Thomas Callan Hodson

“ These prohibitions—or system of things forbidden—affect the relations, permanent and temporary, of individuals (either as members of a tribe, village, clan or household, or as occupying an official position in the village or clan) towards other persons or groups of persons and towards material objects which possess intrinsic sanctity. ”

“ Individuals are subjected to temporary gennas as warriors both before and after a head-hunting raid, pregnant women, married persons at the beginning of their married life, the wives of the priest-chief, and those who from ambition or pride of wealth seek to perpetuate their names by erecting a stone monument, an act which confers the right to wear the distinctive clothes of the priest-chief which otherwise are genna to the whole village. ”

“ Permanent Gennas.—The only universal genna is that which forbids the intermarriage of members of the same clan. In some cases in Manipur animals are genna to the tribe—i.e. they must not be killed or eaten—but tribal differentiation is, in practice, based on dialectical distinctions rather than on tribal gennas. The village as such possesses no permanent gennas, but the clans, as the units of marriage under the law of exogamy, have distinct elementary gennas, especially the clan to which the priest-chief belongs. ”