Traditional warfare of the Zeliangrong - Part 3 -

Budha Kamei *

A Scene from The Zeliangrongs :: Pix by Haobam Ronel (Director)

Colonial masters (Well trained anthropologists) working in highlands Burma and Assam were among the first to recognize that headhunting was not just about violence, revenge. J.P. Mills and Christoph von Fòrer-Haimendorf (Ethnographers) noted that cosmology among upland Southeast Asian groups had much to do with the headhunting practice. By displaying a head in public and treating it with ritual purification, one could conceivably be recruiting the enemy's soul into an ally. The spirit of such allies could then be considered part of your ancestral spirit group – and support your ancestral spirits in the life hereafter. Since the life hereafter in what was known as the sky world resembled life on this earth, with spirits feasting, raiding, growing crops, etc., a beheaded victim's spirit could also be considered as a recruit to your ancestors' army in the sky world. At the very least, they could not become the enemies of your ancestors after death.

The study of ethnographic documents on headhunting in Southeast Asia by McKinley is the first major regional synthesis. While acknowledging early interpretations of the above, he makes some significant points on data from parochial Southeast Asia. (a) Killing one's enemy means victory, but obtaining heads does confer the mystical benefits. (b) The rites involved the victim's head which enable its' spirit to become a friend, guardian, and benefactor. (c) Headhunting is not only about violence, but also part of a sophisticated mythological, ritual and cosmological worldview.

Following the structuralist approach of Levi-Strauss, McKinley notes that headhunting poses a contradiction for native Southeast Asian cosmology. On the one hand, native Southeast Asian cosmology was oriented toward an upstream-downstream geography that fit well with their favoured settlement locations along rivers. Their cosmology was based on a basic three-layered world: the sky world, this world, and the underworld. Gods, goddesses, culture heroes and spirits moved between these realms.

In myths, culture heroes go on long journeys to visit dangerous places to get magical powers and knowledge, in the same way head-hunters made dangerous journeys to distant places to conduct their raids. Native cosmology equated such journeys with travel into remote areas populated by aliens, enemies or spirits, in contrast to their own village world populated by humans.

The contradiction was that in real travel and journeys, other villages were populated by creatures that looked human and seemed to be living just like one's own people, but by cosmological definition could not be. Hence, perhaps they were perceived as semi-human. The headhunting rituals and the focus on taking the head of someone from another village, according to structural analysis, helped resolve the contradiction in the following way.

By taking the head rather than some other part of the body back to one's own village, warriors could integrate the spirit of the enemy into their own community of humans. Often, they gave the head a new name and treated it in ways that were friendly so as to win over the spirit to join their community. (To be contd)

Southeast Asians chose only the head as the head contains the face. Face is a symbol of the individual as a social person. In addition, as noted in the rituals and myths of Southeast Asian tribal peoples who did practice headhunting until early in 20th century, the gods instructed them to take heads as a beneficent virtue that would enable them to increase the fertility of crops, humans, and to acquire other blessings from the ancestral and other sacred beings of the sky world.

In 1968, Michelle Rosaldo and her husband conducted fieldwork among the Ilongot peoples of Philippines. The Ilongot people had stopped headhunting only in early decades of the 20th century. After some months of their fieldwork, they came to realize that 65 of 70 adult men over the age of 20 years had taken at least a head. Ilongot did not say they did hunt heads in order to recruit enemy souls into their ancestors' warriors in the sky world, nor did they do it to turn enemies into friends and therefore resolve a structural/cosmological contradiction.

In fact, they said they did not even bring the heads of their victims back to their villages. What they did say was that it was part of an emotional feeling. They said they took heads when they felt angry or strong pressures. In 1974, Michelle Rosaldo returned again for further investigation; she focused on two native Ilongot terms Liget and Beya. Liget means angry as opposed to passive, dull or fearful—hence passion or creative energy, and Beya means knowledge, or that which controls one's passion and emotions.

Young men explained that headhunting gave them not only the right to gain the spirit of the beheaded victim, but also allowed them to wear hornbill earrings and have respect among their elders. It also enabled them to get a wife. Her further investigations of the life cycle (men and women) had revealed that men have more passion than women as a result of their broader range of experiences and travel to far places.

In order to tame their passion, or effectiveness, taking another individual's head quiets their spirit and restlessness, hence allowing knowledge and maturity to gain control and grow. The spirits of the victims remain with them (their killers) and are not harmful and they have nothing to do with fertility of crops. But, the act of killing itself serves to rouse jealousy and admiration among other youths, to increase one's reputation among the elders, and enables one to get a wife.

In many parts of present-day Southeast Asia, headhunting is a part of the past preserved in narrative form. In some areas, headhunting rituals continue with a wooden tree substitute for a real human head, attempts to achieve the cosmological benefits of agricultural fertility outlined by McKinley without the violence long since outlawed by national laws.

Janet Hoskins opined that headhunting of East Sumba, Indonesia, as an ideology of encompassment, wherein heads were used as tokens of territorial conquest in battles between nobles. In West Sumba, headhunting rites exhibit an ideology of vendetta and were acts of vengeance between equals. At present, the traditions of past headhunting also are constructed and understood in different ways in these two areas.

In East Sumba, headhunting is a symbol of their history and their past; their defiance against colonial Dutch outsiders. In West Sumba, headhunting is a heritage that symbolizes and expresses local desires for some degree of autonomy vis-a-vis the modern nation of Indonesia. Therefore, as a ritual and cosmological complex, headhunting has taken on different political meanings for different peoples.

The above different views are not irreconcilable, but tell to the very different experiences that Southeast Asian tribal peoples have had in different periods. As McKinley notes about headhunting in the past: "Although the head-hunter on a raid was a treacherous and indiscriminate killer of men, women and children, there were at least some human as well as technological limits to the brutality of the system. His wars were waged in the mystical upstream and downstream regions against people who could provide links with the eternal powers of the gods and ancestors."

Among the Angami Naga, "if a man kills another in war, he wears three or four rows of cowries round the kilt, and ties up his hair with a cotton band. If a man has killed another in war, he is entitled to wear one feather of the dhune's bird stuck in his hair, and one feather is added for every man he has killed, and these feathers are also fastened to their shields." Wearing the cowries kilt or feather in his hair is a sign that he has killed someone.

A warrior shawl, among the Ao Naga, is called Mangkotepsu. In the past, a man had earn the right to wear this shawl by taking human heads in warfare, thought acts of bravery and by offering by feasts of merit as proof of his wealth. Anyone wearing without the credentials was taken to task by the village council and had to pay heavy penalties for violating the code.

Women of Chungliyimiti village, Makokchung District say that in the past the women of the village designed this shawl as a token to encourage their men to ward off repeated attack by neighbouring tribes. The white strip in the middle carries the symbols of bravery and courage and the sun, moon and stars signify the resulting fame of such warriors.

The animals depicted in the strip resemble the physical power and the valour of men. The hornbill is a revered bird whose feathers are used for decorative purpose in ceremonial costumes. The mithun indicates the wealth of the wearer because only the rich people could rear these animals. Other symbols are depiction of weapons and shields used by Ao men during warfare.

Among the Konyak Naga, a young warrior would receive a tattoo of his face when he bore to the king the head of an enemy while the tattoo on the chest is yet another typical traditional tattoo, which was a high social privilege and only the best and brave warriors had tattooed. Konyak used a traditional basket specifically made to carry and bring back human heads from war. It was decorated with monkey skulls, wild pigs' horns and sometimes hornbill beaks. It was believed that by taking head of an enemy as a trophy, he took his power and soul.

Among the Maori of New Zealand, the main aim in life is to wear the distinctive attire that rewards the man who has at least twice slain a human being. After the second killing he is allowed to wear a chocolate-coloured headband, the fourth entitles him to wear blood red trousers, and when he got six he may be used complete suit of that colour and a red bag to boot.

Every additional life taken, while no longer resulting in a change of costume, brings additional credit. Those who have never killed a person are nobodies, while the acknowledged braves fill positions of importance and are deemed under the special tutelage of two powerful spirits, between whom and the common herd they are intermediaries. Not only the status, but even the garments of the brave are not inheritable, and the latter should be buried with the owner.

To conclude, in the distant past, inter-village war was a common occurrence among the tribal peoples. The boys of the dormitory/morung at the cost of their lives defended the village from enemy's attacks. It is now gone. However, it is preserved in the form of narrative. Among the Zeliangrong, the war rituals continue in the form of Chong Kapmei, (shooting of and or spearing of the human effigies made of the plaintain trees), Kabaomei and Ritak Phaimei without the violence during the Rih Ngai festival for abundant of crops.

Concluded..