The following translation of a Lushai's account of how mankind first learned the black art is specially interesting, as it introduces Lalruanga and Keichalla, who are the heroes of many of the oldest of the Lushai tales. Colonel Lewin gives some excellent stories in his "Progressive Colloquial Exercises." Keichalla is the man who can become a tiger at will, and appears in many tales:-- "Dawi witchcraft was known to Pathian. Vahrika also was something like Pathian. Vahrika had a separate water supply, and Pathian's daughter was always disturbing it. Vahrika said, 'What can it be?' and lay in ambush. Pathian's daughter came, and he caught her and was going to kill her, but she said, 'Don't kill me; I will teach you magic.' So she taught him, and Vahrika taught it all to Keichalla, Lalruanga, and Hrang-sai-puia. Then Lalruanga went to court Zangkaki, and Zangkaki, who was a friend of Pathian's daughter, bewitched Lalruanga, who had forgotten his "dawi bur" (magic gourd), and he said to Chaichim (the mouse), 'Go and fetch my dawi bur which I put in my basket.' So the mouse went to fetch the dawi bur and got it, but the Tuiruang (Barak) river rose very high. The mouse took the dawi bur in his mouth and started to swim over the river. The dawi bur was washed away by the river till it stuck in the fish trap of the Thlangom tribe, who said, 'What is this?' The dawi bur was singing like anything. The Thlangoms broke it open. No sooner had they opened it than they each acquired knowledge of magic. Then the Thlangoms were chanting the magic song. Some Mizo (natives of these Hills) who were passing through the village also heard the song of those who knew magic. The Mizo saw a man eating rice. 'May you be bewitched!' they said. They bewitched him in his rice eating, and for a year after whenever he ate cooked rice it changed into dry uncooked rice, and it swelled inside him till his stomach could not hold it and he died. Thus the Mizo learnt about magic. Nowadays also there is magic, but those who know it won't teach it without payment." The Lushais maintain that the tribes to the north of them, such as Paihte, Bete, &c., are very proficient at witchcraft, while the Chins consider the Lushais such experts at the craft that when Captain Hall, 2nd Gurkhas, and I forced our way from the west through the then unexplored hills and joined General Symons at Haka in 1890, the chiefs of that village besought the General not to allow any of our Lushai followers to go within sight of it, lest they should, by merely looking at it, cause fearful misfortunes. The belief in the man tiger is common through the Hills and also in Nepal. When a man-eater gave much trouble in Lungleh, our Gurkha Sepoys maintained that it was a man, one of three friends who had assumed this shape and were travelling by different shapes to a previously selected rendezvous, on reaching which they would resume their human forms.