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Updated: May 26, 2025
Buchanan-Hamilton, who spent several years at the beginning of the 19th Century in collecting information regarding the people of Eastern India, during which he lived for some time at Goalpara in the Brahmaputra Valley, confused the Khasis with the Garos, and his descriptions apply only to the latter people.
The females wear short cloths of cotton striped red and blue, the cloth reaching just above the knee, like the Garos; married women wear no upper clothing, except in winter, when a red or blue cotton cloth is thrown loosely across the shoulders. The women wear a profusion of blue bead necklaces and brass earrings like the Garos.
It is probably a Garo custom. In some Lynngam villages there are houses in the centre of the village where the young unmarried men sleep, where male guests are accommodated, and where the village festivities go on. These are similar to the dekachang or bachelors' club-houses of the Mikirs, Garos, and Lalungs, and to the morang of the Nagas.
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.
For example, among the Garos of Assam, "besides the sacrifices for individual cases of illness, there are certain ceremonies which are observed once a year by a whole community or village, and are intended to safeguard its members from dangers of the forest, and from sickness and mishap during the coming twelve months. The principal of these is the Asongtata ceremony.
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.
The cost of an ordinary Lynngam marriage is from Rs. 30 to Rs. 40. The marriage system in vogue among the Lynngams may be described as a mixture of the Khasi and Garo customs. As has already been stated, the Lynngams are a mongrel breed of Khasis and Garos. Ceremonies Attending Death.
There are several Megam villages in the north-eastern corner of the Garo Hills district, and there is regular communication kept up between these villages and the Lynngam inhabitants of the Khasi Hills district. The Lynngams must not be confused with the Háná or Námdaniya Garos who inhabit the low hills to the north of the Khasi Hills district, and are called by the Khasis Dko.
Among the Garos tribe it is not only the privilege, but the duty of the girl to select her lover, while an infringement of this rule is severely and summarily punished. The marriage customs are equally curious. On the morning of the wedding a ceremony very similar to capture takes place, only it is the bridegroom who is abducted.
Although divorce is easy, it is not frequent. “The Garos will not hastily make engagements, because, when they do make them, they intend to keep them.” Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 64, 142. See also Tylor, “The Matriarchal Theory,” Nineteenth Century, July 1896, p. 89.
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