CH. v FOLK-LORE 93

called " Thimzing"—i.e., the gathering of the darkness—and
many awful things happened. Everything except the skulls of
animals killed in the chase became alive, dry wood revived, even
stones became alive and produced leaves, and so men had
nothing to burn. The successful hunters who had accumulated
large stocks of the trophies of their skill were able to keep
alive using them as fuel, and some of their descendants still
survive among the Thados, under which heading they will be
found in Part II. As it was pitch dark, neither animals nor
men could see at all, and tigers went about biting wildly at
trees, stones, and people. A general transformation took place,
men being all changed into animals. Those who were going
merrily to the jhum were changed into "satbhai" (laughing
thrushes), as can be known by their white heads, which
represent the turbans worn by the men, and their cheery chat-
terings. People wearing striped cloths became tigers, the
chiefs of those days being represented by the hornbills of
to-day, whose bills represent the bamboo rods for stirring rice
while cooking; but another version is that the chiefs became
king-crows, whose long tail-feathers the chiefs value much and
wear as plumes. The black hands of the gibbon prove clearly
that his ancestors were dyeing thread when the Thimzing
occurred. Another version ascribes the same origin to the
crows. Similarly those who were carrying torches finding their
way down stream beds were changed into fireflies. The
Chongthu family are sometimes said to have been turned into
monkeys, the Vangchhia into elephants; but another version
says the elephants were old women who were wearing their
" puanpui"—i.e., cotton quilts—with the tufts of cotton outside.
Wrestlers were suddenly transformed into bears, who to this
day grapple with their foes.

The Paihte or Vuite clan became a species of squirrel, while the
Kalte's ancestor was just saying," Vaibel kan chep te ang nge ?"
" Shall we suck our pipes ?" and was therefore changed into a sort
of squirrel called" chep chepa," from the sound it is always making.

The domestic animals were changed into wild ones, but a
number of large boulders in the Van-laiphai are said to repre-
sent Chhura's mithan which were grazing there at the Thim-
zing. After this terrible catastrophe the world was again