acrificed, and
the child is brought outside the house. Children are named without
any special ceremony. The death customs of the Lynngams have been
described in Section III. A peculiar characteristic is the keeping of
the dead body in the house for days, sometimes even for several months,
before it is burnt. The putrefying corpse inside the house seems to
cause these people no inconvenience, for whilst it remains there, they
eat, carry on their ordinary avocations, and sleep there, regardless
of what would be considered by others an intolerable nuisance. The
religion of these people consists of a mixture of ancestor-worship
and the propitiation of the spirits of fell and fall, which are,
most of them, believed to be of evil influence, as is the case with
other savage races. As with the people of Nongstoin, the primaeval
ancestress, "_ka Iaw bei_," is worshipped for the welfare of the
clan, a sow being sacrificed to her, with a gourd of rice-beer,
and leaves of the oak, or _dieng-sning_ tree. The leaves of the oak
are afterwards hung up inside the house, together with the jaw bone
of the pig. Sacrifices are offered to a forest demon, _U Bang-jang_
(a god who brings illness), by the roadside; also to _Ka Miang Bylli
U Majymma_, the god of cultivation, at seed time, on the path to the
forest clearing where the seed is sown. Models of paddy stone-houses,
baskets and agricultural implements are made, sand being used to
indicate the grain. These are placed by the roadside, the skulls
of the sacrificial animals and the feathers of fowls being hung up
on bamboo about the place where the has been performed. There are
no priests or _lyngdohs_, the fathers of the hamlet performing the
various ceremonies. The Lynngams possess no head-hunting customs, as
far as it has been possible to ascertain. These people are still wild
and uncivilized. Although they do not, as a rule, give trouble, from
an administrative point of view, a very serious dacoity, accompanied
by murder, was committed by certain Lynngams at an Assamese village
on the outskirts of the Lynngam country a few years ago. The victims
were two Merwari merchants and their servant, as well as another
man. These people were brutally murdered by the Lynngams, and robbed
of their property. The offenders were, however, successfully traced
and arrested by Inspector Raj Mohan Das, and several of them suffered
capital punishment, the remainder being transported for life.

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