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Tales
from Burma
Richard at
work in southwestern China during his search for the
elusive Yeti -- better known in the West as "The Abominable Snowman."
Naga
Hill Tribe New Year Celebration
The North-Western area
of Burma is known as Naga Land. Naga Land had been off-limits for a half
century, and the last comprehensive book on the Naga, The Naked
Naga by Christoph Von Fureh_Haimendorf, had been publsihed in 1939.
The Naga were and probably still are, in the remote northern Patkai range of
mountains confirmed headhunters. During World War two, Major C.M.
Enriquez said that Japanese heads, taken during their retreat into India, hung
in Naga bamboo groves with arrows driven through the eye sockets, to insure that
the spirits could not wander away, sold for two heads for a penny.
Many tribes of Naga live in both India and Burma, and traveled back and forth as
they wished. Nothing was more troublesome to the central government than
groups of nomadic hill tribes who pack up and move all the time. Even more
of a problem is the idea that national boundries did not exist, and that the
hill people were free to wander about the mountains as they choose.
Burma's border with India was there, delinated on a map, but the Naga found
themselves in both countries, and didn't know or care about the difference.
Porous borders, far away from any governement control meant nothing to the Naga
since they had no national identity, but only that of kinship with thier
own tribe or clan. I had made arrangements with the Naga Central Committee
back in March 1996, and I had received word that they were expecting me to join
them for Naga New Year.
Nobody in authority would dare to say "yes" while nobody directly said "no", but
"no" was implied as I went to speak to the ministry, to immigration and to the
tour companies seeking permission to travel to Singkaling Hkamti for Naga New
Year. I began to be ground down under the crushing wheels of bureaucracy
as the sand fell through the hourglass.
I had what passed as breakfast, and satisfied my minimum daily requirement of
grease and beer as I watched boys in a circle playing chinlon with a woven cane
ball, lofting it into the air with skillful kicks off their knees or feet, up
over their heads, off their heels, to another player in the circle.
I went to every agency in Rangoon, all of whom told me that although the
Ministry of Tourism had issued a directive last March allowing foreigners to
fly to Hkamti, I would not be sold a ticket, and worse, I began to believe them.
I had an invitation letter from the Bishop, one from the Naga Central Committee,
and another from some boss at Myanmar Airways requesting a ticket be issued.
Time was running out if I was going to be able to be in Singkling Hkamti for the Naga celebrations. I had to go, and this would be my only chance.
I left for Mandalay in the North to link up with the flight scheduled for the
next day. If I could not get a ticket issued in Mandalay, my base in
Rangoon would be far away, and communications were always difficult. The
New Year's celebrations were to be held on Wednesday, the fifteenth of January,
but flights to Hkamti were only on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday. If I
couldn't get a ticket for for Sunday, and for some reason failed to get out on
Monday, the Thursday flight would be too late. I carried my pouch of
authorization letters which I was ready to present, but found at the airlines
office that all I really needed was a friend who had gone to school with the
office manager, and a crisp hundred dollar bill in payment. Somehow I was
issued a ticket. I checked the code again to make sure, yeah, that was it.
"KTI" Hkamti. So I actually had my ticket to Naga New Year.
The land route was not possible, and even on modern maps, Hkamti was shown
without the airport in which I would be landing. I would be the first
foreigner to ever witness the event, and I knew that I was looking at taking
photographs of historical significance. History is what was written
after it was lived. I felt that somehow I had fallen through the cracks,
in a place where I did not believe cracks existed.
After the bomb blasts at Christmas inside the Kaba Aye Pagoda in Rangoon, which
was displaying the sacred tooth relic of the Buddha, on loan from the Chinese,
several people had died in the explosions and the relic was moved to Mandalay.
I was wearing a gold ring with a Ceylon blue sapphire, which had been panned
from a river in Ratnapura, found as an ancient intaglio, discovered with an
elephant carved into the face of that stone. That elephant, carved so long
ago into the sapphire, was carrying that same sacred tooth relic of the Buddha
on it's back. I knew I was wearing a lucky omen.
I sat outside at a restaurant near the Mandalay airport and was befriended by a
monk with the features of a Naga. Soon we were joined by a policeman, two
immigration officials, and a man in Ray Bans whom the others had told me, when
he gotten up to go to the bathroom, was military intelligence. We all
waited together ten hours slugging back beers, and eating fried eggs, but the
plane only landed at dusk, too late for today's flight as planes in Burma do not
fly at night; we would all have to wait until tomorrow morning, Monday, the last
and only day to get to Hkamti before the festivities would begin.
Immigration would evidently be coming with me, as they said that they
would help to get me onboard. At least I would not have to pay for their
tickets.
Early the next morning, I again checked out of the Nylon Hotel, and although an
hour later than the check in time written on my ticket, I came back to the
airport and met the monk and the immigration men who assured me that we would be
flying out today since the plane was already there on the runway. When the
flight was called, they saw to getting my boarding pass and checked in my
baggage. One hour and twenty minutes later, we touched down on a dirt
runway ahead of clouds of dust the plane had stirred up, in Singkaling Hkamti on
the Chindwin River. Only a few days hike were Assam and Manipur in India,
and defying all national boundaries, lived the Naga. Hkamti was a relic of
the Shan's expansion, and so at least I knew the food would be good and that I
could eat. The monk showed me on my map where he lived, five days walk
from here, and I noticed that it was roughly thirteen miles inside India.
By now it was clear that the immigration guys had been assigned to me, and I
accepted the arrangement as they became quite friendly and followed me wherever
I went. I told them that if they were going to follow me, at least they
should carry my camera bag. They did. I had been at this a long time
and was older than both of them. In the market I had my first glimpse of Naga girls with several vertical tattoos from their lower lip to their chins,
and a hooked diamond shape on their foreheads.
The next morning I woke up my guards, and we walked uphill to a Naga morung,
or men's house with its long thatched roof, open doors and totems, carved
with opposing leopards, snakes and human forms,
which were brightly painted
and lined with animal skulls. Just a short time
ago, these skulls would have
been human. In the distance as we walked down the
path came the low,
monotonous sounds of grunting punctuated with
high pitched screaming and
rhythmic singing, rising up from the banks of the
Chindwin River. As the
sounds grew louder, and I knew that they were
coming my way, I stood at the
upper side of the trail and over the crest of a hill came about sixty Naga
warriors who ran past with ox leather shields,
and long spears covered in
dyed red goat fur which they raised in unison.
They wore woven cane hats,
some with designs in red and yellow circled with
black monkey fur, draped
with wild boars tusks hanging over their
eyebrows, topped with long black
and white hornbill feathers rising from the
center for their caps. Some
warriors had their chins and jaws ringed with
tiger claws. Around their
necks they wore red beads flanked by tiger's
teeth. These men were elegant
and had the finely carved muscles of athletes. As
they ran past together,
singing and screaming, I was suddenly aware that
the last time any foreigner
had their ears singed by these war chants, and
had seen such an amazing
spectacle, that they were just about to
ceremoniously lose their heads. The
Naga were coming down from the hills. I had been
transported to a time and a
place from a very, very long time ago.
Continually during that day and all evening,
hundreds of Naga men and women
from five different groups came pouring into
Singkaling Hkamti from Kuki,
Layshi, Lahe, from all directions of the hills
and mountains. That day
before Naga New Year, I spent with the Naga
Central Council explaining my aim
to capture the Naga culture on film. My two
immigration men and the head of
the Naga committee joined me as we went from
settlement to village
photographing the different Naga. There were two
different groups of Naga
staying in one large compound, and after I had
finished shooting one group,
because of the direction of the sun, I asked the
other group to move into
better light at the other end of the compound,
but I was told that they
would not cross into the other group's area. The
council told me that there
were to be sacrifices beginning at 3:00 A.M. as a
necessary cleansing ceremony
for the grounds in which the festival would be
held and that I would be the
first foreigner to ever witness the event.
Shortly before 3:00 A.M. the Naga council leaders
came to wake me. My two
immigration men were sleeping outside my door to
the guesthouse whose paper-
thin walls could disguise no movement; in what
could be considered a lobby,
huddled on either side of a clay pit containing
the embers of burning
charcoal. We all walked uphill towards the
festival grounds shivering in the
cold January darkness underneath a sky that was
absolutely pure and clean
with no electricity for miles to distract from
the light of the stars which
glittered in an endless universe of black eternal
depth.
The festival grounds were across the trail and
down the hillside from the
morung. Into those grounds which were blazing
with fire fed by whole logs,
the only light, the Naga led a docile buffalo with
massive horns, two
squealing pigs, and a few chickens. There was a
solid bamboo lattice tied
together and inclining towards the totems
painted red, black, and white in
the shape of V's. The Naga led the buffalo up
into the sacrificial bamboo
lattice with a rope over his massive head and
through his expanding
nostrils which were belching steam. Several men
pulled the buffalo into
place, his legs were wedged into spaces between
the bamboo and the grating
against his heavy chest, and began to sing and
chant, dancing around the
rising flames, punctuating the silent night with
high pitched eerie screams.
When the buffalo's feet were firmly held in
place, a Naga chief in a red-and-black robe whispered into the buffalo's ear and
asked him to die. The chief
said that they were sorry to take his life, and
blessed him with Naga beer
before the sacrifice. One warrior silently
removed his dah with the two
sharpened edges and the blunt end, sliding out of
the bamboo scabbard at the
small of his back, and with one swift stroke,
chopped through the tendons at
the back of the animal's legs so that he could
not jump. The buffalo's
surprise and agony were short-lived as another
warrior plunged a long spear
into his adrenalin-pumping heart and the blood
rushed from his mouth
staining the earth and his teeth red as he fell
over and died. The pigs were
much noisier, tied to bamboo poles, screaming and
grunting in displeasure and
fear; they seemed to know their fate, complaining
until the spears were
driven into their hears with one single thrust.
The chickens faced an
ignoble end as their necks were simply broken
with a twist and their heads
severed.
The night was bitterly cold, and I warmed myself
by the bonfire as the Naga
sang and grunted, circling the fire, they dragged
the buffalo away down a
small hill where other men with bronze disks
covering their genitals tended
fires which had been built beneath huge cauldrons
filled with meats, stirred
with wooden ladles the size of boat paddles.
There would be hundreds of
people to feed.
i brought out a liter of scotch whiskey chilled
by the night, and served my
hosts, and the council poured me Kongye', a kind
of milky Naga rice beer
served in neatly sliced lengths of bamboo which
went straight to the head.
Naga beer is fermented with leaves and some kind
of tree bark, sealed in
ceramic containers and stored underground for
three to five years. The wide
sections of bamboo had the top part sliced off
and reversed to plug the top,
tight as a cork, enclosing the tube with a long
bamboo straw inserted into
the center of the plug. It was better not to
remove the plug and to take a
closer look at what you were drinking.
I was asked by the Naga council to don a Naga hat
and black blanket with red
squares and threaded cowery shells and to give a
testimonial to the Naga for
their New Year's celebration as their guest.
After that while still dark, I
walked back down the trail to Hkamti town,
swaying a bit in the moonlight, to
get a few more hours of sleep before the
celebrations began.
The water at the guesthouse was available at the
side of the establishment
in fifty-gallon drums near the sidewalk, and was
nearly freezing. Brushing
my teeth and washing my face were about the
extent that I could bathe. I
became very used to the cloths that I had been
wearing. Early the next
morning at the festival grounds, the Kongye'
began to flow again, and I was
given a chair and a table at the front with the
Naga council.
I remembered the story a priest had told me about
the time he had brought a
group of Konyak Naga girls to Mandalay for the
first time. "You must wear
these tee shirts," he told them, "You cannot go into town naked."
"But these tee shirts itch," they protested, "and we
cannot wear them."
"You must wear them when we are in the city," the
priest insisted.
The next morning, the priest went to collect the
girls for a sight-seeing
trip around Mandalay. They were wearing the tee
shirts he had given them with
a picture of Pope John Paul on the front, but
they had cut out holes with
their breasts poking out on each side of the
pontiff's head.
At the celebration, Naga girls who were not
topless, continually poured Kongke' into the hollow lengths of bamboo we were
given. When they came to
serve, it would have been an insult not to have
drunk enough to allow them to
again fill the tube. By now all of the Naga
groups had arrived. The Hunimya,
the Makhury, the Naukawe, the Kuki and the Lai
Nawg. The Tanghun and the
Konyak Naga were absent perhaps in the case of
the Konyak, because of the
government's requirement for the girls to wear
cloths, as the Konyak would
never do.
The Naga assembled and danced, some in black
blankets with red squares and
monkey fur leggings. Some had hollow elephant tusks worn around the upper
arm muscles. Hundreds marched around shouting
"Wow wah, wow wah". While
beating their leather shields against their legs
and screaming shrill war
cries. Some Naga shouted "Ah Hay," which was high
praise, and sang welcome
songs. Girls served meals of pork, chicken and
beef, mixed together with
wild mushrooms and sticky rice cooked and wrapped
in banana leaves. Food and beer, dance and song, continued all day and into
the night with different
groups performing. Some of the girls were lovely
and flirtatious, while
others were shy. Girls of the Kuki Naga wore huge
tufts of white fur puffs
in their ears with strands of dyed red goat's hair
nearly touching their
shoulders. On the backs of their necks were white
sea shells which had been
cut in half. Although some of the songs were
songs of welcome, other songs
and dances were of triumph when the men and women
would welcome the warriors
back into their villages with the trophies of the
heads they had captured in
headhunting raids.
The Wa tribes on the opposite side of Burma, near
the Chinese border, had
also been headhunters, utilizing the heads for
agriculture, and were not
above buying them, staking them on long poles of
bamboo placed in their rice
fields to insure a sufficent crop. After the
harvest, those heads would be
put into stone lanterns which would line the
walkway into a village. Although
the Naga would not buy heads, slaves would
sometimes be bought for this
purpose, being well treated, fattened up, made
drunk before the slaughter,
then decapitated. Many of the heads would be
scalped, and several of the
warriors dancing around the fire wore long
strands of human hair in their
ears.
This practice has supposedly been stopped, but I
have heard of heads being
taken in raids as little as three years ago, and
in the Patkai Mountains and
the Anngpawng Bum Nothwest of Singkaling Hkamti,
beyond any administration
or control, who really knows?
There seemed to be no taboos regarding sexual
relations between boys and
girls and virginity was nothing to be valued.
Late at night, when everyone
had drunk their share of Kongye', fist fights
broken out, and some of the
girls could be seen carrying their drunken
boyfriends away on their backs,
not really struggling under the weight, but
staggering none the less, silhouetted against the moonlight.
