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1.1 |
The People |
| Mao Nagas occupy parts of the Mao-Maram
subdivision of the Senapati District of the state of Manipur.
Ethnoculturally, they are with the Nagas of Nagaland, being
closely related to the Angami Nagas. They have long since
enjoyed a settled life. Practise agrarian economy; rice culture
is their main stay, the cultivation of potato being common too.
Maos have long since given up swidden cultivation, terracing
being more common now. Ownership of land is both collective and
individual. They bury the dead. Festivals are in the main,
bucolic, agriculture-related. Villages are divided into
exogamous clans, each headed by a leader. The dormitory system
where boys and girls would freely interact without prejudice to
sex, and which once played a vital role in the sociocultural
life of the village is fast getting into limbo. Joint families
are alien to their mode of life. As in Europe, once married, the
son typically has a separate establishment. Patrilineal and
patrilocal [cü-vu [husband’s] house-go is the verb ‘to marry’
when the speaker is a female], they practise tribal endogamy and
clan exogamy, people have increasingly married within the clan
and outside the tribe with impunity, though. Adjudication,
dispensing of justice and administration of punitive action is
prompt with the aid of an open and mobile court system. Maos
were animists till about 1927 when a large scale proselytisation
into Christianity swamped them and made deep dents in their
primievally vital mode of life. Paganism still survives,
persists among some. In fact the headman of most villages is a
pagan. Headmanship is hereditary. People have a strong sense of
village identity. Social solidarity is at its strongest at the
village level. A word about the genesis of the word ‘Mao’ will
end this laconic ethnological note. The word ‘Mao’ has nothing
to do with the Chinese strongman who dominated China until
recently. There are various stories about how Maos came to be
called Maos. |
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a]
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The term Mao could be
from the word memeo who is fancied to
be their progenitor, forebear of whom all the
Maos are descendants. |
b]
|
When Britishers set foot in this part, they travelled
from Kohima straight to Imphal without contacting
the tribals on the way. They came into contact
with Marams first. The Marams must have called
Maos ‘mao(mai)’ or when asked about the
tribe the Britishers passed by, must have said
‘mo’ meaning ‘I do not know’, which the
Britishers took for the name of the tribe. The
mo came to be spelt as muw which spelling is still
there in the British records in Imphal and as
mow which spelling is still there in the British
records in Kohima, and later as mao which has
come to stay. |
c]
|
Grierson [1903,3, 3:45] says, "Mao is the
Manipuri name of their chief village", which
of course, is empirically empty. Memi which could
be a transformed, mutilated form of memeo
that we broached earlier or from imemüi
[ime from Memeo and müi ‘man,
person, people’], is an autonym. Sopfomie is an
Angami exoethnonym. This could be from the name
of shipfo who is fancied by Maos to be
Memeo’s progenitor. The primogeniture of shipfo
is established beyond argument among the Maos.
Sopfoma and Sopfora are Angami
exoloconyms for the Mao township. |
d]
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The word Mao could also be from omo ‘pumpkin’
- A Zemi version has it that Maos grew very good
pumpkins and so came to be called amomüi
[‘pumpkin men’], which, with the passage of time,
developed into Mao. |
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1.2 |
The Language |
Mao {Naga}, phonemically măŏ
[nāgā], is spoken in the
Mao-Maram subdivision of the Senapati District [formerly called
the North District] of the state of Manipur and in a couple of
solely Mao villages in the Phek District of the state of
Nagaland by a population of 35,381 (all India figure in th 1971
census], now conservatively estimated to be over 50,000. It is
spoken in exclusively Mao villages which are perched on hill
tops - sixteen of them, Punanamai, Pudunamai, Kaibi, Choynu [Chowainu],
Kalinamai, Shongshong, Shajouba, Tobufü, Tadubi, Makhel [Maos
believe all the Nagas originated in this village], Chakumai,
Makhan, Mao Pongdung, Choynamai khulen, Choynamai khunou and
Rabunamai. Mao, which is not an exclusively Mao village but a
township on the kohima-Imphal highway, is an exonym, an exoloco-,
exoethno-, and an exoglossonym [=names that an outsider calls a
place, tribe
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