The style of hair-cutting resembles that of the Semas, Aos and other
tribes. The back and sides of the head are shaved all round up to a
point level with the top of the ears, the hair on the crown of the head
being left long enough to reach to the top of the shaven portion. [58]
When asked why they have adopted this style of hair-cutting they say
that their forefathers used to wear their hair long, but took to
cutting it in the present fashion because it kept getting into their
eyes and catching in the jungle. The custom obtaining in the Southern
Sangtam village of Phulangrr perhaps gives the clue to the real origin
of the fashion. There no man is allowed to shave the back and sides of
his head till he has killed an enemy in war. Till then he wears his
hair cut more or less like a European. Little Lhota girls have their
heads completely shaved till they are about seven years old, when the
hair is allowed to grow. Women wear their hair in an untidy bun on the
nape of the neck, tied round with a bunch of strings of their own hair.
Baldness and grey hair are both uncommon and disliked, and old men
sometimes hide their scanty locks under a wig of black goat’s hair on a
bamboo frame. All children have the lobe of the ear pierced at the
conclusion of the birth “genna.” At the first Ramo [59] “genna” he
attends a boy has a hole pierced in the upper part of the helix. This
is done with a pointed piece of bamboo, and no special ceremonies are
attached to the operation. Among the Southern Lhotas, and occasionally
among the Northern, another hole is pierced in the middle of the concha
at the next Ramo. The holes in the helix and concha are for the cotton
wool with which the ear is adorned and often become much distended in
the case of elderly men.
Circumcision is not practised and neither sex is tattooed.
Dress.