Sailo Hnam
Mizo
At a glance
- Called a
- Hnam
- Community
- Mizo
- Found in
- Mizoram
About
Sailo is a Mizo hnam, or clan, of Mizoram, and the line of the chiefs who held most of the chiefships of the Lushai Hills by the late nineteenth century. It is one of the chiefly lines of the Lusei (Lushei), which in Shakespear's account all claim descent from an ancestor named Thangura. Chieftainship ended when the Assam Lushai Hills District (Acquisition of Chiefs' Rights) Act, 1954 vested the chiefs' rights in the state. The Mizo are a Scheduled Tribe; the clan is not a gotra or a Hindu caste.
What “Hnam” means for the Mizo
Hnam is the Mizo word for a clan, and in a wider sense a tribe or nation; Lorrain's Lushai dictionary gives 'clan' among its senses. A Mizo clan passes through the father, and its name is carried as a surname. Shakespear (1912) called the larger groups, such as the Lushei and the Ralte, clans and their branches, such as the Sailo, families.
Every hnam of the Mizo, with how the clan system works: the Mizo page.
Name and Origin
Shakespear, the colonial officer whose 1912 book is the standard early account of the Lushei and related clans, wrote that the Lushei chiefs all claimed descent from Thangura, and listed six lines of Thangur chiefs: Rokum, Zadeng, Thangluah, Pallian, Rivung and Sailo. In his account the Sailo descend from Sailova, a descendant (a great-grandson, in his genealogy) of Thangura. Mizo oral history, as later histories record it, names Thangura as a son of Zahmuaka, remembered as the first Lusei chief. Shakespear also noted that the Paihte gave a different account of where the chiefs came from.
Historical Journey
Mizo histories place the early Sailo at Selesih, a settlement founded by sons of Sailova, before they spread across the hills. Lallula, a Sailo chief who came from the Chin Hills in present-day Myanmar, left Selesih to found Zopui, and his descendants came to hold most chiefships in the Lushai Hills. The spread followed a custom Shakespear recorded: a chief gave each son, when he came of marriageable age, a number of households with which to found a village of his own, while the youngest son usually stayed with his father and inherited his village and property. The chiefs continued under British administration. Chieftainship was abolished by the Assam Lushai Hills District (Acquisition of Chiefs' Rights) Act, 1954, brought into effect by a notification of March 1955, which vested the chiefs' rights in their lands in the state.
How the Hnam Is Kept
Shakespear wrote that a chief's son's wish to marry the daughter of another chief narrowed his choice, and that marriage between first cousins was more common among chiefs than among commoners. Inheritance went to the youngest son, though the eldest sometimes claimed a share. Children belong to their father's clan and carry its name. The sources checked name no family deity for the clan; most Mizo families today are Christian, and the old chiefly rites belong to the pre-Christian religion.
Presence Across Regions
Selesih and Zopui, Lushai Hills (Mizoram)
Tribal - Mizo
Early Sailo settlements in Mizo histories: Selesih, founded by sons of Sailova, and Zopui, founded by Lallula after he left Selesih.
Notable Personalities
Lallula
c. 1805
Sailo chief who came from the Chin Hills, founded Zopui and extended Sailo rule in the Lushai Hills; his clan is given in Mizo histories as summarised in his Wikipedia biography.
Stories and Legends
A village for every son
Shakespear described how the Sailo came to rule so many villages. When a chief's son reached the age to marry, his father gave him a number of households and let him set up a village of his own. The youngest son usually stayed at home and inherited his father's village. Over a few generations one chief's family could hold a whole cluster of villages, each under a son or grandson.