1852.] Notes on the Heumd or " Shendoos" 211 



The body is kept two or three days in the house after death, but 

 without any embalming or other preparation, so as to become often 

 quite putrid before interment. 



The Abeu or head of the clan dispenses justice. Theft is punished 

 by the restoration of the property stolen and fine equal to its value. 



For murder, the punishment is making over to the relatives of the 

 slain, a number of slaves, from two to seven, according to the wealth 

 or importance of the deceased, and pigs in the same proportion. Should 

 the offender not have slaves, he must give up property equivalent to 

 them, or, in default, his own children. If he have neither slaves, other 

 property, nor children, he is slain by the nearest of kin to the deceased 

 with the weapon by which the murder was committed. But this is 

 an event of such rare occurrence as to be, so to say, matter of legend. 

 Drunken quarrels attended with affray and wounding are of frequent 

 occurrence : but no murder had been committed within my informant's 

 recollection. 



The Heuma were formerly at war with the Koons, but now appear 

 to be at peace with them and all the tribes to the south or along the 

 Aracan frontier ; but they have constant fights with other tribes, 

 whose language, my informant said, was strange to him. 



These people lie to the N. E. and E., and have their legs tattooed 

 like the Burmese. Lebbey stoutly denied having made any excursions 

 for slaves lately, and insisted that all those slaves in his village, were 

 descendants of people captured generations ago. But he confesses 

 that Shendoos have carried off slaves from Chittagong rather recently, 

 and enumerates the following tribes as having been concerned in these 

 forays. Yanglyng (before mentioned), Roopoo [Tynkho Abeu,] a 

 clan living to the N. W. of the sources of the Koladyn ; and Tongshe, 

 [Ekke Abeu,] a clan of about three hundred houses, North of Bookee. 



Of the theological notions of the Shendoos I could gather but very 

 meagre information. They regard the sun [Nye] and the moon 

 [Khiapa] as deities, and sacrifice pigs and cattle to them at the com- 

 mencement of the rains. They have no divisions of time, except 

 by seasons, distinguishing these by the different stages of agriculture 

 proper to them, ploughing, sowing, reaping, clearing jungle, &c. 



Lebbey is a short, rather muscular man, with the well developed 

 thighs and calves of hill people in general, and a pleasing expression 



2 E 



