II	DOMESTIC  LIFE	39
never indulged in, and, though I have often prevailed on the
young men to try, the results were always very poor.
The Lushais are very badly off for games. Girls play a
game with a large, flat bean, called " koi." The players divide
into two parties, each in turn placing their kois in a row on
the ground to serve as a target for those of the other party,
which are held between the thumb and first finger of the left
hand and propelled by the middle finger of the right. Should
the target not be struck the first time, each firer goes to where
her koi lies and again aims at the target, but this time the
missile has to be propelled in another manner. Sometimes it is
placed between the knees and jerked forward by a sharp jump,
or it is balanced on the cheek or forehead and then projected
by a jerk of the head, or it may be balanced on the instep and
kicked towards the mark. This game is played among the
Manipuris, who call it " Kang sanaba." The koi bean of the
Lushai is called " kang " by the Manipuris, but the latter now
usually use round discs of ivory instead of the natural bean.
A game played by both sexes is " Vai lung thlan."1
The players sit on the ground on opposite sides of two paral-
lel rows of shallow holes. In each row there are six holes and
in each hole five small stones are placed. Each player in turn
picks up all the stones in any hole in the row nearest him and,
commencing from the hole next on the left, drops one in each
hole along his row and then back along that of his opponent.
If at the end of a turn one or more of the holes last dropped
into is found to contain only one stone, the player removes
these single stones and places them aside. The game continues
till all the stones have been thus removed, and the winner is he
who has taken most. Counting the stones in the hole before
removing them is not allowed, and considerable skill is required
to judge accurately the number of stones, so as to select a hole
containing the number of stones which when distributed will
leave the maximum number of holes with single stones in them.
This game, under the name of " Mancala Bao" and " Warri,"
is played by the Negroes in many parts of Africa, but on
elaborately carved boards.
1 Lung=stone ; thlan=grave ; ** vai" may mean " foreign " or be short for
" vai phei," the name of an old Kuki clan.