Man, Spirit and the Tiger
Eons ago, the primeval mother gave birth to three sons - spirit, tiger and man - who took turns to take care of their mother. Man ate his food cooked, the tiger ate his raw while the spirit had his smoke-dried. The spirit frightened the mother when he took care of her while the tiger harassed her and plotted to eat her body after she died. The tiger was resentful and surly, constantly creating trouble for everyone. Only man took good care of their mother, cooking food, bathing her and tending to her carefully.
And it so happens that the mother passed away when her human son was with her. So that the tiger would not find their mother's body, man buried her under the hearth to camouflage the smell. Thus the tiger was unable to smell and find her body. Since then, humans have always been allowed to cook on the stove but not animals. This is also the reason why humans can even eat in the graveyard.
In another version, the mother was tired of their constant squabbles so she decided to create a contest to decide who would live in the village and who would live in the forest. The mother created a sculpture/mark with grass, placed it in the forest and said, “Whoever touches the mark first will live in the village, but the other must go and live in the forest.” The spirit decided to aid man and said, “I will shoot the mark with my bow and arrow soon as you call out, then you can claim you are the first to touch it.” Man and the tiger started running towards the mark and when they had run a fair distance, man called out, “I have touched the mark.” At this, the spirit let fly his arrow and hit the mark, causing it to move. And while it still moved, the tiger came upon it and believed man had really touched the mark and thus lost the contest. Disappointed, the tiger went away to live in the forest.
After a while, man sent a message to the tiger through the cat saying,” You are my brother after all, so whenever you kill a deer, please leave a leg for me on the wall.” But the cat made a mistake and said to the tiger instead, “Whenever you kill a deer, leave the deer on the wall for man.” Finding man greedy and selfish, the tiger was filled with anger and hatred for him.
But at the end of the day, man and the tiger are brothers. In the olden days, when an Angami man killed a tiger, the priest or shaman would proclaim a penna and observe a non-working day due to “the death of an older brother.” Even if a man killed a tiger, it was sacrilege to say, “I have killed a tiger.” Instead, he would say, “The gods have struck down a tiger.”