THE MIKIRS
FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE
EDWARD STACK
INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE SOMETIME DIRECTOR
OF LAND RECORDS AND AGRICULTURE,
AND SECRETARY TO THE CHIEF COMMISSIONER, ASSAM
EDITED, ARRANGED, AND SUPPLEMENTED
BY
SIR CHARLES LYALL
(Published under the orders of the Government
of Eastern Bengal and Assam)
ILLUSTRATED
LONDON
DAVID NUTT
57, 59, LONG ACRE
1908
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
To
M. R. L.-J.
In Memoriam
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
In 1882 Edward Stack, appointed the first Director of the newly-created
Department of Land Records and Agriculture in Assam, entered upon
his duties in that province, and applied himself with ardour to the
study of its people. He had passed just ten years in the Indian Civil
Service, which he joined in 1872 at the head of his year. These
ten years had been fruitful in varied interest and activity:
the strenuous life of a District and Settlement officer in the
North-Western Provinces; secretariat employment in his own province
and the Government of India; and, just before his translation to
Assam, six months spent in travel in Persia. [1] Activity of mind
and body, and keen interest in the people and speech of all the
countries he lived in, were his strongest characteristics. During
the cold season of 1882-83 he spent several months in moving up and
down the Brahmaputra Valley, learning, observing, and noting. He
acquired a working knowledge of Assamese with surprising rapidity;
with this as his foundation and instrument, he attacked the multitude
of tribal languages which he found impinging on the Aryan pale. To
him more than to any one else, is due the honourable distinction of
the Assam Province in the grammars, vocabularies, and phrase-books
of nearly all the most important of its multitudinous varieties of
Indo-Chinese speech, which have been drawn up by officers and others
who have served there. In 1883 the Report on the Census of 1881 in
Assam was published; and in this Report, mainly the work of the Chief
Commissioner, Sir Charles Elliott, the chapter on Castes and Tribes was
written by Edward Stack. Paragraphs 131-136 deal with the Mikirs, and
much in these represents the result of his careful personal inquiries
among them. His interest in this tribe gradually grew. In 1884 he was
called to take up the work of Secretary to the Chief Commissioner,
and while thus employed he occupied his leisure in studying Mikir. He
became acquainted with a bright young Mikir lad, a convert of the
American Baptist Mission at Nowgong, named Sardoka, to which he
was accustomed to add the names of his sponsor at baptism, Perrin
Kay. With the help of Mr. Neighbor's Vocabulary of English and Mikir,
with illustrative sentences, [2] Stack and Sardoka worked together
at the language, correcting and largely supplementing the material
contained in their text-book. From this they went on to folk-tales,
which were written down, with a careful attention to systematic
orthography, by Stack from Sardoka's dictation, each day's work
being provided with a series of notes elucidating every difficulty
in it. Thus material gathered; and in the course of 1886 Stack had
arranged, when relieved at the end of that year of the duties of
Secretary by my return to Assam, to put together a complete account
of the Mikirs and their language, fully illustrated (as his wont was)
by ample variety of phrase and idiom, and a collection of stories in
Mikir with commentary and vocabulary. But during the latter half of
1886 his health failed. Partly the moist climate of Assam, and partly,
perhaps, unsuspected flaws of constitution, told upon his strong and
active frame; and, after some months of gradually increasing weakness,
he died at sea on the 12th January, 1887, aged 37, just before the
vessel reached Adelaide, in South Australia, where he had planned to
spend his furlough.
A few months after his death his papers were sent to me at Shillong,
and for some time I hoped, with Sardoka's help, to be able to carry
out his purpose. But the steadily increasing pressure of other duties
prevented this. I left Shillong on a long tour in November, 1887,
and soon after my return in the spring of 1888 I was transferred to
the post of Commissioner in the Assam Valley, eventually leaving
the province in the autumn of 1889 for engrossing work elsewhere,
never to return, except for a brief space as Chief Commissioner in
1894. It had become evident from an examination of the materials that
to do what Stack had set before him involved much more labour than I
could give. It was necessary to learn the language from the beginning,
to construct grammar and dictionary, and to retrace the steps which
he had trodden in his progress; and this with an aptitude and power
of acquisition far inferior to his. Accordingly, on my departure from
Assam, the papers were made over to others, with whom they remained
until, on the organization under Dr. G. A. Grierson of the Linguistic
Survey of Northern India, they were again inquired for, and utilized,
so far as the scope of that work admitted, in preparing an account
of the Mikir language for insertion in the Survey. [3]
In 1904, when Sir Bampfylde Fuller had obtained the sanction of the
Government of India to his scheme for the preparation of a series
of descriptive monographs on the more important tribes and castes of
Assam, he proposed to me to undertake an account of the Mikirs, based
on Stack's materials. There were several reasons why I hesitated to
accept the task. It was many years since I had left the province,
and official work and other studies claimed time and leisure. The
materials were themselves in the rough--mere notes and jottings,
sufficient for the man who carried the main part of his knowledge in
his head, but by no means easy to interpret or set in order for one who
had no such knowledge. They dated, too, from twenty years back, and in
the interval great changes had occurred in the material development
of the tract where the Mikirs live, which is now traversed by the
Assam-Bengal Railway. I decided, nevertheless, to make the attempt,
and, however imperfectly, to do something to perpetuate the work of a
man to whom I was most intimately bound by affection, and whose great
powers and attractive personality were the admiration and delight of
all who knew him. The present volume is the result.
In addition to Stack's notes, I received from Assam three sets of
replies to ethnographical questions which had been circulated to
persons acquainted with the tribe. These were from Mr. W. C. M. Dundas,
Subdivisional Officer of North Cachar, and the Rev. P. E. Moore
and Mr. Allen of the American Baptist Mission. [4] These replies,
which were not very detailed, while quite independent in origin,
agreed closely with Stack's data, and showed that the lapse of years
had not made the latter inapplicable to the present time. In the
following pages any information drawn from these sources has been
duly acknowledged.
It was explained in the Introduction to Major Gurdon's Monograph on
the Khasis (1907) that the order and arrangement of subjects to be
treated in dealing with each tribe had been prescribed by authority;
and Stack's notes had to be brought within this framework. As will
be seen, under certain heads not much information is forthcoming; and
perhaps the more searching standard of inquiry applied by ethnologists
in the present day might demand more exhaustive treatment of some
points in this presentment of the Mikir people. This, however, must
be left for our successors.
Section I has been expanded by adding numerical data from the last
Census (1901), and measurements from Lieut.-Colonel L. A. Waddell's
Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley (1900). Section II (Domestic Life)
is entirely due to Stack. The same is the case with Section III (Laws
and Customs), except the Appendix. Section IV (Religion) is wholly
Stack's; reading the careful and minute account which it contains of
the funeral ceremonies, one is strongly impressed by the thoroughness
which he brought to his investigations. Section V (Folk-lore) contains
translations of three of the folk-tales written down in Mikir by Stack,
of which the original text, with an interlinear rendering, is given
in Section VI. These translations, in both Sections, have been made
by me. Stack's manuscript supplied the Mikir text, which has been
faithfully copied, and a number of explanatory notes, but no connected
rendering. I have therefore had to depend upon my study of the language
in the linguistic materials collected by him, and those contained in
Mr. Neighbor's vocabulary and Sardoka's dictionary and phrase-book. I
had hoped to have the assistance of Sardoka himself in revising the
translations. He served for many years in the Assam Secretariat after
Stack's death, and helped in the preparation of the specimens of
Mikir for the Linguistic Survey in 1902; but in September, 1904, he
was transferred as mauzadar, or Revenue collector and administrator,
to the important mauza or territorial division in the Mikir Hills
called Duar Baguri, now divided between the districts of Nowgong
and Sibsagar; and on the 8th March, 1905, he most unhappily died
there of cholera. Other help was not forthcoming. I must, therefore,
ask for the indulgence of those better acquainted than I with Mikir
in regard to these renderings. Probably they contain many errors of
detail; but at least they seem to hang together as a whole, and to
be consistent with what I could ascertain elsewhere of the fashion
of Mikir speech. The notes are chiefly from Stack. The sketch of the
Grammar in Section VI is reproduced (in a somewhat abridged form)
from that which I contributed to the Linguistic Survey. Stack himself
had drawn up no grammar, though he had put together much illustrative
material from which the mechanism of the language could be deduced. The
main facts are clear and comparatively simple, though there are not
a few idiomatic expressions in the texts of which it is difficult to
give a satisfactory account.
For the last Section, that dealing with the probable affinities of
the Mikir race, I must take the full responsibility. It is the result
of the collation and comparison of materials from many sources, and
especially those contained in the three volumes of the Linguistic
Survey treating of the Tibeto-Burman family of speech. The authorities
on which I have relied are indicated in the text.
In the Bibliography I have entered only those works (so far as known
to me) which contribute something to our knowledge of the Mikirs. I
have not thought it necessary to specify mere casual allusions to the
tribe, or to quote imperfect lists of words which have been superseded
by more accurate material.
For the coloured illustrations I have to thank Miss Eirene
Scott-O'Connor (now Mrs. Philip Rogers), and for the photographs
Major Gurdon and Mr. W. C. M. Dundas; the reproductions are
by Messrs. W. Griggs and Sons. The map (by Mr. J. G. Bartholomew)
showing the localities inhabited by the Mikirs is taken from the new
volumes of the Imperial Gazetteer of India. An explanation of the
system adopted for rendering Mikir words will be found on p. 74.
C. J. LYALL.
April, 1908.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGES
Introductory Note vii-xiii
Section I.
GENERAL.
Numbers and Distribution 1-2
Habitat 2-3
Physical characters 4
Traditions as to origin 4-5
Dress 5-6
Tattooing 6
Jewellery 6
Weapons 6