630 Notes on Northern Cachar. [No. 7. 



Death and diseases of every kind are ascribed directly either to 

 the anger of the gods, or the malignity of demons, and in every 

 appearance of the latter it is believed that a deity is offended, who 

 must be propitiated. 



Some diseases in themselves indicate the power that has inflicted 

 them, but these are few, and it becomes very perplexing among such 

 an extended theocracy to find out the angry god. For the purpose 

 of fixing this identity and conducting all religious ceremonies, there 

 is a class of priests called " Thempoo" or " Mithoi" who are sup- 

 posed to have undergone an initiatory education, before admission 

 into the order, which possesses them with much ocult knowledge, 

 and obtains for them the privilege of holding commerce with the 

 gods, and divining the cause of wrath and the means of propitiation. 

 This order is held in more dread than veneration by the people 

 generally, and much mischief is often ascribed to them, from the 

 abuse of the influence they possess with supernatural agents. The 

 office is not hereditary, but the ranks of the priesthood are recruited 

 by novices from among the people, who may wish to acquire such 

 dangerous knowledge, and the number is not limited. 



Such however, is the superstitious fear of the Kookies that they 

 exhibit the greatest disinclination to be initiated, and to prevent the 

 order dying out altogether, the Rajahs have at times thought it 

 necessary to coerce some of their subjects into becoming Thempoos. 

 This feeling of dread is further illustrated by a preliminary form of 

 prayer uttered by the novice in which he beseeches Puthen that if 

 there should be anything wrong in what he is going to learn, the fault 

 may be visited not on him, but on his teachers. "What the mysteries 

 of this education may be, it is impossible to say, the Thempoos them- 

 selves being very jealous of their secret, but it is undoubted that 

 they have among themselves a language, most probably an entirely 

 artificial one, quite different from that spoken by the people and 

 perfectly unintelligible to them, which must be the first thing 

 taught to the novice, the rest he most probably picks up from their 

 practice which is as follows : 



An individual of a village, being stricken with disease, goes to or 

 calls for the Thempoo, who feels his pulse, and questions him as to 

 the spot on which he first felt himself affected, and on other matters 



