United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The sacrifice of the fowls is also an essential feature of a Garo marriage. The Lynngams, unlike the Garos, do not observe which way the beaks of the fowls turn when they are thrown on the ground after being sacrificed. The Lynngams, like the Khasis, take auguries from the entrails of the fowls and the pig. After these ceremonies are over, the Lynngam pair are allowed to cohabit.

An incantation used in addressing this god begins: “O Father, Thaulang, who hast enabled me to be born, who hast given me my stature and my life.” This is very certain proof that the maternal system among the Khasis has no connection with uncertainty of paternity.

These cattle are either sold in Shillong or find their way to the Kamrup district by the old Nongkhlaw road. Cattle-breeding is an industry which is capable of expansion in these hills. There are a few carpenters to be found in Shillong and its neighbourhood. The Khasis are said by Col.

Amongst the Khasis, after one or two children are born, and if a married couple get on well together, the husband frequently removes his wife and family to a house of his own, and from the time the wife leaves her mother's house she and her husband pool their earnings, which are expended for the support of the family.

It is easier to obtain coolies in the Khasi than in the Jaintia Hills, where a large proportion of the population is employed in cultivation. The Khasis are excellent labourers, and cheerful and willing, but they at once resent bad treatment, and are then intractable and hard to manage. Khasis are averse to working in the plains in the hot-weather months. Apiculture. I am indebted to Mr.

Old Khasis are frequently well versed in the details of sacrifices, and in the art of obtaining auguries by examining the viscera of sacrificial victims. Apart from family and clan sacrifices, there are the sacrifices for the good of the State or community at large; it is these sacrifices that it is the duty of the lyngdoh to perform.

From the records available of the military operations of the Khasis against the British, the former appear to have relied principally on bows and arrows, ambushes and surprises, when they fought against us at the time of our first occupation of the hills. During the Jaintia rebellion firearms were used, to some extent, by the Syntengs.

I understand that the Mikir stones, like the Khasi, are mere cenotaphs, the ashes of deceased Mikirs being left at the burning places which are generally by the sides of rivers, and the memorial stones not being necessarily anywhere near the burning grounds. Unlike the Khasis, the Mikirs do not collect and carefully keep the bones in stone cairns.

Moberly, the Superintendent of Ethnography in Bengal, reports that the ashes of deceased Hos, after being sprinkled with water by means of peepul branches, we collected, dried, and placed in a new earthen pot, and kept in the house until the day of burial, which may take place, as with the Khasis, long afterwards. Khasi Memorial Stones.

Both Bivar and Shadwell say the reason why the Khasis do not eat the flesh of the dog is because he is in a certain sense a sacred animal amongst them. There is a Khasi folk-tale relating how the dog came to be regarded as the friend of man.