By Bhogtoram Mawroh
An exploration of the past can be divided into two categories: history and prehistory, with the distinction being based on the presence or absence of written records. In that sense, the history of the Khasis started when Reverend Thomas Jones brought out the Khasi translation of two Catechisms (one in English and one in Welsh) giving birth to the Khasi alphabet. There is some controversy regarding this claim as some argue that it was Alexander Burgh Lish, a Baptist missionary who, in his essay, ‘A Brief Account of the Khasees’ for the first time, wrote Khasi words in the Roman script. Therefore, A.B. Lish, not Rev. Thomas Jones, deserves credit for first creating the Khasi script and thus heralding the beginning of the community’s history.
Notwithstanding this minor controversy, it does not mean that before the coming of the British, the Khasi had no way of recording the past and passing it to the younger generations. The lack of script is more than compensated by the richness of the oral culture, which gives a unique glimpse into the past. One of those oral narratives is about the founding of the Hima Shillong, a powerful chieftainship which in 1859 became divided into the Hima Khyrim and Hima Mylliem. Hamlet Bareh Ngap Kynta’s book ‘The history and culture of the Khasi people’ gives a very detailed account of the founding myth and the various events that took place in the Hima which was based at Nongkseh (a village 5 km to the south of Shillong). One of those is about the civil war in which the Chieftainship almost became extinct.
According to tradition, U Piar was the 6th Syiem from the ancestral lineage which traces its descent from Ka Pahsyntiew, who had a mythical origin. During his rule a civil war began between the two parties: on the one side there was the Syiemship being supported by the Nongkseh Thangkiew Basan (head of the founding clans), while on the other, there were three Basans who wanted to annihilate the ruling clan. In the war, attackers besieged and burned the royal residence. The Thangkiew Basan saved th chieftain’s daughter Ka Jait Kiri and took her to a sanctuary in the west. Another ruling clan member, Ka Khein, escaped to Mawpdang and started another clan, which survives to this day. After the war ended, people brought Ka Jait Kiri back, restoring the ruling clan line. So, Nongkseh was a very important site for understanding the history of the Khasi. Recent archaeological excavations have further reaffirmed its importance.
Couple of weeks ago, my friend and I went to Nongkseh to search for the old market of Shillong. Before the coming of the British and the setting up of Shillong around Iewduh (also called Bara Bazar), this market was very important. After asking around, we finally found the market was behind the house of a family. We asked the permission of the family to enter their compound and look at the monoliths that were in the backyard. We took pictures and were about to leave when suddenly from the other side appeared Marco Mitri and AC Mawlong, both professors from the history department of NEHU. Marco Mitri is well known for his excavations around Lum Sohpetbneng, where he found evidence of a Neolithic settlement dating to around 770 BCE and 1220 BCE, approximately 3,243 years ago. He had also discovered the site of Myrkhan, a village close to Nongkseh, which was a workshop dated between 1885 BCE to 1765 BCE, or approximately 3,900 years ago. So, the establishment of the Hima Shillong in Nongkseh was of high strategic value.
We exchanged greetings and then we realised that the monoliths that we found were just a small section of the original market, which was located just behind the house. In the original market there were dozens of monoliths, some still standing while others had fallen down. Pine trees covered the site, which must have once been an open space for stalls like those still found in the weekly markets of Sohra, Umsning, and others. Marco took us to the dig site where he had found many artifacts which attested to the variety of goods that were traded in the market. One of the intriguing finds was wheel made pottery, which revealed that the market had visitors from the plains, possibly, both from the Brahmaputra valley and the plains of Sylhet (or Shella Hat in Khasi). His previous dig at Lum Sohpetbneng yielded 2,058 handmade potsherds of differing varieties, all crafted without a wheel. Today pottery making has completely disappeared from the Khasi region and is now limited to the village of Larnai in the Thadlaskein Block of West Jaintia Hills. These are not wheel-made pottery.
Marco also found a lot of seeds which he has sent for identification and dating. Austroasiatic speakers were among the first to cultivate rice in South China, their original homeland. During their migration to Southeast Asia and South Asia, they introduced agriculture, especially rice cultivation. The rice consumed in India today is a hybrid between the semi-domesticated indica species and the japonica species brought by the Austroasiatic people who are today identified with the Khasis and the Mundas. In his previous excavation, Marco found rice seeds, but those were of the wild variety. Evidence of domesticated rice would actually confirm the hypothesis of Austroasiatic speaking people bringing domesticated rice to South Asia.
Archaeologically, the Khasi appeared to have arrived in their present location by around 2000 BCE or 4000 years ago, but genetic evidence puts them at 3000 BCE or 5000 years ago. The area around Nongkseh seems to have been a very important site for settlement. It is also located not far from Nongkrem, the oldest iron smelting site in all the North East. This site is over 2000 years old. We can gauge the industry’s importance from the fact that iron slags were the most common finds. These were telltale signs that iron smelting was a very important activity that took place in the market. The market, in fact, could have grown around the workshops. Till the coming of the British, the Khasis were exporting both iron tools and ore to the plains in exchange for other goods. Iron was such an important commodity that the Jayantia Buranji mentions that when the Syiem of Jaintiapur and Ahom sovereign would exchange greetings with each other, the former would attach pieces of iron with the message. The word ‘Pnar,’ a sub-group of the Khasi, is supposed to actually mean Pakka Nar (or good quality iron).
The discovery or introduction of the iron industry among the Khasi was a very important event and, according to Marco, could have been an instrumental factor in the formation of the early Himas, one of which was Hima Shillong. Slave raiding was an important activity among the Khasis who were described by the Garos and Nagas as “those who live up above and draw fire from heaven to make iron” in the 1958 book ‘Secret Lands Where Women Reign’ by Gabrielle Bertrand. At the same time, the degraded landscape seen around Sohra resulted from the trees being cut down for charcoal to fuel the industry. Heavy rainfall, without trees to anchor the soil, gradually washed away the soil over many centuries, leaving the landscape barren except for a few patches where local communities designated certain areas as Law Kyntang (sacred forest) or Law Adong (Restricted forest). It appears that the market at Nongkseh was trading in enormous quantities of iron.
Marco also showed us many cists, which were stone coffins containing the ashes of the dead, found throughout the village. These contained the remains of the founding clans, like the Thangkiew. The structures were built as a dolmen, using several upright stone slabs to support a flat roofing stone. It was surrounded by several upright stones with the entrance facing to the east. If the clan were to allow samples to be taken, it could tell the exact date when the first groups arrived in Nongkseh and established the settlement and the market.
Nongkseh is one of the many sites in Meghalaya which will help understand not just the history of the Khasis but shed more light on the link between South Asia with South East Asia and South China. Being the second oldest community in South Asia, the history of the Khasis goes back many thousands of years ago (much earlier than the steppe pastoralists who brought Sanskrit and early forms of Hinduism to South Asia) and the lack of a written script is no more a handicap in understanding it. The work by Marco Mitri and others like him will be invaluable. Maybe, one day Nongkseh could become an open-air museum (a dream Marco shares) where researchers and tourists would visit the site and understand more the significance of the place and the people who shaped the history of an entire region, stretching all the way from South China to South Asia.
(The views expressed in the article are those of the authors and do not reflect in any way his affiliation to any organisation or institution)