Khasi

Clans and Kinship

The kur (also called jaid) is the Khasi clan: all who descend from one ancestress, the 'grandmother of the root' (ka Iawbei-tynrai), who is greatly revered. Below the kur, Gurdon describes the kpoh ('womb'), the descendants of one great-grandmother, and the iing ('house'), a grandmother with her daughters and their children under one roof. A Khasi saying he records, long jaid na loa kynthei, means 'from the woman sprang the clan'. A man belongs to his mother's kur; once married he is, to his wife's clan, a begetter (u shong kha) and takes no part in its rites. The youngest daughter (ka khun khadduh) 'holds the religion': she performs the family ceremonies in her house and takes the largest share of the ancestral property. The mother's brother (kni) is head of the house and carries out family and clan rites. Clans are strictly exogamous, and clans believed to share descent (iateh kur) may not intermarry either. Above the clan stood the state (hima), headed by a syiem from its syiem family, with succession through the female line. He governed with a durbar of myntris, the heads of leading clans, beside the lyngdohs, priests drawn from priestly clans, and in some states village sirdars and market heads (basans).

A selection, in Gurdon's order, from the two lists of exogamous clans in The Khasis (1907, Appendices A and B), which he drew up from information given by the Siems of Cherra and Khyrim: 100 clans in Cherra and about 200 in Khyrim. It is not a full list of Khasi kurs; Gurdon gave the two states only as examples. Names are spelt as he printed them, with his ditto marks written out (Khong-wir); spellings in use today may differ. The notes give his remarks, including clans that may not intermarry (iateh kur).

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Meghalaya, Assam

  Listed as: Khasi, Jaintia, Synteng, Pnar, War, Bhoi, Lyngngam

  In Assam the entry is in the part of the list for the autonomous districts, not in the list for the rest of the state.

• Scheduled Tribe

  Mizoram

  Listed as: Khasi and Jaintia (including Khasi Synteng or Pnar, War, Bhoi or Lyngngam)

• Scheduled Tribe

  Tripura

  Listed as: Khasia

In each list one entry covers the Khasi together with the Jaintia (Pnar or Synteng), War, Bhoi and Lyngngam. Meghalaya and Mizoram also list Synteng as a separate entry, and so does Assam's list for the autonomous districts (spelt Syntheng). Assam's list for the plains has no Khasi entry. Checked against a compilation of the Order; amendments of 2022 to 2024 were not checked.

Checked on 2026-11-06 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

The Khasi traditions of origin that Gurdon collected disagree. One brings the people from the north into the plains of Sylhet, from which a great flood drove them back into the hills; in that flood the Khasi lost his book while swimming, which is why the Khasi had no writing. Another, which J. B. Shadwell heard, brings them from Burma over the Patkoi range. Gurdon called all of this vague and did not decide. Clan traditions also speak of migration: the Diengdoh clan of Cherra traced its first ancestress to the country beyond the Kopili river. Khasi and Pnar tradition traces the people to the Hynniew Trep, the 'seven huts' or seven families (as summarised in Wikipedia's article on the Pnar, citing Soumen Sen, 2004).

History

Before British rule the Khasi Hills were divided among small states. Gurdon (1907) counted fifteen, each with its own syiem family; the largest were Khyrim, Mylliem, Cherra (Sohra), Nongstoin and Nongkhlaw, and a few smaller ones were ruled by lyngdohs, sirdars or elected wahadadars. U Tirot Singh, ruler of Nongkhlaw, rose against the East India Company in 1829 and fought for four years before he was captured and imprisoned for life. The Jaintia Hills to the east, once ruled by the Rajas of Jaintia, became British in 1835 and were governed through elected dolois, while the Khasi states kept their own government under treaties. The Welsh Calvinistic Methodist mission opened a branch at Cherrapunji in 1842. At the census of 1901 Gurdon counted 176,614 Khasis, of whom 47,883 were Syntengs (Pnar) and 17,125 Christians. Shillong later became the capital of Assam, and the Khasi and Jaintia Hills are now in Meghalaya, a state formed in 1972.

Faith and Worship

The traditional Khasi religion, known as Niam Khasi (ka niam is religion; Gurdon cites U Jeebon Roy's account, Ka Niam Khasi), recognises a creator, U Blei Nong-thaw, often addressed in the feminine as Ka Blei Synshar. It honours the ancestors of the clan, the first grandmother, the first maternal uncle and the father, with offerings of food. It propitiates the spirits of the state, the village, the water and wealth, choosing which to address by breaking eggs, and makes no images. The youngest daughter and the maternal uncle keep the family rites; the lyngdoh, always from a lyngdoh clan, keeps the communal rites and must be assisted by a female priest (ka soh-blei). Gurdon counted 17,125 Christian Khasis in 1901; most Khasis are now Christian.

Customs

To marry within one's own kur was, in Gurdon's words, the greatest sin a Khasi could commit: it brought excommunication, the refusal of funeral rites, and exclusion of the bones from the clan sepulchre. Among the Khasi a husband usually lived at first in his mother-in-law's house and might later set up his own; among the Pnar he only visited his wife's house. Divorce, by mutual consent, was marked in the open air by an exchange of five cowries before witnesses. A family left without daughters could bring in a girl to take the youngest daughter's place ('rap iing). The dead were cremated and their bones later laid in the clan's stone ossuary, and rows of rough-hewn upright stones, usually in odd numbers with a flat table-stone in front, were raised to ancestors. The Nongkrem dance at Smit is part of the pom-blang, the goat sacrifice of the Khyrim state.

Festivals

Stories and Legends

Notable Personalities