n DOMESTIC LIFE 23

relations dependent on him, their houses will be found scattered
through the village, each forming a centre of a quarter or a
veng, from the inhabitants of which the chief allows them
to collect the dues, which are his by right.

The steepness of the hillside is no obstacle to house building,
and frequently the roof of one house will be lower than the
floor of the one immediately above it. The Lushais have been
nomadic ever since their ancestors started on their western trek
some 200 years ago. The method of cultivation which they
follow is very wasteful, and a large village soon uses up all the
land within reach, and then a move becomes imperative. Their
custom of burying their dead within the village tends to make
a site unhealthy, especially as the water supply is usually so
situated as to receive the drainage of the village, and when the
rate of mortality rises unduly high, a move is at once made.
In old times these moves were often of considerable length—
sometimes as much as two or three days' journey—and sometimes
a halt for a whole season would be made at some temporary
site, the people living in huts alongside their cultivation.
The selection of a new site is a matter of much thought, and
before a final decision is arrived at, a deputation of elders is
sent to sleep at the proposed site, taking with them a cock.
If the bird crows lustily an hour before daybreak, as all good
cocks should, the site is approved of. Sites of villages which
have been burnt by enemies are eschewed as unlucky, and a
chief when re-occupying a site of some other chiefs village
generally tries to establish himself slightly to one side or other,
in hopes that the new site will bear his name for many years.

As soon as the move has been decided on, arrangements are
made for cutting the jhums near the new site, and during the
rains all the workers live either in the jhum houses, or in tem-
porary shelters built near the new site, to which, after the
harvest, they laboriously carry all their belongings on their own
backs, as they own no beasts of burden. These constant moves
have had a great share in moulding the Lushai character, for
when you have to carry all your worldly goods from your old to
your new house every four or five years, it is not strange if you
are disinclined to amass more than is absolutely necessary, and
gradually become content with very little, and prefer ease and