Phung

Phung (Phûng) is among the most dreaded malevolent spirits of traditional Mizo belief, lexicalised by Lorrain as 'a spirit, a bogey, a spook, an ogress, a genie, a goblin'. She is imagined as a being of colossal size with wild hair and pitch-black skin who frequents roads, paths and lonely places, and the Mizo generally regard the Phung as female. Her characteristic harm is to seize humans and afflict them with epilepsy and insanity — the very disease being named phûngzawl, 'seized by the Phung' — and she was credited with sorcery and witchcraft. She belongs to the wider company of harmful wild-spirits, the ramhuai or huai ('demons who cause sickness') whom the pre-Christian Mizo strove to placate or avoid, but unlike the formless demon-class she is individuated as a named ogress of the folk imagination.

Domains

• madness and affliction
• malevolent spirits of the wild

Powers

• to strike humans with epilepsy and insanity
• to lurk on roads and lonely places as a giant dark figure

Epithets

• Phûng

Sources

• J.H. Lorrain, Dictionary of the Lushai Language (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1940), s.v. 'Phung' — 'a spirit, a bogey, an ogress, a genie, a goblin'.
• B. Lalthangliana, Culture and Folklore of Mizoram (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 2005).
• Lalthansangi Ralte, 'Mizo Myths and Folklore: A Posthumanist Study', The Literary Oracle (2024).