[7. Offences connected with the body.] The punishment in these cases rested originally with the aggrieved party or his relatives, who were allowed to exact summary vengeance. Thus a husband was at liberty to kill an unfaithful wife and her paramour, but if he did not take refuge in the chief's house, becoming a chemsen boi, the families of the victims were also entitled to kill him whenever they got an opportunity. Very shortly after our occupation of the Lushai Hills, two lads deliberately cut down a man who, they were told, had murdered their father many years before. The deed was done in broad daylight, in the middle of the village, and apparently attracted but little attention. The boys both entered the chief's house, and I should never have heard of the occurrence had they not applied to be released from service to the chief. To cut off the ears or nose of the paramour was a favourite way for a husband to avenge himself, and he did not always wait to be sure that there was anything to avenge. A man of Lianphunga's village passed the night in Tlungbuta's village, and, having been very hospitably treated by a friend, mistook the house of a very jealous husband for that in which he was to sleep, and was promptly ejected and deprived of his ears. Lianphunga, being a more powerful chief than Tlungbuta, exacted ten mithan as compensation for the injury done to his man, who, however, received absolutely nothing. The chief kept eight of the animals and killed two to feast the village, but the unfortunate victim was too ill even to share in the feast. Rape or sodomy were punished in the same way, but the latter, if committed with the consent of the pathicus or with an animal, was not considered a crime, and there is no doubt that the class of men known as Tuai, who dressed as women and did women's work, indulged habitually in this disgusting vice. Fortunately the class, never very large, has almost died out, but I fear the vice is far from extinct. [8. Decisions of disputes.] The chief of each village, assisted by his upa, was the one and only court of justice in the village, and from their decisions there was no appeal, but nevertheless an unsuccessful litigant found a way of getting his case reheard. If the matter in dispute were of sufficient value to make half of it worth a great chief's acceptance, the would-be appellant could generally find some powerful chief who would accept him as a subject and take up his quarrel on those terms. The custom of settling disputes by ordeal or by oaths, which is so common among the Naga tribes, is almost unknown to the Lushais. During the fourteen years I was among them I have only twice heard a party to a case offer to accept the other's oath. In ordinary cases, a man wishing to be believed will take an oath holding a tiger's tooth, saying, "If I lie, may a tiger eat me as I now gnaw this tooth"--suiting the action to the word.