Lashi.--Although the Lashi are not considered as demons or divinities, yet this seems an appropriate place to deal with them. A Lushai describes them thus:--"The Lashi folk are spirits which live in the Lur and Tan precipices. Formerly a Lushai young man went shooting alone. Beneath the Tan precipice a most beautiful Lashi maiden was weaving, and on seeing her the youth became love-sick and could not go away, so he stayed and courted her all day, till it began to grow dark; then the Lashi maiden, wishing to go to her house, asked him to roll up her weaving for her, but he would not. Then she said to him, 'What animal would you most like to shoot?' and on his saying an elephant she at once caused him to kill one and he bore its head back in triumph, while the Lashi maiden and her mother rolled up the cloth and disappeared into the precipice." My informant assured me that had the young man rolled up the weaving he would never have escaped. In another tale a Lashi youth falls in love with the daughter of a man called Lianlunga, to whom he appeared in a dream and offered to place in his tobacco box the fur of many wild animals and to enable him to shoot every animal the fur of which was in the box. In return for this Lianlunga agreed to the match, and both he and his wife were given the power of decoying wild animals. Lianlunga's wife would pinch her pig's ear, and if it made no noise Lianlunga would go out shooting and Chawntinleri, a younger sister of the Lashi son-in-law, would drive all the animals past him, and he shot what he liked, for the Lashi had tamed all the animals. Lianlunga, however, came to a tragic end through trying to dispense with the services of the Lashi. He enticed a wild metna under his house and then tried to spear it through the floor, but only wounded it and the animal escaped. This offended the Lashi, who "made the barb of an arrow come out of his heart so that he died." The Lashi seem to be only concerned with wild animals, over whom they are believed to have complete control. [4. Religious rites and ceremonies.] In this part I propose only to deal with the various sacrifices which play so important a part in a Lushai's existence, but the festivals described in para. 9 are, to a certain extent, religious ceremonies, and are performed with the idea of pleasing the gods. Suakhnuna explained to me, when giving the description of the Thangchhuah feasts, that Pathian resided in the sky and that these feasts were supposed to please him. Similarly, the carrying about of the effigies of their ancestors in the "mi-thi-rawp-lam" is supposed to be acceptable to the spirits of the departed. In these feasts I think we may safely trace the rude beginnings of the magnificent pageants performed by the Manipuris and called by them "Lai-harauba"--i.e., "Pleasing the god." Before describing the various sacrifices it is necessary to explain some of the terms used.