometimes lest they 

 touch the ground and destroy the fertility of the soil ; chiefs who must 

 contract marriage with their own clan, which would be incestuous for 

 anyone else, if they are to have a legal heir ; chiefs whose blood must not 

 be shed on any account, who have been known to be driven out, strangled 

 or otherwise got rid of by the villagers, who are probably derived ulti- 

 mately from a different stock. 



One important feature of the Konyak tribes, shared, it is true, by their 

 neighbours the Aos, and in a ruder fashion by the Sangtam, Chang and 

 Yimtsungr of the east, is the possession of enormous slit wood gongs to 

 which I give the name ' canoe gong ' on account of their shape. S. E. 

 Peal was the first to report on these gongs,^''^ which he called ' canoe 

 drums ' ; Professor Henry Balfour calls them xylophones, and the only 

 reason that I do not adopt his term is that I prefer to keep that name for 

 the more usual type of xylophone consisting of a number of slats of wood 

 giving different notes when beaten which is found among the Kuki, 

 though not among the Naga tribes. These canoe gongs are the basis 

 of an important cult intimately associated with head-hunting, and strongly 

 suggestive of much that is associated with canoes in Oceania. 



The true canoe gong with carved figure-heads and long hull like that 

 of a dug-out is almost entirely limited to the Konyak, Ao, Chang and 

 Sangtam tribes,^"^ and of these four undoubtedly the Chang and the Ao 

 contain a large admixture of Konyak blood. The Sangtam only use a 

 typical canoe gong in those villages which march with the Ao and Chang 

 country. Further south the shape is much less elaborate, and the 

 Yimtsungr to the east of them used a mere hollow tree-trunk. South 

 of the Sangtam tribe the canoe gong completely disappears except for 

 the following instance : the Tangkul tribe use a remarkable form of 

 gong hitherto, I believe, unpublished, which might be described as 

 resembling an inverted boat, the two ends of which are skeleton, while 

 the centre part consists of the usual slit gong of more or less cylindrical 

 type. The Angami use an unornamented wooden vessel ^lo of similar 

 shape (without the skeleton ends) for the reception of liquor in bulk on 

 ceremonial occasions, and one recalls Ellis's account ^^^ of the man of 

 Rurutu who came off^ to meet him ' at a distance of two miles ' from the 

 island in a wooden food-vessel 6 feet long and i8 inches to 2 feet wide. A 

 smaller slit gong of somewhat similar pattern, but much simpler, is used 

 for scaring the birds from their fields by the Kachha Naga. Further 

 south again the Zanniat Chins, who, unlike the other Chins, have a demo- 

 cratic organisation, have a small slit gong not more than 6 feet long 

 very like the Angami vat, while the Ngawn Chins use one of the same 

 size not unlike the South American teponatzli, and put food in it on the 

 occasion of a ceremonial dance.^^^ A ' wooden drum ' also appears in 

 Arakan as one of the prized possessions of the pre-Burmese king ; it 

 may or may not have been a ' canoe gong.' ^^^ 



208 Peal, op. cit. 209 Mills. II. 76 sqq. ; Smith, 47 ; Hutton, X. 



sio Hutton, I, 57, "1 Ellis, III, 3, 400. 



212 Personal information from Mr. N. Stevenson of the Burma Frontier Service. 



213 Scott and Hardimann, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, 1, ii, 402 . 



