Nagaland: Clouds and the Ancient Mountain of the Dead

A fascinating tale of the ancients -  the legend of the Mountain of the Dead. 

This story is from a collection of oral folklores passed down from our ancestors for generations...stories narrated usually by the eldest member or the most dramatic story-teller of the household in the evenings when all the day's work is done and everyone is seated around the crackling, deep red and flaming fireplace, all under one cosy thatched roof. 

These were not just mere story-telling sessions: the narrations required great skill and mastery of  memory, confidence, voice clarity and modulation, intonation, timing, animated hand gestures, facial expressions and body movements... no wonder the stories survived for thousands of years. Unfortunately, I think this tradition died a sudden death in recent years - banished for eternity to the mountain of the dead, and it grieves me immensely. :(

I was fortunate enough to have known two grandfathers who were both great story-tellers and story-lovers who could go on and on with their webs of wonder even after I had long drifted away to another world and this is one such story from my grandfathers' granary of Naga folktales. 

According to legend, this (photos on this page) is the Mountain of the Dead where the souls of people travel to after they die. The ancients believed that this place had great powers and the living had no control over it. In those olden times apart form natural causes the other major cause of death was war - among different tribes, clans and villages, even individuals. The cause of their wars had almost the same reasons as the present day's: power, wealth, land, glory, name and fame. 

It is gruesome to imagine heads literally rolling off headless bodies but since head-hunting was an established practice in those days, it was quite acceptable to chop off heads (not guillotine style but free-style chop with a dash of passion that matched the Red Queen's) of the enemies as grand prizes to be carried back to the village for a great song and dance by the victorious warriors.

Our ancestors used the ancient versions of modern-day missiles, guns, savagery, extortion and manipulation techniques -- their primitive spears, Daos and a certain amount of organised planning were somewhat crude but produced the same results like all wars do: death and pain. 

But there was this place - the Mountain of the Dead to rescue the dead from their ancient defeats and shame. This special mountain was a refuge for the soul of the loser as well as the winner who died perhaps due to a fatal fall over the rocky cliffs after drinking excess rice beer celebrating his heady booty.

Head-chopping was strictly prohibited in the afterlife and therefore the souls of my ancestors made peace, composed and sang folk-songs together in the other world. I am not certain if they were allowed to smoke the aromatic Peace-Pipe but they were happy and ate a variety of fresh fruits.

Yes, real fruits. According to the same legend, the Mountain of the Dead was not an eerie, ghost-infested, dark and hellish abode but a bountiful, bright, breezy and colourful orchard with all types of fruit trees imaginable. The best thing about this place was that the living were welcome in their living, breathing selves to enter the orchard to pay their respects to the dead and to eat as many fruits as they liked: plump passion fruits, pineapples, gooseberries, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, oranges and guavas, but that is not all to the story. 

The living, as we know, are not perfect and are sometimes plagued by bouts of greed and desire for more and more....even in times of mourning. 

So this legend goes on to include a twist of fate for those living mortals who wanted more fruits than they could bite (just like Mr. Adam and Ms. Eve).

The strange power of the Mountain of the Dead was that visitors were allowed to have their fill and even live in the orchard for days and months but on the condition that they do not take even a single fruit out of the orchard. Many visitors loaded their bamboo baskets to the full with their favourite fruits despite the warning and tried to escape. Nothing visibly terrible happened to them and they hurried without looking back, they walked, they ran, for days and days, covering many miles, rivers and hills toward their villages with their heavy loot.

But alas! not even a sign of thin smoke nor a distant glimpse of huts and bamboo groves. When they stopped for a moment's rest, they realised that they have been walking on the same spot over and over for days. It was a trick of the mind to imagine that they were progressing closer to home. The Mountain of the Dead was just and the visitors knew that they had been given fair warning. There was no other alternative but to abandon their baskets and return to the land of the living and that is what the visitors did.

However, some people could not believe that it was impossible to escape and continued to walk with their stolen goods. The legend says that these visitors are still walking with baskets of choice fruits strapped to their heads looking homeward neither dead or alive, forever.

(Photos by Aaron Jimomi:  Mountain of the Dead, Nagaland - view from Zunheboto )