By Bhogtoram Mawroh
The debate over the anthem is not going to die down very soon, and there have already been some rebuttals, a particular one directed at me, which I really welcome. I say this because I am going to take this opportunity to share more materials that are about the Khasi community (which includes the Jaintia as well) with my thoughts on them. I have always tried to share my reading materials with the readers because they should not believe me but actually go and read the materials on their own so that they can make up their own minds. There might have been a time when reading materials were very hard to come by, and one might have had to rely on others to know the facts. But now, many are available for free online. Therefore, if one talks without reference, they are just being lazy. That, in turn, can lead to them being manipulated by those who think they can speak for others. The point about intellectual discourses is not to trust anyone, but to check things out for ourselves.
Now coming to the criticisms, a vehement critic of my article, Omarlin Kyndiah, stated that, “in recent times everyone has become an expert of Jaintia history overnight by quoting colonial sources,” and complained that unfortunately, colonial ethnographers’ writings like Gurdon’s and Rafy’s are being treated as gospel truth. He also alleges that the colonial legacy is too strong, and these newspaper articles want to wipe out the history of the Jaintias with one stroke of the anthem. Now there are some interesting allegations here; the first is about the sources, and the second is about ignoring the history of the Jaintia’s. Let’s take the first argument.
The use of colonial ethnographic works is because they are the earliest that are available on the subject. There is also Jayantia Buranji, which will be referred to later in the article. However, apart from them, we will have to turn to oral sources, which also give a good idea of the history and culture of the people. That’s where folk tales come into the picture. Rafy’s work is therefore interesting in that regard because it does give an idea of the worldview that the Khasi adhered to. It is not to say that these sources should be read uncritically, and there are a few passages that do show the condescending attitude colonial officials like Gurdon had towards the native community who had not converted to Christianity. However, does it mean that the remaining information that he provides is somehow tainted by that? I see no evidence of that.
In fact, Gurdon’s observations about the Lyngngam and the Bhoi were very insightful, as was his mention of the nearest ethnic group that might have kinship with the Khasi based on vocabularies, the Palaung (an indigenous group found in present-day Shan State, Myanmar). All of them have been found to have been proven by works like the 2012 paper ‘Molecular Genetic Perspectives on the Origin of the Lyngngam Tribe of Meghalaya, India’ by Banrida T. Langstieh and her colleagues, Philippe Ramirez’s 2014 book ‘People of the Margins: Across Ethnic Boundaries in North-East India’ and the 2013 paper by K. S. Nagaraja, Paul Sidwell, and Simon Greenhill, ‘A Lexicostatistical Study of the Khasian Languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War’ which will be discussed later.
Rafy’s book is a collection of folk tales. To dismiss them is to assume she must have invented some of the stories, which is an incredible argument to make, which I will not. So, I will not dismiss the colonial sources just because they are colonial. To do so in fact reveals a bias that is not borne out of critical scholarship. It is, however, an attempt to create an alternative narrative not based on facts. What might that attempt look like? We will have to wait and see.
The second criticism is regarding ignoring the history of the Jaintia. I don’t see the connection between the anthem and this allegation. The anthem is based on the one official and two associate official languages of the state, English, Garo, and Khasi (the Sohra dialect). Pnar is one of the languages spoken by the Khasi (by this, I mean one of the groups within the larger umbrella, i.e., Pnar/Jaintia), but because of historical reasons, they were not chosen as the standard Khasi. That went to the Sohra dialect, which became the associate official language mentioned in the Meghalaya State Language Act, 2005. It is also the language for which the 8th Schedule is being demanded. So, it’s not about ignoring history, because the anthem is not about that. Also, including Pnar, which is not part of the Meghalaya State Language Act, 2005, will be a grave injustice to the other languages, one of which is actually the oldest among all from which Pnar and other Khasi languages emerged.
Regarding the Jaintia history, one has to appreciate HH Mohrmen’s effort in this regard, who has been trying to do a lot by sharing it every now and then with the public. His latest article, ‘Jaintia is Not Just an Idea’, is a continuation of that, albeit this time with an attempt to link it with the anthem, which I feel is misguided. According to him, the debate is not about language but about “history and the pride of the people who belong to (once upon a time) the greatest kingdom amongst the Austro-Asiatic Mon Khmer-speaking people in this region.” Yes, the Pnar had a kingdom, and it was a great one, stretching all the way to Jaintiapur in present-day Bangladesh. It did issue coins, had some small cannons, and appeared to be quite advanced politically. A lot of the information about the kingdom comes from the ‘Jayantia Buranji’, a chronicle on Ahom-Jaintia political relations. The English-translated version came out in 2022, and it is a really fascinating book. For those who can, please buy the book and read it.
The book begins with the hostilities between Jaintia and the Kacharis, which includes the account of the murder of the Jaintias (called Garos here) by the treachery of the Kacharis. Interestingly, a very similar strategy, using deceit to kill your enemies, was mentioned again later, which was used against the Mughals. Similar stories are also known in the Bhoirymbong (Ri Bhoi district) of killing one’s enemies by inviting them on the assurance of peace. So, such stories seem to be quite common, or the practice is quite widespread. After that, the mention of the Ahom-Jaintia relations began during the reign of Swargadeo (Swarga means heaven and Deo means god—not very pompous at all) Pratap Singha, and the contemporary Jaintia King was Jasamanik. A feature of this relationship was the fact that both were independent kingdoms. The chronicle mentions the Ahom-Jaintia war that happened during the reign of Swargadeo Rudra Singha, in which the Jaintia King Ram Singha was defeated and taken hostage. Ram Singha later died when he was about to be sent back to his capital. Fighting, however, continued till the Jaintia got back their prince, who was warned by the Ahom king not to create any trouble in the future. However, this was not the end of the fighting, and there are accounts of clashes between the Ahom and Jaintia during the reign of Swargadeo Siva Singha as well. So, it’s not that the colonial accounts are the only sources; the Jayantia Buranji, however, is referring to matters of statecraft and not the ethnography of the Jaintia, for which we have to depend on the colonial sources. There is one account, though, that reveals an agreement with the colonial sources. This is about the origin of the word Jaintia, which is claimed to have been derived from the name Jayantia Devi.
In Jayantia Buranji, Jayanti Devi is mentioned as the daughter of Jayantarai, the Brahmin king of Jayantia. She was married to Landhabar, the son of the royal priest. Landhabar was, however, cursed by the goddess Bhadrakali and was driven out by his wife. Later, in remorse, Jayanti Devi prayed for the goddess Mahamaya, who asked her to bathe in the river. When she was bathing, her reflection was devoured by a fish. The fish was later captured by Landhabar, who brought it home for eating but forgot all about it. Over the next few days, he found that all the household work would be done and his food would be cooked when he returned home. Afterwards, he found that a maiden would appear from the fish when he was away. He married the maiden (the reflection of Jayanti Devi) and had a son called Borgohain, who was later appointed as the king of Jayantipur by Jayanti Devi. Curiously, there is a similar story in PRT Gurdon’s book ‘The Khasi’, which is about the origin of the Syiems of Sutnga (another name for Jaintia). It’s about U Loh Ryndi and Ka Li Dohkha.
According to this version, there was a man from War Umwi (Amwi) named U Loh Ryndi who went fishing. He caught a fish, roasted it, and placed it on the tyngir, but forgot to eat it. The next morning, he went for a walk, and when he came back, he found the house clean and food cooked. This continued for a few days. Then one day he concealed himself and found that it was a maiden who called herself Ka Li Dohkha who did all the work. There was then an incident that made her leave and go stay in the river Umwai Khyrwi in a village called Suhtnga (Sutnga). There they both got married and had children, after which they returned to the stream of Umwai Khyrwi. One can already notice similarities between the two stories about the fish who was a celestial maiden, from whom the kingdom/Hima originated. The Sutnga story seems to be the older version, which later got co-opted by applying Hindu embellishments when the Pnar established their kingdom in the plains. This is not surprising, as the process of the rulers becoming Hinduized and trying to build a connection with the larger Indo-Aryan (the central Asian migrants who brought early forms of Hinduism to the subcontinent around 3500 years ago) religious mythology was quite common. The process is still ongoing, and one can find out more about it in the YouTube series brought out by The Wire, ‘Indians: A Brief History of a Civilization’.
A similar attempt can be seen in the Jayantia Buranji, where the son of the Landhabar and the maiden (the fish who swallowed Jayanti Devi’s reflection) was called Borgohain, which is an Ahom surname and an administrative title. I don’t think anyone will make the argument that the Jaintia came out of the Ahom. A similar thing must have happened with the story of the name Jayantia Devi, which must have been an attempt to make it appear more Hindu. So where are the Pnar/Jaintia, actually?
Most probably, the Pnar are actually the War Amwi people with the story U Loh Ryndi and Ka Li Dokha making that connection. This origin is indirectly supported by the 2013 paper ‘A Lexicostatistical Study of the Khasian Languages: Khasi, Pnar, Lyngngam, and War’ by K. S. Nagaraja, Paul Sidwell, and Simon Greenhill as well. The paper supports the unity of the Khasian branch of the Mon-Khmer languages (this includes the languages and dialects of Khynriam, War, Bhoi, Jaintia, Maram, and Lyngngam), which means that all these languages emerge from a common ancestor. The Pnar and the standard Khasi are closely associated, but the War-Lamin and Lyngngnam are a little further away from both. Based on dating methods, it is assumed that the oldest languages spoken must have been quite similar to those spoken by the Palaung (mentioned by Gurdon in 1907), who are also an Austro-asiatic speaking group. Khasi appears to have diverged from Palaung around 4000 years ago and within the Khasian group it diverged from War more than 2000 years ago (the earliest) and from Pnar around 600 years ago (the most recent). Because they recently diverged, Pnar and Khasi are in fact, so similar that they are termed as being dialects of the same language. This suggests that among all the languages spoken now, the oldest and most similar to Palaung must have been something that sounded like the War-Lamin. So let’s try to reconstruct the origin of the Khasi (which includes Pnar and all the sub-groups) based on this information.
Based on the papers ‘Y-chromosome diversity suggests southern origin and Paleolithic back-wave migration of Austro-Asiatic speakers from eastern Asia to the Indian subcontinent’ by Zhang and colleagues and ‘A late Neolithic expansion of Y chromosomal haplogroup O2a1-M95 from east to west’ by Arunkumar and colleagues, the groups known as Khasi today arrived in the sub-continent between 10,000 and 6000 years ago. These early groups spoke what must have sounded very similar to the War-Lamin. Then, over time, the groups started occupying different areas, with the name of some of the seven groups that emerged later actually being geographical. War is a term given to those who stay in the deep gorges of the southern part of what is today known as Meghalaya, while Bhoi, as Philippe Ramirez himself puts it, means “people of the border.” In time, clans started to reorganize and form into Hima, with Hima Sutnga, founded by the War Amwi, being one of them. Maybe it was around this time, or a little later, that the name Pnar came to be used. Now, Mohrmen personally informed me (he can verify it later) that the ‘Pnar’ actually comes from the term pakka nar, i.e., good quality iron. Interestingly, in the Jayantia Buranji, along with the letters, pieces of iron from the Jaintia King and chillies from the Ahom ruler were exchanged.
The paper ‘Two thousand years of iron smelting in the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, North East India’ by Pawel Prokop and Ireneusz Suliga claims that the Khasi (which also include the Jaintia/Pnar) had already developed an iron smelting industry 2000 years ago. The 1958 book ‘Secret Lands where Women Reign’ by Gabriel Bertrand (this book was written after India got independence, so I am sure it will not qualify as a colonial source, but Omarlin Kyndiah will know better) has a chapter ‘In the Mountain of the Serpent (most probably it’s the Thlen) God’ where there is a mention of the Garos and Nagas living in fear of “those who live up above and draw fire from heaven to iron”. “Those” here refer to the Khasi (which also include the Pnar), who would raid these tribes and carry their people to work as slave labour for erecting the monoliths that now dot the Khasi landscape. So, the word Pnar must have its origins in the iron industry. In time, as Hima Sutnga grew in power, it conquered the plains, and it was around then, in an attempt to link the Syiem/King to Hindu mythology, that the legend of Jayantia Devi was created with a little modification of the original legend of U Loh Ryndi and Ka Li Dohkha. That’s how the people of Hima Sutnga, who came to be known as Pnar, also became known as Jaintia. But in reality, they were the War Amwi. In fact, all Khasis are descendants of the War Amwi (or people who originally spoke a similar language).
The State Anthem is not ignoring Jaintia history because it is based on the three official languages, with the Sohra dialect being one of them. In fact, it is quite propitious that for the Khasi, where the khadduh is of such importance, the youngest language is the lingua franca of the community. The Jaintia have a fascinating history, but so do the other groups that make up the Khasi. To ignore them smacks of arrogance and defeats the very argument of Khasi subsuming the identity of groups like the Jaintia. So, if there’s a change made to the anthem, first the Meghalaya State Language Act, 2005, should be scrapped, and instead of the Sohra dialect, the War-Lamin dialect should be included as an official language since it is the oldest and the one from which other Khasi languages, including Pnar, emerged. Mankular Gashnga’s Lamin War-English Dictionary (I am not sure if it is out) can be helpful in this regard, and through incorporation into education and other official works, it should be made the lingua franca, which is to be used by all those who belong to the Khasi groups, with the name Khasi also being changed to War. All groups now, except War, should have the suffix War attached to them: Jaintia-War, Bhoi-War, etc. Let us be authentic and go back to our roots. That will be true justice. If anything, this will be a lasting contribution to the state anthem debate.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the author’s and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organisation or institution)