Darlong Khawrua

                         ‘BUKPUI’, an institutional house for the Darlongs: Tracing the lost elements of the Darlong ethnicity as imaged and imagined in the ‘Bukpui’ age.   ABSTRACT: The Darlong, belonging to one among the many communities of the ‘Zo Hnathla’ nomenclature, had dairies of folk traditions to be unfolded. However, the tribe leaping over a vast ocean of time dropped almost their entire past cultures adopting a new ones thereby leaving themselves almost in a state of blankness. ‘Bukpui’ was the traditional institute of the Darlongs where the heritages are born and contained. The ethnic institute had been acting as a wagon train in carrying out the orature, artefact, the oral narratives and other ethnic elements or the folk traditions as a whole in a varied form when writing and documentation was yet a mystery to them. However, the ‘Bukpui’ f...

       Once upon a time, there lived a widower who goes hunting every day. One day, the widower’s Kar  ( a typical Darlong trap usually made to hunt down animals that does not crawl) made shot down a beautiful she-deer. The widower brought the deer home, peeled off the skin, cooked a portion of the meat and fermented a portion of it hanging over a Rap to consume it as Sahroi (fermented meat). Aftermath of the incident (which was nothing new to the widower), kept up his schedule going undisturbed. One certain day, as he returned from his tiresome day work the widower found that his evening meal had been cooked by someone. He was greatly happy to learn that someone in the village cared about him. He ate the prepared food and slept for the night. The next, day, widower once again went out to work at a jhum. At dusk, he returned home and found his meal prepared well before his arrival. The widower once again was happy to learn that someone in the village do under...

          Once upon a time there lived a girl named Hrili who had a cruel stepmother and had to lead a life of domestic tortures and sufferings. One day, the father took Hrili’s younger sister deep into forest and cold bloodily murdered her. Hrili cried for many days looking for her younger sister and eventually discovered the fact about the death of her younger sister and was inconsolably weeping alone in a green plantation field. The little girl, drained, exhausted and unable to produce any sound fainted besides her sister’s body. Magically as did in all fairy tales, a good spirit known as Zingngawrtenu (goddess of dawn) appeared and found Hrili in a miserable condition. She then asked the little girl the cause of her sufferings and revealed to her the magical healing power of a particular tree. The good spirit then asked the little girl to plucked the leaves of the tree and bring her younger sister back to the mortal world. In spur of a moment, Hr...

In his publication ‘Ei Mihmasak Hei’, late Mr. Siamkȗnga Darlong of present Darchawi village, narrated the emergence of the ‘Dȃrlawn Ṭlâng’ located in the present Mizoram in form of folktale. To him, “once upon a time there lives a couple. One day the woman went to have a bath in a lake called ‘Hri Li’. In the process, a strange thing happened when the woman was pollinated by a huge snake as a result of which, she gave birth to a baby girl. The little girl was name ‘Zawlṭleipuii’ who grew up to be the most beautiful girl of the village and its adjacent territory. As Zawlṭleipuii matured up in age, they eventually gets married to some other village who in return presented the village with a treasure called ‘Dȃrsȗngsen’ also known as ‘Tuiruangdȃr’, as a price for the bride which in today’s Darlong community is done in term of animal forelimb called ‘Zuar Dȃr’ in the vernacular language. During the time of hand over, the bride’s villagers were asked not to put it down until they reac...