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Dress
The most prominent item of Naga dress is the shawl. It is different for
every tribe and besides, there are varieties and sub-varieties
in every group. A warrior's shawl or shawl of a man who has performed
the Feast of Merit, is different from that of an ordinary villsager.
The common pattern among the Angamis is red and yellow (now being
replaced by green) bands, on black cloth called Lohe.
The western Angami villages have their own distinctive pattern. Lothas
have a streamlined gradation of shawls indicating the number of
gennas performed by the wearer. Thus a man who has performed the
first genna wears the phangrhup, its strips being widened, after the second
genna. The third genna entitles the man to wear the Ethasu, while after
the series of feasts is completed and the stone-dragging done the man
can wear the Lungpensu, which is a dark blue cloth with five stripes of
light blue and with narrow marginal stripes on each side.
The Ao warrior shawl called the Tsungkotepsu with
figures of mithun, tiger, elephant, human head, cock, Dao and spear is
strikingly picturesque. Each of these figures is symbolic; mithun represents
wealth of the wearer, the elephant and tiger denote his prowess
in hunting and the human head signifies success in taking heads. These
patterns are painted in black on a white band, while the cloth itself
is of dark blue colour.
Among the Changs, the unmarried boys and girls
wear the Kaksi nei, while the newly married couple sport the Silang nei.
Another variety of Chang shawl, the Tobu nei has zig-zag patterns
in alternate red and black on a blue band.
The popular Yimchunger shawls are the Aneak khim which
is black, and Mokhok khim which is white. Rongkhim, a particularly
attractive variety of Yimchunger shawl, may be worn only by one who
has taken heads in war, it has prominent rectangular red design,
red colour signifying the blood of the enemy.
In the past it was possible to identify, by simply
looking at the shawl of the wearer, the tribe he belonged to and occasionally
even the group of villages he came from, his social status and the number
of gennas he had performed. But nowadays this identification is
not possible.
Apart from the shawl, the normal working dress is
a kilt which is generally of black colour. It may be embroidered
with cowries in which case it is looked upon as a distinctly male dress.
The cowries are rubbed on stone before being embroidered so that they
may stick well, and they are always sewn by the man using the cloth
and never by his wife or anybody else. The cowrie decoration is quite
popular among the Nagas and it imparts to the kilt the character of toga
virility, signifying his success in love or war. |
