People of Pathian: Early religion of the Lushai people.
Reinterpretation of the Early Lushai culture, before coming of Christianity in Mizoram.
Today’s Mizoram is dominated by the majority “Zo/Mizo” people(Mi means People, Zo meaning the name of a progenitor; Mizo thus is People of Zo origin)1. This article tries to note down their early religious heritage before the advent of christianity. It also aims to question various readings of the Mizo history which the author of this article finds problematic.
1. Diluting Mass Christian conversion
In “The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram”2 the authors Willem van Schendel and Joy L.K. Pachuau paints the picture of early Lushai people as devoid of any common god. To make this point, they use the writings of Francis Buchanan3. Buchanan’s mentioning is used to state the absence of a common god in the culture by the authors. They quote from Buchanan:
The earliest Europeans who contacted the hill people were baffled by their religion and often doubted that they actually had one. In 1798, Francis Buchanan questioned six individuals and concluded: ‘They have no writing, nor Priests: nor could I discover, that they had any belief in a God, nor in a state of future existence’.
Meeting them again and probing further, he learned that, they acknowledged two Gods, a female named Po-vang, and a male named Sang-ro. The headman did not pretend to know where these Gods reside: but he said, that on certain occasions their old men and Women directed the performance of Sacrifices. These rites were also vowed by those who were in apprehension of a bad crop, or of danger from sickness. The sacrifice is performed by killing fowls, Goats, Swine, and the like; the blood is offered to the Deity, and the flesh serves for a feast … I have not been able to discover, that they have any Idea of a future state.
However, this journal entry by Buchanan itself is very confusing. He initially claims they have no religion, while later acknowledging two separate gods. Yet fast forward to 1912 and we get a far more authentic idea of the Lushai lives through the book “The Lushei Kuki Clans”4, written by James Shakespear, who was a British Civil Servant. Shakespear’s understanding of the Lushai religion is entirely different from Buchanan’s.
J Shakespear’s work is a more authoritative history of the Lushai/Mizo people. Though Buchanan and Shakespear are apart by nearly 40 years, we can’t expect the religious culture to have taken such a sharp turn. This means that Buchanan’s writings of the Zo people, which are only in passing and limited to a group of six people, are inferior in quality for the matter of the study of Mizo religion when compared with writings of Shakespear.
This source entrenches deeply the hill religion as a very distinct entity in the imagination of the Zo people. They were the people of the Pathian.
Author doesn’t have an academic background. Opinions are his own. Feedbacks and corrections are appreciated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizoram#Demographics
Pachuau, J., & Schendel, W. (2015). Domesticating a New Religion. In The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram, Northeast India (pp. 59-86). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139683470.005
Internet access from: (PDF) Francis Buchanan in Southeast Bengal (1798): His Journey to Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Noakhali and Comilla (1992) | Willem van Schendel - Academia.edu
Internet access from archive.org