Jingpo

The Jingpo, a Tibeto-Burman people of the Kachin Hills of northern Myanmar and neighbouring Yunnan, with the Zaiwa as one of their branches, followed an animist religion before Buddhism and Christianity arrived. They held that spirits reside everywhere and that these bring good or bad luck. All living creatures have souls, and rituals protect almost every activity, from planting crops to warfare.

One well-known spirit was Madai. Jingpo legend names Ningguanwa as a first ancestor, a cave-dweller and hunter who beat gongs and drums at his wedding to bring home his wife Burenzaren, the daughter of a dragon king.

The Jingpo and Zaiwa celebrate the great manau dance, in which dancers circle a central post. It is held around the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and again at the new rice harvest.