Watlong, the Naga queen: negotiating local identities through narratives

In the oral narratives of the Konyak and other Naga groups, the story of a woman is told who got married to an Ahom prince of the Assam plains and became a queen. Her name was Watlong. Recently a heated dispute between two Konyak villages arose regarding which village did Watlong actually originated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian ethnicity 2016-07, Vol.17 (3), p.353-369
Main Author: von Stockhausen, Alban
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ahom
identity
Konyak
Naga
narratives
Northeast India
oral tradition
scriptualisation
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Summary:In the oral narratives of the Konyak and other Naga groups, the story of a woman is told who got married to an Ahom prince of the Assam plains and became a queen. Her name was Watlong. Recently a heated dispute between two Konyak villages arose regarding which village did Watlong actually originated from. Both villages claim her as the identification model by presenting stories, songs and objects of evidence handed down since generations. In this paper I follow the story of Watlong in its different variations in detail and suggest that the negotiation of identity among the (Konyak) Nagas, which is traditionally carried out through their specific oral narratives, is nowadays challenged through scriptualisation and notions of 'the script' mainly introduced by Christian mission.
ISSN:1463-1369
1469-2953
DOI:10.1080/14631369.2015.1091651