Nagas and Megaliths: a knowledge system

Abstract

Megaliths are raised in memory of an ideal life or achievement, through time and space. In India and more particularly in northeast India, this has been a living tradition. This paper discusses the tradition, belief and knowledge system involved in the cycle of quarrying the megalith to transporting and raising the same in a new place in Nagaland. Moreover, the megalith is evaluated in relation to the fertility and status it entitles the host and his progeny. The paper also discusses the life and gender of megaliths and the associated customs and taboos. In archaeology one gets the end products, in this case standing megaliths and their leftovers statics, the cognition and process behind the act are knowledge-based, the decode key is with the Indigenous people, folktale, earlier reports, re-casted tradition, and ethnohistorical and ethnotechnical calibration of the same.