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Updated: May 6, 2025
The Larnai potters also make flower-pots which are sold in Shillong at from 2 annas to 4 annas each, the price of the ordinary pot or khiew ranei varying from 2 pice to 4 annas each. Laws and Customs Tribal Organization. The inhabitants of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills may be said to be divided into the following sections: Khasi, Synteng or Pnar, Wár, Bhoi, and Lynngam.
Khasis who inhabit the low country to the north of the district, which is called generally the "Bhoi." The Lynngams are a separate division. They must not be confused with the Dkos or Hanas who are Garos. It must, however, be remembered that the Jinthong, Mynri, and Ryngkhong Sub-divisions of the Bhoi division are not Khasi, but Mikir, i.e. they belong to the Bodo or Bara group.
The use of waist-cloths among the Khasis is on the increase, especially among those who live in Shillong and the neighbouring villages and in Jowai and Cherrapunji. Tattooing. None of the Khasis tattoo; the only people in the hills who tattoo are certain tribes of the Bhoi country which are really Mikir.
The lac trade in the Jaintia Hills and in the southern portion of the Khyrim State is a valuable one. The profits, however, go largely to middle-men, who in the Jaintia Hills are Syntengs from Jowai, who give out advances to the Bhoi cultivators on the condition that they will be repaid in lac.
I noticed an interesting custom at a Bhoi village in Nongpoh of barricading the path leading to the village from the forest with bamboo palisading and bamboo chevaux de frise to keep out the demon of cholera. In the middle of the barricade there was a wooden door over which was nailed the skull of a monkey which had been sacrificed to this demon, which is, as amongst the Syntengs, called khlam.
The haversack of the men is of cloth in the high plateau and in the Bhoi country, but it is of knitted fibre in the Wár country. The Syntengs have a cloth bag, which they call ka muna. The Wár men dress very much the same as the neighbouring Sylheti Hindus. The Wár women, especially the Shella women, wear very pretty yellow and red checked and striped cloths.
In the northern portion of the Khasi Hills which borders on the Bhoi country there lived a man, by name U Manik. The people nicknamed him "U Manik Raitong," because he was an orphan, his parents, his brothers and sisters, and the whole of his clansfolk having died. He was very poor in addition. U Manik Raitong was filled with grief night and day.
One misses the pretty gardens of the Wár villages, for Bhois and Lynngams attempt nothing of the sort, probably because, unlike the Khasi, a Bhoi or Lynngam village never remains more than two or three years in one spot; generally the villages of these people are in the vicinity of the forest clearings, sometimes actually in the midst of them, more especially when the latter are situated in places where jungle is dense, and there is fear of attacks from wild animals.
Amongst the Mikir-Bhois, i.e. the Mikirs who inhabit the Bhoi doloiship of the Jaintia Hills, the law of inheritance is totally different from that of the Khasis, for males succeed to all property, whether ancestral or acquired. Thus, if a man dies, leaving son, mother, wife, and daughters, the son takes all. If there are several sons, they divide.
The above tribes and sub-tribes are not strictly endogamous, nor are they strictly exogamous, but they are more endogamous than exogamous; for instance, Syntengs more often marry Syntengs than Khasis, and vice versâ, and it would be usually considered derogatory for a Khasi of the Uplands to marry a Bhoi or Wár woman, and a disgrace to marry a Lynngam.
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