the case of the travelling vessel

In this circle of hills, as in every corner of the world, all history is a history of connections. Suddenly, a day comes when a man will claim kinship with a distant clan, like Rakut, who had brought us to this village. He was not born here, and no one from his immediate family had ever lived here, yet he knew that he had an ancient bond with the village. He did not himself remember how it had been formed, or in which generation, through which group of his ancestors. ‘This is how it has always been,’ he said, and looked a little sad at not being able to satisfy Jules’ curiosity. ‘You understand how it is,’ he muttered to me.

At this point, the headman of Komsing came to his rescue. ‘It happens like this,’ he said. ‘There are many stories that link clans. Sometimes we forget how these connections were made, but everything is interconnected. Sometimes a connection is born in the middle of war. Sometimes it is through a woman, sometimes land, and sometimes it is through an object out of the past.’

Then he told us a story about a travelling vessel.

It happened long ago. The Lotang family of the Migu clan owned a fabulous vessel called a danki. It was made of the strongest metal alloy and it was an object of pride and admiration. Its wide, shallow surface was criss-crossed with fine intricate markings, like sword strokes, and a man could see his face reflected clearly on its polished surface. Where had it come from? No one knew for certain. It had been passed down from father to son for generations in the family. One day, the eldest son of the family noticed that the vessel was lying overturned in its usual place. He turned it over and was surprised to see it damp with moisture and with patches of moss on its surface. How could this have happened overnight when the danki had been kept under lock and key in its usual corner in the granary?

From this time he began to inspect the granary every morning and found the vessel always overturned and filled, now, with moist leaves and twigs. What surprised him most was that the leaves found in the danki were of a bamboo that did not grow in the vicinity at all, but came from the small, knotted, slow-growing variety of the hills far to the north of the village.

Being a superstitious man he began to leave the vessel outdoors. Every evening he wiped it clean and left it overturned with its face down. Every morning he found it face up, its shallow surface full of twigs, ferns and leaves. Word about the strange behaviour of the vessel began to spread. Many people came to visit the family and enquired about the strange phenomenon. But every time they went to the place where the danki was kept, it was found missing. It seemed that the vessel was teasing them, playing hide-and-seek. Till the son realized that the danki showed itself only to members of his clan.

At this time the Migu clan became prosperous and had many sons and daughters who married well, made a name for themselves and settled in far away places. And so the danki came to be cherished as an auspicious gift from the gods. When the owners held it up and tapped it, the vessel vibrated and tinkled like a bell and they came to associate this sound with their good fortune.

It was shortly after the earthquake some hundred-two hundred years ago that the Lotang family woke one morning to find that the famous vessel had split in two. The two broken halves of the danki had lost all their shine and turned a dull, iron grey, and each half was heavier than what the intact vessel had ever weighed.

The family soaked the two halves in the cleanest spring water, scrubbed and washed them with ash and the froth of the soap nut but nothing could bring back the old lustre. Immediately afterwards, people say, the two halves of the danki disappeared and the fortunes of the Migu clan began to decline. They became poor in sons. The last son bearing the Lotang title lived to the ripe age of ninety-eight. He had six daughters but no male heir.

So it was that after the disappearance of the danki the Migu clan decided to perform an elaborate family ritual that they claimed was long overdue. They felled the tallest tree and brought a hive of wild ants from the forest. The tree was a symbol of strength and the ants symbolized fertility and the birth of many sons. A famous miri was called from the mountains in the north but word reached them that he was away in a village close to the high passes. Since the rituals could not wait, the family called another shaman from a village twodays’ journey to the east. He was a small, youngish man who did not impress anyone at first, but when he began to intone the prayers the women said his voice was delicate and sweet like honey. He stayed in the village for three days and during this time he was lodged in the Lotang house and accorded every attention and honour. As this miri communicated with the world of spirits, he must have succumbed to some misinterpretation or wayward instruction because when the time came to leave, he left the village with a bag full of stolen coins and a number of heavy necklaces of precious stone.

A maternal uncle of the Migu clan gave chase but the young shaman was fleet footed and there was not a trace of him on any of the routes that the vengeful uncle followed.

One day, on his long trek back, the uncle came upon two women quarrelling fiercely by a wide, gushing stream. He stopped, without wondering why he should have done that, for he knew neither of the women. But having failed in his quest, he was in no hurry to return to his village, and he hid behind a tree to listen.

‘He said to share the beads!’ the younger of the two women was shouting.

‘Yes, so I have given you two!’

‘But there were five necklaces!’

‘I am keeping three.’

‘How dare you! We should share the extra necklace!’

‘Don’t be so greedy. Two is enough for you. You’re even lucky to get one.’

‘But the miri said to divide it!’

‘Hush! Don’t make such a noise about it. Someone may find out!’

Now there was no doubt in the eavesdropper’s mind that the women were discussing the stone beads. He drew his sword and rushing out of his hiding place killed them both without a moment’s hesitation. Then he saw an old man perched on a rock staring at him. ‘He has seen everything, I might as well finish him off too,’ thought the uncle, and leapt on the old man and cut him down.

In the clear sunlight the uncle stood with his sword dripping blood into the stream. Three bodies lay among the boulders. The old man had swung backwards and fallen into the water and the women lay twisted and still a little distance away, as though they had slipped and gashed their heads on the hard stones.

‘I came to catch a thief and now I am a murderer,’ the uncle thought, but he felt no regret. He was an elderly man but still strong, and as he fled from the place, he felt like a forest creature that had done what had to be done out of sheer instinct. He disappeared from his ancestral village. It was many years later that the Migu clan discovered that he had reached the village of Sirum in the Duyang group, the home of Rakut’s forefathers. He had married a woman there and had a son.

Emissaries were sent to call the uncle back to the village of his birth, and he returned, fourteen years after his disappearance from the place by the stream. Because the people of Sirum had taken him in, given him one of their daughters and revered him as a son-in-law, the Migu clan and all the clans of Sirum were now united for posterity in a bond of kinship.

‘Such are the histories recorded by our shamans and rhapsodists,’ the old headman of Komsing said. ‘And in time of need, when a person falls ill or a fire starts suddenly, or when there is a murder or a fatal accident, all the remembered links of kinship are called up and word is sent to clan members to come to the aid of their brethren.’