Monday, January 2, 2012

Traditional House of the Tangkhul Nagas

This would without doubt will be my toughest post to understand and probably the most boring one as I am going to flung us all back to the times when there were no iron nails, saw, and other carpentry tools to build houses. This is when the axe and iron chisel were the only tools Tangkhuls used for building their houses. We are glaring at early nineteenth century, the pre-Christian era in the Tangkhul hills.


I can understand a bit of what mammoth effort it would have been to build a house with only an axe and a chisel in the hands of the carpenter. I am a part time carpenter and I vouch it would take me a decade at least to complete a house with an axe and a chisel.

Traditional Tangkhul houses are unique in every way. The front portion consists of huge carved pillars with the gaps filled by wooden planks. The back and sides are covered with horizontally placed wooden planks which are joined by ropes.The roof is slanted and covered with thatch.

The wooden planks were chipped out from huge trees, which are split in the middle first and then the two sides made into single planks. Thus, a huge tree which could build a whole house if modern tools were used were just made into two planks. Some of the wooden planks measure 3/4 meters. Depending on the length of the tree, the planks are cut into multiple pieces to fit the height of the walls.

The huge carved pillars for the front side are made from single woods, which are chipped and shaped with axe and crude chisels. It is said that 90% of carving on the pillars are done with axe, which is sort of unimaginable.

The interior of the house is partitioned into two sections separated by wooden planks and carved pillars.The front side which forms major part of the house is reserved as the cooking area and the smaller portion is kept as the bedroom.

The front door and the bedroom doors were usually made of single wood planks and are heavily carved. One side of the doors have pointed ends which are slightly longer than the main frame. These pointed ends are fixed to hollowed out wooden frames on one side of the door that makes closing and opening of the doors possible. Hinges were something unheard of then.

The Building Process:
The whole village in some ways or the other is involved when a house is built. Men are responsible for felling trees and cutting them into planks and to carry them home from the forest. Craftsmen and carpenters in the village are responsible for carving the pillars and the doors. Women and children help in collecting the thatch of house.

The owner of the house feeds the workers until the house is completed. People who are rich build more magnificent houses to showcase their social standings. The house of the rich apart from being larger has more carved pillars. The workers do their duties voluntarily, with the understanding that they are just helping each other. Rich people host a grand feast for the whole village when the building is completed, this is in addition to feeding the workers throughout the building period.


It is said that building a house take months. After the advent of Christianity and introduction of modern carpentry tools the traditional way of house building got replaced by simpler and less time consuming strategy. Pure traditional houses are hard to find today even in the most interior Tangkhul villages.

After moving into the new house, the heads of animals slaughtered at the time of building it are hung on wall of the cooking area as decoration. The front wall of the house used to be adorned with wild animal heads killed by the head of the family. It is said that during the days of head hunting, the heads of the victims are hung at the front wall of the house between the carved pillars.

The carved pillars and doors too have vanished. Some of the pillars and doors were looted away by antique collectors which most of the villagers gave away at throwaway price not knowing their value. It is a shame that we have lost almost everything that can remind us of our glorious past. In some villages, the wood totems were cut down to use as fuel which otherwise has withstood for centuries.

Author's Note: A writeup based on memory from stories I heard from old people by the hearth.

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