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- Permanent Link:
- http://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA004232/00001
Notes
- Abstract:
- A man sitting beside a platform on which two stones have been erected. He is probably the giver of the first of the series of Feasts of Merit, culminating in the stone-dragging ceremony, and entitling him to wear the richly decorated stone-dragging cloth. In the course of the ceremony two mithan are sacrificed and the meat distributed to members of the village. The stones are erected beside a path leading to the fields so that the "fertility" which they are held to possess may be transmitted to the villagers who pass by and to their crops. ( en )
- General Note:
- The Pangsha Expedition took place at the end of 1936 and was a punitive expedition led by Mills to rescue children who had been abducted and sold into slavery. Pangsha was a notoriously warlike village in unadministered territory close to the border between India and Burma, whose warriors were constantly mounting head-hunting raids on the surrounding villages. It was during these raids that the children had been captured. The area was unexplored and the villages had never seen a white man. Mills did not even know the exact location of Pangsha. Every day while he was away, Mills wrote to his wife. This journey into the territory of hostile head-hunters was a dangerous undertaking, and Mills wrote: 'For some weeks I have had a feeling I should not come back from this show, but now that has suddenly completely worn off.' The letters were found many years later, edited by his daughter and published by the Pitt Rivers Museum.
- General Note:
- The Feasts of Merit is a series of progressively more lavish ceremonies, culminating in the sacrifice of a "seijang" or mithun (Bos frontalis), a type of cattle. During the Feasts of Merit a man shares his fertility, as indicated by his wealth, with the members of the community through offerings of food and drink.
- General Note:
- A mithun, also spelled mithan, known among the Naga as "seijang", is a type of Indian bovine animal, i.e., cattle.
- General Note:
- Reference: Mills, J.P. (James Philip), 1890-1960, The Pangsha Letters. Edited and with an introduction by Geraldine Hobson. (Oxford : Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1995).
- General Note:
- Reference: Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, 1909-1995. The Naked Nagas. Christoph Fürer- Haimendorf. London : Methuen & Co., [1939].
- General Note:
- Reference: Hutton, J.H. The Angami Nagas. London : Macmillan, 1921.
- General Note:
- Ethnicity: Naga
- General Note:
- Ethnicity: Angami Naga
- General Note:
- Ethnologue reference for the Angami Naga people is located at http://www.ethnologue.com/language/njm
- General Note:
- B&W photographic print
- General Note:
- Originally collected in Album Y of the "J.P. Mills Photographic Collection". (Held in the SOAS, University of London, archives and special collections.)
- General Note:
- Album Y was given to Mills by Haimendorf as a Christmas present. It contains photographs by Christoph Fürer-Haimendorf of the Pangsha Expedition in which both he and Mills took part. Some of the photographs were later published in Haimendorfs book The Naked Nagas , (Methuen 1939), which contains an account of the expedition. The last five pictures were taken when Haimendorf was studying the Konyaks of Wakching. There is also a set of Haimendorfs contact prints of this expedition and photographs taken by Mills and others in one of the boxes of this collection.
- General Note:
- VIAF ID: 109123273 (name authority) : Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, 1909-1995
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- SOAS, University of London
- Holding Location:
- Archives and Special Collections
- Rights Management:
- Image: © 1936, The Estate of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf. Text: © 1996, Geraldine Hobson.
- Resource Identifier:
- PP MS 58 image number Y.10 ( accession number )
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