40 Annual Address. [Feb. 



from exploiting what is, when once you have got there, a fertile 

 and attractive country. An instance or two of the customs which have 

 thus been kept alive may be of interest. We find in the khels or tribal 

 septs of the Nagas a complete example of the exogamons group of 

 blood relations, dwelling apart in its own territory and more or less at 

 war with the rest of the world, which Mr. McLennan and others believed 

 to be the earliest organised unit of human society. Hitherto the otily 

 surviving specimen of the exogamous sept as reconstructed in Mr. 

 McLenuan's famous essay has been the gochi of the Orissa Kandhs, which 

 T came upon and described some years ago. But the Kandh gochis 

 live at peace with one another, and to that extent have fallen away from 

 their primitive condition ; while the Naga hhel fortifies its quaiter of 

 the villages with a stockade, a deep ditch full of bamboo calthrops, nnd 

 a craftily devised ladder, and is for ever at war Avitli its immediate 

 neighbours. During the next few years I hope we may have more 

 light thrown upon the internal structure of the Mongolian and semi- 

 Mongolian tribes of our eastern borders, which has always been a bit 

 of a puzzle. Meanwhile I venture the conjecture that further inquiry 

 will show the khel or exogamous sept to be the original unit of their 

 organisation, the tribal names by which we know them referring 

 merely to locality or to some personal idiosyncracy, such as an aversion to 

 wearing clothes, which may have struck their neiglibouis as distinctive. 

 Another subject of which I hope we may hear more is that of the 

 picturesque oaths and ordeals in vogue among some of these people for 

 the purpose of settling disputes. TlieNagas for example have the most 

 intense belief in the binding virtue of an oath when properly taken. 

 The litigant who appeals in this fashion to the judgment of the powers 

 unseen, bares his right arm and shoulder, plants one foot firmly in a 

 noose of rope laid on the ground, and swears aloud in an elaborate 

 formula, settled by much preliminary haggling with the other side, 

 in which he devotes not himself only, but all the members of his khel 

 or blood-kin to an early death if his cause is not good. Even if he is 

 prepared to take risks himself, the khel see to it that their lives are not 

 rashly sworn away. Still there are loop holes of which an adroit person 

 may avail himself. If the opponents have weakly agreed to a looselj^ 

 worded oath, or if in the most formidable oath the swearer can manage 

 to skip or slur over an important word, he may win his case triumph- 

 antly without provoking divine intervention. Mr. Davis, who is well 

 known as a leading authority on the Naga languages, told me that he 

 had himself on several occasions detected a man in the act of slipping or 

 mispronouncing a word. When called upon to repeat it ho at once 

 withdrew hia foot from the noooo, declined the ordeal and threw up hi« 



