We seldom employed fewer than twelve or fourteen of the natives as collectors, and when travelling, from thirty to forty as coolies, etc. They are averse to rising early, and are intolerably filthy in their persons, though not so in their cottages, which are very poor, with broad grass roofs reaching nearly to the ground, and usually encircled by bamboo fences; the latter custom is not common in savage communities, and perhaps indicates a dread of treachery. The beams are of hewn wood (they do not use saws), often neatly carved, and the doors turn on good wooden pivots. They have no windows, and the fire is made on the floor: the utensils, etc. are placed on hanging shelves and in baskets.
The Khasia people are of the Indo-Chinese race; they are short, very stout, and muscular, with enormous calves and knees, rather narrow eyes and little beard, broad, high cheekbones, flat noses, and open nostrils. I believe that a few are tattooed. The hair is gathered into a top-knot, and sometimes shaved off the forehead and temples. A loose cotton shirt, often striped blue and red, without sleeves and bordered with long thread fringes, is their principal garment; it is gathered into a girdle of silver chains by people of rank. A cotton robe is sometimes added, with a large cotton turban or small skull-cap. The women wear a long cloth tied in a knot across the breast. During festivals both men and women load themselves with silk robes, fans, peacock's feathers, and gold and silver ornaments of great value, procured from Assam, many of which are said to be extremely curious, but I regret to say that I never saw any of them. On these occasions spirits are drunk, and dancing kept up all night: the dance is described as a slow ungraceful motion, the women being tightly swathed in cloths.
All their materials are brought from Assam; the only articles in constant use, of their own manufacture, being a rude sword or knife with a wooden handle and a long, narrow, straight blade of iron, and the baskets with head-straps, like those used by the Lepchas, but much neater; also a netted bag of pine-apple fibre (said to come from Silhet) which holds a clasp-knife, comb, flint, steel, and betel-nut box. They are much addicted to chewing pawn (betel-nut, pepper leaves, and lime) all day long, and their red saliva looks like blood on the paths. Besides the sword I have described, they carry bows and arrows, and rarely a lance, and a bamboo wicker-work shield.
We found the Khasias to be sulky intractable fellows, contrasting unpleasantly with the Lepchas; wanting in quickness, frankness, and desire to please, and obtrusively independent in manner; nevertheless we had a head man who was very much the reverse of this, and whom we had never any cause to blame. Their language is, I believe, Indo-Chinese and monosyllabic: it is disagreeably nasal and guttural, and there are several dialects and accents in contiguous villages. All inflections are made by prefixing syllables, and when using the Hindoo language, the future is invariably substituted for the past tense. They count up to a hundred, and estimate distances by the number of mouthfuls of pawn they eat on the road.
Education has been attempted by missionaries with partial success, and the natives are said to have shown themselves apt scholars. Marriage is a very loose tie amongst them, and hardly any ceremony attends it. We were informed that the husband does not take his wife home, but enters her father's household, and is entertained there. Divorce and an exchange of wives is common, and attended with no disgrace: thus the son often forgets his father's name and person before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to his mother. The sister's son inherits both property and rank, and the proprietors' or Rajahs' offspring are consequently often reared in poverty and neglect. The usual toy of the children is the bow and arrow, with which they are seldom expert; they are said also to spin pegtops like the English, climb a greased pole, and run round with a beam turning horizontally on an upright, to which it is attached by a pivot.
The Khasias eat fowls, and all meat, especially pork, potatos and vegetables, dried and half putrid fish in abundance, but they have an aversion to milk, which is very remarkable, as a great proportion of their country is admirably adapted for pasturage. In this respect, however, they assimilate to the Chinese, and many Indo-Chinese nations who are indifferent to milk, as are the Sikkim people. The Bengalees, Hindoos, and Tibetans, on the other hand, consume immense quantities of milk. They have no sheep, and few goats or cattle, the latter of which are kept for slaughter; they have, however, plenty of pigs and fowls. Eggs are most abundant, but used for omens only, and it is a common, but disgusting occurrence, to see large groups employed for hours in breaking them upon stones, shouting and quarrelling, surrounded by the mixture of yellow yolks and their red pawn saliva.
The funeral ceremonies are the only ones of any importance, and are often conducted with barbaric pomp and expense; and rude stones of gigantic proportions are erected as monuments, singly or in rows, circles, or supporting one another, like those of Stonehenge, which they rival in dimensions and appearance. The body is burned, though seldom during the rains, from the difficulty of obtaining a fire; it is therefore preserved in honey (which is abundant and good) till the dry season: a practice I have read of as prevailing among some tribes in the Malay peninsula. Spirits are drunk on these occasions; but the hill Khasia is not addicted to drunkenness, though some of the natives of the low valleys are very much so. These ascend the rocky faces of the mountains by ladders, to the Churra markets, and return loaded at night, apparently all but too drunk to stand; yet they never miss their footing in places which are most dangerous to persons unaccustomed to such situations.
Illustration—THE TABLE-LAND AND STATION OF CHURRA, WITH THE JHEELS,
COURSE OF THE SOORMAH RIVER, AND TIPPERAH HILLS IN THE EXTREME
DISTANCE, LOOKING SOUTH.
The Khasias are superstitious, but have no religion; like the Lepchas, they believe in a supreme being, and in deities of the grove, cave, and stream. Altercations are often decided by holding the disputants' heads under water, when the longest winded carries his point. Fining is a common punishment, and death for grave offences. The changes of the moon are accounted for by the theory that this orb, who is a man, monthly falls in love with his wife's mother, who throws ashes in his face. The sun is female; and Mr. Yule* [I am indebted to Mr. Inglis for most of this information relating to the Khasias, which I have since found, with much more that is curious and interesting, in a paper by Lieut. Yule in Bengal Asiat. Soc. Journal.] (who is my authority) says that the Pleiades are called "the Hen-man" (as in Italy "the chickens"); also that they have names for the twelve months; they do not divide their time by weeks, but hold a market every four days. These people are industrious, and good cultivators of rice, millet, and legumes of many kinds. Potatoes were introduced amongst them about twenty years ago by Mr. Inglis, and they have increased so rapidly that the Calcutta market is now supplied by their produce. They keep bees in rude hives of logs of wood.
The flat table-land on which Churra Poonji is placed, is three miles long and two broad, dipping abruptly in front and on both sides, and rising behind towards the main range, of which it is a spur. The surface of this area is everywhere intersected by shallow, rocky watercourses, which are the natural drains for the deluge that annually visits it. The western part is undulated and hilly, the southern rises in rocky ridges of limestone and coal, and the eastern is very flat and stony, broken only by low isolated conical mounds.