Belief

Orality

Nagaland is home to nearly two million people consisting of 16 constituent major tribes that speak over 89 dialects (mostly mutually unintelligible between two tribes) and are without a common language and script.

According to the most famous legend regarding the Naga script, it was given to the people on animal skin which, when nobody was looking, was eaten by a dog leading to the script being lost forever. Certain variations to the legend also claim that the Assamese script was given on stone for which it endured as against the Naga script on animal hide which perished.

The Prayers of the Talibés (2)

yalna laa baay laate, dugal la ci poosam yobu la aldiana !

yalna nga àjji màkka 

yalna nga giseek seriñ tuuba yoomalxiyaam 

yalna la borom bi bindal tuyaaba

yalna nga amm ay seex 

yalna nga tabbi ci teenu xaalis ñu lay gene ngay bañ 

 

May God make Baye Lahat put you in his pocket and enter with you into Heaven.

May God give you the grace to perform Hajj in Makkah

May God make you meet Serigne Touba in the afterlife

May God record this good deed for you...

Thet-pyauk-taing: The Memorial Pole

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief. 

The guardian spirit was once an ordinary man. One day, while he was crossing the strem, he was bit by a tiger or kyar and died. The villagers erected a teak wood pole as a memorial to him and named it Thet-pyauk-taing. And from then on he became Taungthaman Bo Bo Gyi, the guardian spirit.

Taungthaman Bo Bo gyi (2): Strangers Beware

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief

“There are many beliefs that are linked with Taunghtaman lake and Taunghtaman Bo Bo gyi, our guardian spirit. I was told by my grandparents and we also believe that strangers who visit U Pein bridge should not shower in Taunghtaman lake because the bather will take the place of the one who died before him/her.

According to another belief, if someone misuses the word ‘kyar/tiger’ (an animal which killed the guardian spirit) and then visits the lake... that person dies.

Taungthaman Bo Bo gyi (1): The Guardian Spirit

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief

In U Pein Bridge, our group interviewed a second-year law student from Yadanabon University which is located near U Pein Bridge. She shared a story which she had learnt from her grandparents:

“We believe that Taungthaman Bo Bo gyi is the guardian spirit of the village. Now there is a pole erected in the middle of the Bridge to mark his death. It is known as Thet-pyauk-taing .

U Pein Bridge (2): Learning History Through Childhood Poem

This oral narrative was collected by the students exploring the word concept - belief. 

The seventy-two year old father of the fried-fish seller told us the following story related with the establishment of the U Pein bridge:

"I left the monastery long time ago but I remember what I learnt about the history of the U Pein bridge"

 

အင်းကအော်ညီး ဆောက်လုပ်ပြီး၊ ဉီးပိန် တံတားကြီး

အင်း၀ရေငံ တွင်းဂျီးစော်နံ၊ တောင်သမန် ရေချိုတွင်း သောက်ပါလေ့ ကို ရန်ကင်း ဘေးရန်က ရှင်း

ဘရူရာဇာ (ထန်းပင်) မည်သော ထန်းပဒေသာပင်များ ခြံရံလျက်ရှိသောနေရာများကို ရွေးချယ်ခဲ့သည်။

A Shared Locale: Changing Pedagogy in General Anthropology, University of Mandalay (1)

In (2019-2020) academic year, I teach general anthropology (Anth-1101) to first year students. My idea is to combine the classroom and field trip to show how the concepts of general anthropology that they learned in the class can be connected with "code words" outside of the class room, to begin to show them how to analyze field notes and connect them to theoretical concepts.

Bakhri (2)

Bakhri II
 
The community Bakhri (Granary) at Thuribari, Kokrajhar, is one of the few such Bakhris seen nowadays in Assam. Community Bakhri is representative of a communal living and sharing. Located in an open village space just opposite the Brahma temple, these three small raised mud houses look ordinary but the significance and relevance of them in Thuribari community life is clearly visible from the well-maintained condition of it. 
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