ABORS AND GA LONGS. 63 



while they were preparing their food the bird fouled it. Tani got very angry and 

 the bird flew away and he never saw her again. Then the search for a wife went 

 on until at last Tani went to the sun, who gave him a woman, Mumsi, to be his wife. 1 

 The Abor legend of the creation has already been given. 2 I was told by the Pasis that 

 the killing le tung stone of creation is hollowed like a cave. On this stone the foot- 

 prints of men and all creation are to be seen, and about the rock are pebbles that the 

 children bit and played with, and because the flinty rock was soft in those early 

 days, you can see the marks of their teeth and the prints of their tiny fingers. 

 The stone of creation is near the source of the Sisap, the river just beyond Koku 

 (marked Karko on the map). 



After the creation, Nibu the father of all flesh and Robo the father of 

 all spirits one day set their traps in the river. Robo set his up-stream, and 

 Nibu down the current. After a little Nibu came back and saw that while his 

 traps were (not unnaturally) quite empty, Robo's were already full of fish. 

 So Nibu lifted Robo's traps and emptied them into his own, and went away. 

 Next day when the two hunters came out to look at their traps Robo was very 

 much surprised to find that his own were empty and Nibu's were full of fish. 

 However, he said nothing. Then they went on and set their "egom" trap.* 

 Robo set his on the ground, Nibu on the branch of a tree. During the night 

 Nibu went round the traps to see what luck had befallen them. And he found 

 that Robo had caught a barking deer, but in his trap there was only a hornbill. So 

 he changed the contents of the two traps. Next day, when Robo saw what was in 

 his trap he exclaimed, fr How can a hornbill be caught in a trap on the ground." 

 And Nibu said, " Quite easily, if he goes there to look for food." Then Robo said 

 angrily, ' c Any way a deer cannot be caught up in a tree," to which Nibu replied, " Oh 

 yes, he can if he is looking for fruit.' At that Robo got very angry indeed and 

 went away furious. And from that day to this the spirits of Robo have haunted the 

 children of Nibu. 



The following story is perhaps a memory of Fr. Krick's teaching fifty years ago 

 unless it be an echo of the days when the missionaries of the Church of Rome were a 

 power through Central Asia. In the beginning a man and a woman lived alone on the 

 earth. And a snake came and tempted the woman with a brew of apong that he had 

 made. She drank it and, under the influence of the wine, consented to have intercourse 

 with him. Afterwards she gave birth to an immense number of little snakes that all 

 slipped away among the trees. Then the man hunted out the snake and killed it. 

 And the snake since then has been a deadly enemy of mankind. 



Once upon a time there was a great flood in the Siang river (Dihang), that 

 covered all the earth. And when it subsided, all the fish were found stranded on the 

 ground. So Shile Shido (Shedi Melo, the omnipotent spirit) took the hills and piled 



1 An almost similar legend is told by the Subansiri Daflas. 2 Page 13. 



3 An egom is a trap set in an animal's run, with a suspended stone which falls when the game comes against a cane 



.' ' The story of Robo and Nibu is Minyong. 



