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There seems to be an idea generally prevalent that the Raja of Jaintia, owing to his conversion to Hinduism, and especially owing to his having become a devotee of the goddess Kali, took to sacrificing human victims; but I find that human victims were formerly sacrificed by the Jaintias to the Kopili River, which the Jaintias worshipped as a goddess.
He is appointed by the Siem with the consent of the adult males of the villages which he is to supervise. The Siem family of Nongkhlaw, or Khadsawphra, is believed to have been founded by a Synteng of the name of U Shajer, who left the Jowai hills with his sister, Ka Shaphlong, because she had failed to obtain her share of the family property in Jaintia.
The villages in which bees are regularly kept to any large extent in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills are Thied-dieng, Mawphoo, Nongwar, Mawlong, Pynter, Tyrna, and Kongthong, but most of the Wár villagers rear bees and sell the honey at the neighbouring markets.
Stack, in his admirable note on silk in Assam, says, "Throughout the whole range of the southern hills, from the Mikir country, Eri thread is in great request for weaving those striped cloths, in which the mountaineers delight," but this observation should have been confined to the Jaintia Hills portion of this district, the Khasis not weaving themselves either in silk or cotton.
In addition to the Khasis there are some members of Bodo tribes inhabiting parts of the district. The Lynngam tribe appears to have been reckoned in 1901 as Khasi, there being no separate record at the last Census of these people. The district is split up into two divisions, the Khasi Hills proper and the Jaintia Hills.
The lungs were cooked and eaten by such Kandra Yogis as were present, and it is said that the royal family partook of a small quantity of rice cooked in the blood of the victim. The ceremony was usually witnessed by large crowds of spectators from all parts of the Jaintia pardganas.
In order to drive away the thlen from a house or family all the money, ornaments, and property of that house or family must be thrown away, as is the case with persons possessed by the demon Ka Taroh, in the Jaintia Hills. None dare touch any of the property, for fear that the thlen should follow it.
The people of Mawsynram propitiate the god of Symper in cases of sickness by sacrificing a he-goat or a bull. Symper, like U'lei Shillong, is one of the minor deities of the Khasis. Close to Shangpung, in the Jaintia Hills, there is a small hill called "u lúm pyddieng blai lyngdoh," where sacrifices are offered on an altar at seed time, and when the corn comes into ear.
The people of the high plateaux generally prefer rice spirit, and the Wárs of the southern slopes of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills customarily partake of it also. The Khasis of the western hills, e.g. of the Nongstoin Siemship, and the Lynngams, Bhois, Lalungs, and Hadems almost invariably drink rice-beer, but the Syntengs, like the Khasi uplanders, drink rice-spirit.
These cloths are the handiwork of women alone, and a woman working every day regularly will take six months to manufacture a cloth valued at Rs. 25; but, as a rule, in the leisurely manner in which they work, it takes a year to complete it. Cotton Cloths. In the Jaintia Hills at Mynso cotton is spun into thread, and weaving is carried on there, but on a limited scale.
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