Ao Naga Erotic

The Ao are a major Naga people of the Mokokchung district of Nagaland in northeast India. They speak Ao, a Central Naga language of the Sino-Tibetan family, in two main dialects (Chungli and Mongsen), and number several hundred thousand. They are historically significant as the first Naga group to convert to Christianity in large numbers.

Society and subsistence

Ao villages were governed by a council of elders, the putu menden, representing the clans, a broadly republican system rather than hereditary chieftaincy. Terraced and shifting cultivation of rice was the mainstay, with the agricultural year marked by festivals, notably Moatsu after sowing and Tsungremong at harvest. American Baptist missionaries reached the Ao hills in the 1870s, and today the great majority are Christian, with high levels of education and a strong presence in Naga public life. Older animist belief and headhunting have passed, but clan identity, oral genealogy and festival culture remain central. Ao was among the first Naga languages to be written down and given a literature, and the community today has a strong record of education, church life and professional achievement across northeast India.

Appearance and adornment

Ao ceremonial dress centres on woven shawls in red and black. The most prestigious, the tsungkotepsu, carries a painted median band bearing symbolic figures such as the mithun, elephant, tiger, human head and spear, and may be worn only by men who have earned the right through feasts of merit or war honours. These feasts of merit, in which a wealthy man gained prestige by hosting the whole village, were a central path to status in the old society. Warriors wore cane headgear with hornbill feathers and boar tusks, kilts decorated with cowrie shells, and ivory or brass armlets. In everyday life, reflecting long Christian and educational influence, the Ao wear ordinary modern clothing.