The Gods—Ārnàm-ātum—are innumerable, and are worshipped in different ways, at different times, and in different places. The names of some of the most important are given below.
Ārnàm Kethē, in spite of his name, which means “The Great God,” has no definite authority over the other Gods. He is a house-god, and is sacrificed to once in three years, if no occasion (in consequence of trouble) arises meanwhile. His appropriate offering is a pig. The family obtain Ārnàm Kethē by asking him to stay with them, and by castrating a young pig, to be sacrificed three years later. All families have not got Ārnàm Kethē to stay with them, nor does he always come when invited. If a man is sick, and the uchē (diviner) declares that Ārnàm Kethē wishes to join the household, the ceremony is performed, but no offerings are made at the time. After three years—or earlier, if there is any sickness in the family—the pig is killed, and a general feast, with rice, beer, and spirits, given to the village. A booth of leaves is built in the three days before; the first day is devoted to cutting the posts for the booth, and is called phòng-ròng ketèng; the second, to garlanding leaves round the posts, called phòng-ròng ketòm; and on the third day leaves are laid out for the rice, rice-flour (pithāguri, Ass.) is sprinkled about the ground, and plantains and other trees are planted around the booth. All these preparations are done in the early morning before eating. Then follows the ceremony—Ārnàm Kethē kāraklī. First, there is the invocation: “To-day has come, and now we will give you your three-years’ offering; accept it kindly!” Fowls are killed, and then the pig (all animals killed in sacrifice are beheaded with one stroke of a heavy knife delivered from above). The liver, heart, and lights of both are cooked for the god. Then the hoof, ear, and tail of the pig are offered, then pieces of cooked meat. Afterwards the sacrificers eat tekār kethī or tekār-sō, then tekār-pī. Both are pieces of flesh, the first smaller, the latter larger, eaten with rice-beer. Then all the company set to and eat rice and flesh together. Sometimes three or four pigs and forty different kinds of vegetables are consumed at the sacrificial feast. The women get sixfold or ninefold the shares of the men, and carry them home bound up in leaves (àn-bòr and òk-bòr).
Pèng is also a household god. His offering is a goat, sacrificed yearly, in the tikup or space before the house. Some neighbours are invited to the sacrificial feast. Pèng lives in the house, Ārnàm Kethē in heaven. Pèng is also sacrificed to in sickness. Very few houses have not Pèng. Maize, rice, and a gourd of rice-beer are placed for him above the veranda of the house, and the firstfruits of the harvest are offered to him. “But these two gods only come to eat, and families avoid taking them if they can.”
Hèmphū (“head of the house,” “householder”) owns all the Mikir people. Everybody can sacrifice to him at any time, and pray for deliverance from sickness. Mukràng is similar to Hèmphū but slightly lower in dignity. These two gods, the preservers of men, are approached by the sacrifice of a fowl or goat. Hèmphū must be invoked first in every sacrifice, being the peculiar owner of men.
Rèk-ànglòng (“the mountain of the community”) or Inglòng-pī (“great mountain”) is a house-god, but is worshipped in the field, and only men eat the sacrifice, which is a fowl or a goat once a year. He is the god of the hill they live on, the Deus loci, with whom they have to be at peace; but not every family in the village need have him.
Ārnàm pārō (“the hundred god”) is the name of a god who takes a hundred shares of rice, pithāguri, betel-nut, and the red spathe of the plantain tree cut up. He is worshipped with a white goat or a white fowl as the sacrifice. He and Rèk-ànglòng figure particularly in the Ròngkēr, or great annual village festival, celebrated in June at the beginning of the year’s cultivation. (Ārnàm-pārō seems to be a collective name, to include all gods whom it may concern. Kāmākhyā, the Hindu goddess of Nīlāchal above Gauhāti, is mentioned as one of the deities included in Ārnàm-pārō.)
The gods named above are all invoked and propitiated to grant prosperity and avert misfortune, both generally and specially. There are, besides, numerous gods who take their names from the special diseases over which they preside or which they are asked to avert; such are—
Chomàng-āsē (“Khasi fever”), a Khasi god, who lives in the house and is propitiated with a goat; he is comparatively rare. This god appears to be identical with Kēchē-āsē, which is the rheumatism. (Chomàng is the name for the interior Khasis, Kēchē for those immediately in contact with the Mikirs.)
Ājō-āsē (“the night fever”) is the deity of cholera (mā-vur or pòk-āvur). The sacrifice to him is two fowls and many eggs, and is offered at night, on the path outside the village. The whole village subscribes to furnish the offering, and with the eatables are combined a load of cotton, a basket of chillies, an offering of yams, and the image of a gun (because cholera is thought to be a British disease); also sesamum (nèmpō), many bundles consisting of six sticks of a soft wood called chèknàm (perhaps the cotton tree, bombax) tied together, many bundles of the false cane (ingsu), and double wedges of chèknàm wood. The god is invoked: “Don’t come this way, go that way!” The eatables are eaten, and the other articles thrown away. The houses are then beaten with rods of chèknàm and ingsu.
Sō-mēmē (“evil pain”) is the god to whom barren women have recourse.