The Thado Kukis, while not practising lycanthropy, believe very strongly in vampires and are extremely afraid of offending persons with the reputation of being such. The vampire sends his soul to suck the vitality of other men’s souls during sleep. The Meitheis also believe in vampires, but I have not met the belief in any Naga tribe. [39] The Semas have a story of a stone at Champimi which fought with Tukahu (Japvo) mountain. The Aos have several stones that fight or fought, and the Lhota stories are given by Mr. Mills. It may be noticed that the Aos, like the Khasis, have the practice of divining by breaking eggs and observing the fall of the fragments of shell. [40] McCulloch, quoted by Hodson (The Meitheis, pp. 68, 73), records a Manipuri tradition of the composition of the Manipuri people from different clans that came from the south, the east and the north-west. Mr. Hodson also suggests that the existing population was already located as at present in A.D. 1431 (op. cit. p. 74 note). [41] But north of the Brahmaputra again burial is the rule. [42] These Y-shaped posts are also used by the Wa of Burma to commemorate the slaughter of buffaloes (Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, I. i. p. 505), whose village defences (ibid. p. 504) must closely resemble those of the Angamis and Kacha Nagas. [43] It might, of course, be possible to contend that this fusion took place as a result of two consecutive occupations of the Naga Hills themselves, but in my opinion all the evidence points to the fusion having taken place at any rate before the Angamis occupied their present sites. The barbarian element may have been Tai in origin. [44] I am indebted to Mr. J. P. Mills for this explanation of the names of the Lhota phratries, which reached me long after I had formed the conclusions which they appear in some degree to strengthen. [45] The meaning of the Lhota word is, I am told, very doubtful. If correctly interpreted it might perhaps refer to some habit of hairdressing. The Angami, in contradistinction to tribes to the north, brushes his hair up off his forehead; so does the Tangkhul. [46] I take azo and ayo, Angami and Lhota respectively for “my mother,” to be the same word. [47] Gait’s History of Assam, p. 162. [48] The Lhota villagers on the outer range relate that the Burmese visited them in a horde which moved on from village to village, looting everything they could find and eating all the food supplies and defiling the houses in a very Prussian way before leaving, the Lhota inhabitants having fled to the jungle on the approach of the Burmese. One Lhota, who related this to me, said that the Burmese (mān) must, in his opinion, have been some sort of spirit or godling, but another contradicted him, saying that he knew well that the mān were men like themselves.—J. H. H. [49] Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. 110, 1841, p. 162.