Folk Behaviour of the Darlong: Investigating the Buried Traditions of the Darlong Ethnicity from the Eye of ‘Bukpui', a Traditional Institute of the Tribe

Abstract

The Darlong, belonging to one among the many communities of the ‘Zo Hnathla' nomenclature, had dairies of folk behaviours to unfold. However, the tribe leaping over a vast ocean of time dropped almost their past cultures adopting a new one thereby leaving them almost in a state of vacuum. The materials of the article is primarily oral narrations collected from the tribesmen in addition to the secondary materials in a form of personal interviews and govt. as well as non-govt. records available at my disposal. ‘Bukpui' was a traditional institute of the Tribe where the heritages are contained and preserved. The ethnic institute had been acting as a wagon train in carrying out the orature, artefact, the oral narratives and other bygone elements or traditions of the people as a whole in a varied form when writing and documentation was yet a mystery to them. However, ‘Bukpui' failed to stand against the diverse cultural forces encountered by the people incourse of their voyages. Malsawma Darlong in his journal, ‘Looking into the Transitional Paradigm of Darlong Traditional Institute from Bukpui to Church' remarks, "it is a matter of shame and emotional discourse that an institute which stood by the tribe throughout the vast ocean of different environmental metamorphosis have lost its values and significances to the people in the eclipse of the alien ideological confluences”. Thus, the article attempts to draw an observation upon the images and imaginations of the people as quoted in the ‘Bukpui' days.