Angami ecoethics

Easterine, in her novels A Naga Village Remembered and When the River Sleeps, explores the Angami ecoethics which have been the guiding principles of the Angami tribe of Nagaland.

18.3.1 A Naga Village Remembered

A Naga Village Remembered upholds the Angami ecoethical dictum, “The Sky is my father, the Earth is my mother, I believe in Kepenuopfu”(Iralu 2003:57). In When the River Sleeps the importance of Kepenuopfu is also reiterated. At the time of any difficulty and danger, the name of Kepenuopfu is uttered to get rid of all difficulties: “Kepenuopfu zanu tsie la mha talie”, meaning “in the name of the creator-deity retreat at once” (Kire 2014:105). A Naga Village Remembered upholds other virtues which are the mainstay of tribal ecoeth­ics mostly followed by the Angamis. The mannerisms, etiquettes, and morals which are adhered in the Angami society are also recorded in the pages of this novel while depict­ing the chivalric challenges displayed by the Khonoma villagers in resisting the colonial aggression against them. The fixed moral ways of living recorded in this novel include: “(i) a household is not worthy of its name if its granaries are empty”, (ii) “The sun and rain are the Creator’s blessings. They rain and shine in turn for us to make our fields and get our harvests”. (iii) “War is part of a village’s life but if we have grain, we can withstand war. If we do not have grain, a few days of war will overcome us” (Das 2021:163). There are also genna days and such ritualistic days are honoured by all. There are several other obligations and mannerisms which an Angami strictly follows such as: honouring the elder, controlling one’s greed, not mourning lashu death, etc. Besides these there are certain apho­ristic sayings which are significant in an Angami’s life, like: (i) “It is not manliness to be so overcome by drink, it goes by another name”, (ii) “If you are at a community feast, and take more than two pieces of meat, shame on you.

When you are a few years older and your hearts are strong within you, you will take on the responsibility of guarding the village while others will go on to earn a great name for our village. Your roles are different but each is as important as the other. Never be arrogant, respect yourself sufficiently so that you fulfil the responsibilities of manhood... A real man does not need to roar to show that he is a man.

(Das 2021:164)

On the occasion of marriage, the Angami bride’s mates pronounce the following blessing in the groom’s household after reaching there with bride and receiving the bride price:

This household will fetch and drink water from the water source as long as others are fetching and drinking of it. They will be able to make a fire as long as others. Their progeny shall be numerous, as numerous as the progeny of spiders and crabs; They shall be blest with long life. They shall live to be ancestors and grandparents and prosper in their life.

(Iralu² 2003:49-50)

While entering a new house, the priest performs geida ritual by touching a rooster to the inner posts of the house and killing it and sprinkling its blood on the middle of the beam with the chanting of blessings:

The blessings of your father and grandfather will visit you in this house, my children. You have done well to build a new house. Your lives are starting now and it is good that you have heeded the old ways. May you always keep the blessings.

(Iralu 2003:52)

The ritual of geisu ruotho is performed to appease the spirit for recovery of a person from sickness. The priest sacrifices a rooster and chants blessings in a loud voice:

We refuse to take disease, death or any ill encounter with spirits from any place and therefore we are substituting your life with this unblemished chicken which is greater than your life and we will appease the spirits with it, kha kenie, dia, pengou, sorou.

(Iralu 2003:54)

The spirits favour the persons who perform the rituals. Hence, the rituals are to be per­formed in regular intervals and the genna days also must be observed. The rhoutho ritual of seed sowing is performed with the elder pronouncing blessing for the appeasement of the spirits to cause good crop harvest:

My paddy may you grow up well, though the weeds are abundant, my paddy grow you around the tree stumps and boulders. It will be food of generations, the food of wartime, grow bent over with full-husked grain.

(Kire 2018:82)

Besides these, the other agricultural rituals performed by the Angamis are Tiemvukie (a ritual preceding harvest), Liede (ritual initiation of harvest by a woman called Bilipfu), Kelipie (a festival/ritual in the middle of the agricultural year), Terhunyi (harvest festival), Thekranyi (a festival made from the earnings of the age-group), and Kerutsu (the ritual of first day of field going for married couple) and above all the festival of Sekrenyi (the important festival of sanctification). Though they call the sky father and earth the mother and Kepenuopfu, the creator god/spirit, Vo-o is the spirit which is propitiated at the seed sowing ritual and Chukhieo is the guardian spirit of wildlife (Das 2010:46-47). The bitter wormwood gives protection against all evil spirits in the Angami tradition (Das 2010:47) whereas the wild ginger gives protection against the evil spirits in the Adi tribal tradition (Dai 2006:94).

18.3.2 When the River Sleeps

In When the River Sleeps, Easterine explores an Angami hunter’s life, ecoethics, and the ecoethics of Angamis in the ancient times depicting their living in the midst of the natural green world amidst the ecosophical tradition of the world of spirits. Vilie recurrently utters “the forest is my wife” and gives the reason for such words: “the forest is my wife. She provides food for me and more, she is the sanctuary I need and I am content with that” (Kire 2014:142).

It protects the animals also: “You come from a long line of warriors but you have chosen to be a hunter. You trap animals for food but also protect the ones entrusted to you. Not many men can keep that balance” (Kire 2014:141). The spirits in the forest enchant hunters or any intruder or trespasser and draw them to unclean forests so that they would die there (Kire 2014:76). The hunters and forest dwellers must be aware of these. For a forest dweller, honesty is very important. If one is honest, he will have no fear, one’s evil action determines his safety and self-security:

Remember when we are out at the sleeping river, there can be no room for fear. If you harbour fear, you are a dead man. If you came here after committing something terrible, like a murder or sending a man to death by a false testimony, your spirit will not be able to outwrestle their spirits. Any evil action of yours will weigh on your conscience, and make you vulnerable to their onslaught. It is an attack, there’s nothing gentle about it. So your protection is your own good heart and your clear conscience. Harbour no evil against any man when you are going on this trip.

(Kire 2014:93)

The sleeping river in the forest is enriched with the sacred heart stone which is spiritual and is a blessing with the heavenly virtues. If someone catches the heart stone from the sleeping river, he can use it for blessings of wealth, cattle, and beautiful women and more than that. The heart stone is very precious and if someone tries to possess wealth with the help of the heart stone, he will lose something more precious. Hence it is said:

It is not wrong to have wealth but your relationship to your wealth defines every­thing else. If you are grasping at wealth, you are going to lose something that wealth cannot buy for you. You will lose the knowledge of the spiritual. And you will lose the power it offers you. That is true power; that is the only power to aspire to because it gives you power over both the world of the senses and the world of the spirit.

(Kire 2014:95-96)

The heart-stone has such divine powers whereas the screaming stone is evil. In the village of Zuzie, there were two screaming stones that used to scream in the evening. When the stones scream, the mothers hid their children and cover their children’s faces with their body­cloths or with the border of their waist cloth to protect them from whatever evil thing the stone was to emit over the village as it screamed. They would even plug their children’s ears and pull them inside their houses and shut their windows and doors (Kire 2014:140-141).

Vilie struggled ferociously with the cold water of the sleeping river to dive it at the time of flood to catch the heart stone which was guarded by the widow-women spirits. The sleeping river itself was a spirit and to get rid of all of the evils, Vilie had to utter the spirit words:

Sky is my father, Earth is my mother, stand aside death! Kepenuopfu fights for me, today is my day! I claim the wealth of the river because mine is the greater spirit. To him who has the greater spirit belongs the stone!

The spirits are very interested in the heart-stone because it has the power to turn the hearts of others to the owner. But it is only the humans who can enter the sleeping river to catch the river and the heart-stone as the spirits cannot do that as they cannot touch water, because the water of a sleeping river is also a spirit (Kire 2014:111).

To get rid of the widow-women spirit and Kirhupfumia, Vilie had to utter the name of the Creator Spirit: “Kepenuopfu zanu tsie tuomhatalie” (Kire 2014:193) like other way of chanting/shouting the name: “Kepenuopfu zanu tsie la mha talie” (Kire 2014:105) (meaning, ‘In the name of the Creator-deity/god, retreat at once’). Use of the name of the Creator-spirit saves an Angami in critical moments of life and in all dangers. The heart-stone is divine, but

it is not an object of worship... It is not for making profit for oneself... The wisdom of the stone is more spiritual than physical.

(Kire 2014:238)

In the whole of the colonial countries in different parts of the world, with the advent of the colonisers and their colonising new religion, the traditional autochthonous ecoethics and religions started losing their virginity, pristinity, integrity, and identity and in several regions also started disappearing. In the tribal worlds to be integral to the nature and to follow the ways of nature was the religion of the tribes. Now most of the tribal worlds have been Christianised and thus anthropocentrically colonised, devastating and degenerating the green virginity and alienating the tribes in their own habitats and depriving them from their animist ecoethics and forcing them to an anthropocentric new world order. Hence, they are suffering from alienation, nostalgia, desperation, and deprivation in a diasporic state of life in their own diseased habitats always being idiosyncratic of the forgotten world or living a hybrid mode of life pining of the old world order.

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