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318
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(OCTOBER, 1892.
qualified for a Chiefship her son must continue these habits. Such a child is taken good care of, and in due time installed as a Chief in the following manner. A hò, - a low, rambling rectangular bamboo structure is built and the candidate for the Chiefship is placed in it. Each villager brings one bunch of plantains, one mat, and at least a quarter of a tical weight of silver as offerings. The amount of the silver offering, however, varies from a quarter of a tical to a full tical, according to the resources of the village. The villagers also bring fowls, whose bones are to be used in reading omens. They then proceed to pass a merry time the whole night long, drinking kaung, their national beverage, and dancing round the hò. The fowls are killed and the leg bones are carefully scraped clean, and certain small holes in them are examined with a piece of straw or bamboo. If the holes on the right leg. bone are situated higher up than the correspond ing ones on the left, the omen is considered to be auspicions. By this method of divination, which is quite a science among the Red Karens, the future of the candidate for a Chiefship is settled. The questions usually solved are whether the newly installed Chief will be one of might and power, whether the villages will prosper under his rule, and whether the people now assembled will be able to undertake forays successfully and with a minimum of loss to their side.
Every man is judge in his own case in Karenni, and the exaction of an indemnity in consequence of a chwe, which is an affair of honour, rests with himself. It is only in im
portant differences and disputes that the Chief exercises his prerogative by stepping in as an arbitrator or peacemaker.
Divination by means of the bones of a fowl plays an important part in Karenni politics. All organized raids are determined in this way, and sometimes the subjects of a Chief disobey his orders, when the bones consulted predict unfavourable events.
The Karennis pay no regular revenue to their Chiefs. All that they are called on to pay is a silver offering, as described above, on certain days, as the anniversary day of the Chief's installation, or some festival day. Such silver pieces are hoarded in the hollow of the central post in the ho.
The Karennis, like all other wild tribes, are noted for their fidelity to their oaths. There are different forms of oath-taking: -(1) killing buffaloes, eating their flesh, and preserving their horns, one being kept as a memento by each party participating in the ceremony ;' (2) drinking water, in which a drop of human blood from a puncture in the arm has been infused; (3) eating a jack-fruit; and (4) exchanging spears. The first three forms are used when an interchange of fraternity takes place. The fourth signifies that a reciprocal guarantee is given that no harm shall be done to the recipients. Sometimes, after deciding a knotty case between parties, who have a chwé against each other, a Karenni Chief gives his spear to one of the litigants in order to shield him from private vengeance.
T. S. K.
NOTES AND QUERIES. MISCELLANEOUS SUPERSTITIONS AS TO If a horse neighs, or an ass brays, or a clock ANIMALS IN MADRAS.
chimes, or a bell is rung, or a dog twitches his If one happens to see a jackal on first rising ears, or a gun is fired, just when one is contemfrom bed, there will be success in every enterprise
plating the performance of anything, there will undertaken during that day. It is a common certainly be success in the enterprise or attaincustom among the Hindus of Madras, when a man
ment of the object. meets with exceptional success, to ask him, "Did
K. SRIKANTALIYAR. you see the jackal's face early this morning P” Ootacamund.
BOOK-NOTICES. ARCHEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA, THE MONUMENTAL Leipzig.--Otto Harrassowitz. Imperial Quarto.
ANTIQUITIES AND INSCRIPTIONS IN THE NORTH 1891. WASTERN PROVINCES AND OUDH, described and Tbe new series of Archæological Survey Reports arranged by A. FÜHRER, Ph.D., Archeological
well begun by Messrs. Führer and E. Smith's Surrey, N.-W. P. and Oudh. Allahabad-Printed and Published by the Supdt., Govt. Press, N.-W.P.
handsome volume on the Sharqi Architecture and Oudh; Calcutta.-Thacker, Spink & Co.;
of Jaunpur is worthily continued by the work London.-Trübner & Co. and W. H. Allen & Co.; which is the subject of this notice. 1 [ò=am, in awful'-ED.)
(Chetpôjt), Chief of Western Karennt, and Mr. O'Riley, ? Such a ceremony was performed by Kyetpógyi | Deputy Commissioner, Toungoo, in 1857.
