Part 16
Musical instruments. A flute, pongsi, cut from a bamboo, is mentioned on p. 128: pongsi is the Assamese bansi, the well-known instrument of the youthful Krishna (Bansi-dhar). Other instruments known to the Mikirs are muri, a fife; chèng, a drum; chèng-brup, the small handdrum used by the risomar to accompany their dancing at funeral feasts; and kum, a one-stringed fiddle. The last is made by stretching a string made from a creeper, màngri, across a gourd, bòng, which provides an air-chamber. It is played with a bow, kum-aliso (li, a bow, so, diminutive particle) made of bamboo, the string of which is a tough fibre of bamboo. (Compare the one-stringed fiddle, pena, of the Meitheis: Meithei Monograph, p. 56.)
VII.
AFFINITIES.
The place of the Mikirs in the Tibeto-Burman family.
Some idea of the mental equipment of the Arlengs will have been gathered from the two preceding sections. It has been seen that, within the limited circle of their experience, they possess a medium of expression which may be described as adequate to their needs, well knit together in its mechanism, and copious in concrete terms, though, like all such languages, wanting in the abstract and general. Their folk-tales are lively and effective as narratives, and the themes, though probably borrowed from the great treasury of popular story elaborated in Peninsular India, have been appropriated and assimilated to the social conditions of the Mikirs themselves. Little has hitherto been done to enlarge the resources of the language in the direction of higher culture, or to use it for the expression of ideas lying beyond the scope of the tribal life; but there appears to be no reason to doubt that the language of the Mikirs will be found in the course of time to be as capable of development for this purpose as the speech of their neighbours the Khasis. [43]
The leading feature of the race, in contrast with other hill tribes of Assam, is its essentially unwarlike and pacific character. Its neighbours--Khasis, Kacharis, Kukis, Nagas--have for centuries been engaged in continuous internecine strife, and their tribal individualities have been preserved, and differences accentuated, by the state of hostility in which each unit, however small, lived with all adjacent peoples. The Mikirs have always, at least during the last two centuries, been, as Major Stewart described them in 1855, "good subjects." Numbering some ninety thousand souls, they are extremely homogeneous, while other tribes in their neighbourhood differ in an extraordinary manner from village to village, and constantly tend to split up into smaller aggregates, looking on all outsiders as enemies. No such disintegrating influence has affected the Arlengs. Whether in North Cachar, the Jaintia Hills, Nowgong, or the Mikir Hills, their tribal institutions, their language, and their national character are identical, and they pursue their peaceful husbandry in the same manner as their forefathers, raising in ordinary years sufficient food for their subsistence, and a considerable amount of cotton and lac for export to the plains. In these circumstances, surrounded by warring tribes, and still nomadic in their habits of cultivation, they have from time to time found it necessary to place themselves under the protection of stronger peoples. It has been mentioned in Section I. that the traditions of the race show that they were formerly subject to the Khasi chiefs of Jaintia and the eastern states of the Khasi Hills, and that they migrated thence to the territory subject to the Ahom kings. [44] During their sojourn in Khasi-land they assimilated much; dress (p. 5), ornaments (p. 6), personal names (p. 17), methods of divination (pp. 34, 35), funeral ceremonies (pp. 38-42), memorial stones (p. 42), all come from the Khasis, who have also contributed many words to their common speech. Borrowings from Hinduism are equally manifest in their language, their folk-tales, and their religion. Assamese words are numerous in Mikir; Arnàm Kethe (p. 30) seems to be a translation of Mahadeva; Jòm-aròng (p. 28), and the ideas linked therewith of an after-life, are strongly impressed with a Hindu stamp.
Yet they retain, together with these borrowed features, a sufficiently definite stock of original characteristics. Physically they differ much from Khasi and Assamese alike. Their social fabric is based upon clearly marked exogamous groups, with patriarchal principles of marriage and inheritance; they call these by a Khasi name (kur), but have no trace of the matriarchal family as known among the Khasis. They build their houses on posts, while their neighbours, except the Kukis, build on the ground. Their deities are of the primitive kind which is common to all Indo-Chinese races, well known, under the name of Nats, as the object of popular worship and propitiation in Burma.
Ever since the race has been studied, it has been noticed that it was difficult to establish its exact place and affinities in the heterogeneous congeries of peoples who inhabit the mountainous region between India and Burma. This was remarked by Robinson in 1841 and 1849, by Stewart in 1855, by Damant in 1879. At the Census of 1881 an attempt was made to bring the Mikirs into relation with the Boro or Kachari stock; but it was seen at the time that more must be ascertained regarding their neighbours before any final judgment could be arrived at. Dr. Grierson, on linguistic grounds, has classed them in the Linguistic Survey as intermediate between the Boro and the Western Nagas. It appears to the present writer, in the light of the much fuller information now available, that they should be classed rather with those tribes which form the connecting link between the Nagas and the Kuki-Chins, and that the preponderance of their affinities lies with the latter of these two races, especially those dwelling in the south of the Arakan Roma range, where the Chin tends to merge into the Burman of the Irawadi Valley.
When Robinson and Stewart wrote, it was still remembered that the Mikirs had once been settled in strength in the country (now called North Cachar) to the immediate north of the Barail Range, and in contact with the Angami, the Kachcha, and the Kabui Nagas; and that, exposed as they were in this locality to the inroads of the Angamis and the oppression of the Kachari kings, they had migrated westwards to the territory of the Jaintia Raja in search of protection. It was noticed in the Assam Census Report of 1881 that in this region north of the Barail, where there are now no Mikirs, local names belonging to their language indicated their former presence. When they lived there, they must have been in touch with tribes belonging to the Kuki-Chin stock, who have for centuries occupied the hill ranges to the south of the valley of Cachar, and the mountains between that valley and Manipur.
The institutions of co-operative agriculture by the village lads (p. 11), the bachelors' house or teràng (id.), the former custom of ante-nuptial promiscuity (p. 19), and the traces of village tabu resembling the Naga genna, still characterizing the annual festival of the Ròngker (p. 43), all point to a connection with the Western Naga tribes, rather than to affinity with the Kachari stock. From the Kuki and Chin tribes the Mikirs are distinguished chiefly by their pacific habits, and by the absence of the dependence upon hereditary tribal chiefs which is so strong a feature among the former. The customs of both races as regards the building of houses upon posts, with a hong or open platform in front, are identical; in Major G. E. Fryer's paper "On the Khyeng people of the Sandoway District, Arakan," published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1875 (pp. 39, 99), a Khyeng house is figured which bears a striking resemblance to the Mikir house. The institutions of domestic and individual life among the Khyengs (Chins), as described by Major Fryer, especially as regards marriage, funeral ceremonies, the disposal of the dead (after copious feasting of friends and relatives) by cremation, the rules of inheritance (females being wholly excluded from succession), the treatment of disease, the propitiation of spirits, and the annual festivals in honour of the gods who preside over man's welfare, present the closest analogy to those of the Mikirs as set forth in this monograph. Like the Mikirs, the Chins are divided into exogamous groups and follow the rule of male kinship; but, like the Mikirs also in this, the approved marriage is that between a man and his first cousin on the mother's side. It has been noticed already (p. 21) that the word for father-in-law (òng-hai, wife's father) in Mikir is identical with that for maternal uncle, òng, and that son-in-law, osa, also means nephew (sister's son). The story of "the Orphan and his Maternal Uncles" illustrates the obligation which lies on a lad to marry his mother's brother's daughter (see above, p. 53). Similarly, Harata Kunwar, though but a mortal, calls his father-in-law the Bari-the Recho ònghai (p. 147), and is spoken of by him as osa (id.), while the fairy princesses call him cousin, kòrpo (p. 127). The same phenomenon appears in the Kuki-Chin languages. In Shö or Chin (Khyeng) apu means both maternal uncle and father-in-law; so also in Lushei, pu has both meanings. The following list of words indicating relationship in Mikir and Lushei (representing the Central Kuki-Chins) shows how closely the two languages correspond in this important part of their vocabulary:--
Mikir. Lushei.
grandfather phu pu grandmother phi pi grandson su-po tu-pa granddaughter su-pi tu-nu father po pa mother pei nu aunt: father's sister ni ni mother's sister pi-nu nu father's brother's wife ni nu
Among all these tribes the most important index to racial connexion is to be found in their languages. No one would now assert that language, any more than religion, is everywhere a conclusive mark of racial unity; immense masses of the people of India to-day speak languages imposed upon them from without, and Aryan speech has extended itself over many millions in whose blood nothing is due to the original invaders from the north-west. Again, the practices of a predatory state of society bring into the tribe slaves and wives from outside; or, as among the Mikirs (p. 33), aliens may be accepted on equal terms as members, thus modifying the unity of blood. On the other hand, it would be equally unreasonable and opposed to the facts to deny that, among such communities as the Tibeto-Burman peoples of Assam, race and language do, constantly and in a general manner, coincide. People who speak a tongue which is unintelligible to their neighbours are necessarily thrown together into a unity of their own. Their ancestral ideas and institutions, secular and religious, their tribal history, must tend to keep them united, and perpetuate the influence of a common origin by the fact that all outside the community are actual or potential enemies. Language, therefore, when it coincides with tribal separateness, is our chief guide in determining the relationship of the hill tribes of Assam one to another.
Here another qualification is, however, necessary. The word-stock of the Tibeto-Burman races is to a large extent identical. The same methods of arranging the elements of the sentence, in other words the same general principles of grammar, prevail throughout the whole family of speech. We must, therefore, in investigating the nearer kinship of one group to another, not be misled by linguistic resemblances which are common to the whole stock to which both groups belong.
In comparing Tibeto-Burman languages it has been usual to choose for examination in the first place the numerals and in the second the pronouns. The vocabulary of nouns, adjectives, and verbs is liable to disturbing influences which do not equally affect the simple ideas represented by number and person. Let us begin, therefore, with the numerals. These, so far as they are necessary for our purpose, are as follows in Mikir:--
one, isi two, hini three, kethòm four, phili five, phòngo six, theròk seven, theròk-si eight, ner-kèp nine, sir-kèp ten, kèp eleven, kre-isi twelve, kre-hini thirteen, etc. kre-kethòm a score, ing-koi twenty-one, etc. ing-koi-ra-isi thirty, thòm-kèp forty, etc. phili-kèp a hundred, pharo
Here the first thing to be noticed is that the three numerals between six and ten are not independent vocables, but compounds; seven is six plus one: eight is ten minus two, and nine is ten minus one. In most of the other languages of the family this is not so; the Boro, the Naga, and the majority of the Kuki-Chin languages all have independent words for seven, eight, and nine. It appears to be only in the Kuki-Chin group that we can find an analogy to the Mikir words for these three numerals. In Anal, a language of the Old Kuki family spoken in Manipur, seven is tak-si which seems to be identical with the Mikir theròk-si; and in Meithei (the language of the Manipuris) eight is ni-pan,"two from ten," and nine is ma-pan, "one from ten."
We next notice that ten is expressed by two separate words, kèp (in ten and its multiples) and kre (in the compounds from eleven to nineteen). So far as vocabularies have yet been published, the only other tribes of the Tibeto-Burman family [45] which have a word resembling kèp for ten are Maring Naga, one of the Naga-Kuki languages, where it is chip, and Shö or southern Chin, where gip is used for ten in the sequence thirty, forty, fifty, etc. (thum-gip, thirty, mli-gip, forty, ngha-gip, fifty, exactly corresponding to the Mikir thòm-kèp, phili-kèp, phòngo-kèp). The close resemblance of the other numerals in Maring to Mikir forms is noticeable; four is fili, five funga, and six tharuk. The other word for ten, kre, strongly resembles the Angami kerr or kerru and the Kachcha Naga gareo; in the Central Naga group the prefix ke- has been replaced by ta- or te-, and the words for ten are ter, tara (Ao), taro, tara, tare (Lhota), etc. In the Naga-Kuki group Sopvoma has chiro, Maram kero, Tangkhul thara, etc. In the Kuki-Chin group Meithei tara is the same word: in the Central Chin another prefix, pu-, pö-, or pa-, is used, and we have Lai pöra, Banjogi para, Taungtha parha. There are no Boro forms which correspond to kre, nor any much resembling kèp.
The Mikir word for twenty, ingkoi, is made up of the prefix ing-, and koi, formerly (before the loss of the final l) kol. Kachcha Naga has the same word, engkai, Kabui choi, koi, or kol. The word also appears in Garo (kol), Tipura (khol), and Deori-Chutiya (kwa), of the Boro group; Angami me-kwu, me-khi, mekko, Lhota me-kwi, mekwü, in the West and Central Naga groups; Maram and Sopvoma (make, makei), Tangkhul (maga), Phadeng (ma-kui), in the Naga-Kuki group, and Singpho khun. In the Kuki-Chin languages it is very common (Meithei kul, Siyin kul, Lai pö-kul, Shonshe ma-kul, Banjogi kul, Shö [Chin] kul, goi). There does not appear to be any trace of this word for a score in the Tibetan and Himalayan languages, where twenty is invariably rendered by "two-tens." [46] The Northern Indian word kori, which has the same meaning, has been compared with it; it is difficult, however, to imagine borrowing on one part or the other.
In the series of tens, 30 to 90, Mikir prefixes the multiplier: thòm-kèp, phili-kèp, phòngo-kèp, etc. The Boro group prefixes the tens (Garo sot-bri, 40, sot-bongga, 50, sot-dok, 60, etc.). [47] The Naga group has both systems; Angami prefixes the tens: lhi [48]-da, 40, lhi-pangu, 50, lhi-suru, 60; Lhota and Ao suffix them: Lhota tham-dro, 30, zü-ro, 40, rok-ro, 60; Ao semur' 30, lir' 40, rok-ur' 60. In the Kuki-Chin group the majority of dialects prefix the tens (Thado and Lushei som-thum 30, som-li 40, etc.), and this is also the rule for Kachcha Naga, Kabui, and Khoirao, as well as for all the languages classed by Dr. Grierson as Naga-Kuki. But the Shö or southern Chins not only have the same collocation as the Mikirs (thum-gip, mli-gip, ngha-gip)--an arrangement which also obtains in Burmese,--but use the same words. This coincidence is very striking.
The word for a hundred, pharo, bears no resemblance to any word expressing this numeral in the Boro languages. It agrees with the Angami kra, Kezhama kri, Sopvoma kre, and in a remarkable way with the words used by the Southern Chins (Taungtha ta-ya = tara, Chinbòk phya = phra, Yawdwin pra, Shö (Chin) krat). It will be seen that pha- in Mikir, k- in the Naga languages, and ta-, ph-, p- and k- in the Chin dialects, are numeral prefixes, and that the essential element of the numeral is ra (Mikir ro) or rat. It appears in this form, without any prefix, in several other Kuki-Chin languages.
Here should be mentioned a custom which obtains in Mikir of counting by fours; a group of four is cheke or chike, which corresponds to the Boro zakhai (jakhai). This system is used for counting such things as eggs, betel-nuts, fowls, etc., of the same class; e.g. vo-ti chike phòngo-ra e-pum, 21 eggs (4 × 5 + 1): chike phòngo-ra pum-thòm, 23 eggs (4 × 5 + 3). Possibly one language has borrowed from the other. (This method of counting by fours is common throughout the Aryan languages of Northern India, where a group of four is called (ganda.)
Our conclusion from these comparisons is that while Mikir has few coincidences, beyond those common to the whole Tibeto-Burman family, with the Boro group, it has many with the Naga and Kuki-Chin groups, and especially with the Shö or southernmost Chins.
Before leaving the numerals, something must be said of the prefixes which they exhibit throughout the Tibeto-Burman family. Taking first that member for which we have the oldest materials, Tibetan, the first ten numerals are as follows:--
As written. As now spoken in Central Tibet.
one gchig chik two gnyis nyi three gsum sum four bzhi shi five lnga nga six drug dhuk seven bdun dün eight brgyad gya nine dgu gu ten bchu chu
Here we observe several different prefixes, once no doubt supplied with vowels, but from the dawn of written record united in Tibetan with the following consonant, and now no longer heard in utterance; in the first three units the prefix is g-: in four, seven, eight, and ten it is b-: in six and nine it is d-: and in five it is l-.
In the Tibeto-Burman languages of Assam and Burma we find the same phenomenon of numeral prefixes; but while some languages have the same prefix throughout the ten units, others, like Tibetan, have several different prefixes. In some cases, again, the prefixes have been incorporated in the numeral and are no longer recognized as separable, while in others they may be dropped when the numeral occurs in composition; in others, again, the prefixes have (as in spoken Tibetan) been dropped altogether.
Of the first class the best examples are the Central Kuki-Chin languages:--
Lai. Shonshe. Lushei.
one pö-kat ma-kat pa-khat two pö-ni ma-nhi pa-nhih three pö-thum ma-ton pa-thum four pö-li ma-li pa-li five pö-nga ma-nga pa-nga six pö-ruk ma-ruk pa-ruk seven pö-sari ma-seri pa-sarih eight pö-ryeth ma-rit pa-riat nine pö-kwa ma-ko pa-kua ten pö-ra ma-ra shom
Of the second class Mikir, in common with most of the Assam family, is an example; in one and two the prefix ke- (representing the Tibetan g-) has been abraded to i- and hi-: in three it persists; in these numbers the prefix may be dropped in composition, leaving si, ni, and thòm remaining. In four and five we have the prefix phi- (for pi-) and pho- (for po- or pa-), representing the b- of Tibetan, but now no longer separable. In six the prefix the- represents the original d-, and has similarly become inseparable. In ten, the form kre represents an original kera, answering to the Kuki-Chin pö-ra and ma-ra and the Meithei ta-ra. We notice that in Mikir, as in the Naga and Kuki-Chin languages, the hard consonants k, p, t (ph, th) have replaced the soft g, b, and d of the Tibetan. In the Boro languages, on the other hand, the original soft consonants of Tibetan are retained, as will be seen from the forms below:--
Boro. Dimasa. Garo.
one se, sui shi sa two ni, nui gini gni three tham gatam gitam four brè, brui bri bri five ba bonga bongga six ro, do do dok
In these changes Mikir follows the phonetic laws obtaining in Naga and Kuki-Chin, not those which obtain in Boro.
It has been pointed out already (p. 78) that generic determinatives are used in Mikir when numbers are joined to nouns. This practice is common to the Boro languages and to the Kuki-Chin group (as well as Burmese), but does not appear to be prevalent in the Western Naga group. A list of the words used in Darrang Kachari is given at p. 13 of Mr. Endle's grammar; for Garo, a list will be found at p. 6 of Mr. Phillips's grammar; it much resembles the Darrang list, but neither contains any forms coinciding with those of Mikir except the Garo pat, used for leaves and other flat things, which resembles the Mikir pàk. On the other hand, in Kuki-Chin we have in Lai pum for globular things, [49] the same as in Mikir, and in Shö (Chin) we have for persons pün, the Mikir bàng (bàng in Mikir and pang in Lushei mean body), and for animals zün, the Mikir jòn (Mr. Houghton's grammar, p. 20). Here again the affinity of the Arleng is with the Kuki-Chin group, and especially with its southernmost member, rather than with the Boro.
Turning now to the pronouns, the Mikir ne for the first person singular finds it exact equivalent only in the two Old Kuki dialects Anal and Hiroi, spoken in Manipur, where the corresponding pronoun is ni (Anal) and nai (Hiroi). In Boro the form is ang, in Angami a, in Sema ngi, in Ao ni, in Lhota a, in Kachcha Naga anui. In the majority of the Kuki-Chin family another stem, kei or ke, is used. Here Mikir agrees with the two Kuki dialects mentioned and with some of the Naga forms, rather than with Boro.
For the second person singular all the Tibeto-Burman languages of Assam have nàng, or closely similar forms.