174 THE NON-LUSHEI CLANS CHAP.

service in the girl's father's house. The Eonte maiden's price
is two gongs, and her proper husband is her maternal first
cousin. In both clans a fowl has to be killed by the khulpu
at the time of the marriage, and the Eonte tie some of its
feathers round the necks of the couple. Should a Tarau
maiden be led astray both parties are fined a pot of rice-beer,
which the villagers share, and the seducer pays the girl's father
one pig. The child, when old enough to leave the mother,
becomes the property of the father. A Eonte mother must
not leave her house till five days after the birth of a daughter
and seven after that of a son. On the day of the birth there
is a feast, and on the fifth or seventh day, according to the
sex of the child, a fowl is killed by the khulpu, and the
child's hair is cut, its ears pierced, and its name decided
on, the choice being made from the names of its forefathers.
The house is purified by being sprinkled with zu by the
khulpu.

Among the Tarau, the period during which the mother may
not leave her house is prolonged to ten days, at the expiry of
which the khulpu kills a cock for male child and a hen for girl,
and then purifies the house.

In both clans the dead are buried in a cemetery situated
to the west of the village, while the corpses of those who
have died unnatural deaths are buried elsewhere with
no ceremony. Women dying in childbirth among the
Tarau are buried by old men, who have no further
hope of becoming fathers, far from the village, while persons
being killed by wild animals, or by some accident, such as a
fall from a tree, are buried where they die. Persons who are
drowned are buried on the bank of the river where the body
is found, the grave being dug at the spot where some water
thrown up by hand from the river happens to fall. This
custom also exists among the Shans of the Upper Chindwin,
which lends some colour to the tradition that the Tarau
sojourned in Burma before entering Manipur. Among the
Eonte, women dying in childbirth, and all children dying
under a year of age, are buried to the east of the village,
while accidental deaths necessitate the burial being made to
the south. The funeral takes place on the day of death except