Conclusion

Naga therianthropy was conducted nearly a century ago by Hutton (with important publications on the subject in 1920 and 1931), and to a lesser extent Mills (1922; 1926). Their overall research agenda followed a predefined outline conceived in response to a general concern that the colourful Naga traditions were vanishing and needed urgent documenting.13 But their work in relation to the tekhumiavi phenomenon went over and above this requirement. Clearly engrossed by the subject, they collected anecdotes, documented personal experiences and aimed to analytically clarify the mechanisms employed in the enactment of tiger-transformation (the idea of the transferability of a soul or spirit between hosts), and investigated at length the parallels they observed between Naga tiger-transformation and nahualism in the Americas. It is no stretch to imagine that it was fuelled by an intense personal curiosity. What is lacking, however, is a more detailed recording of the oral histories of the various Naga groups, and how practices such as tiger-transformation fit within them. In this regard, the project was left unfinished or open-ended, and it will be up to a new wave of anthropologists and scholars concerned with recording the oral histories of the Nagas – led to some degree by Ao (1999), Longchar (2000), and more recently Sutter (2008) and Kaiser (in Oppitz et al. 2008) – to pick up those threads and take the research further. This brief summary of Naga tiger-transformations including some recent interviews with Naga informants will hopefully contribute to the cause.