THE KACHÁRIS
BY THE LATE
REV. SIDNEY ENDLE
For many years Chaplain of Tezpur and in charge of
the Kachári Mission of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel at that place.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
J. D. ANDERSON, I.C.S. (Retired)
Published under the orders of the Government
of Eastern Bengal and Assam
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1911
N.B.--The Editorial Notes in this volume are from the pen of Colonel
P. R. T. Gurdon, I.A., Director of Ethnology to the Government of
Eastern Bengal and Assam.
CONTENTS
PAGE
SECTION I
Characteristics, Physical and Moral; Origin, Distribution
and Historic Summary, etc. 1
SECTION II
Social and Domestic Life 11
SECTION III
Laws and Customs 24
SECTION IV
Religion 33
SECTION V
Folk-lore, Traditions and Superstitions 54
SECTION VI
Outline Grammar, Etc. 71
Appendix I. Tribes Closely Allied to Kacháris 81
Appendix II. Specimens of the Bodo Language 97
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
S. Endle.
From a Photograph by Messrs. Bourne & Shepherd Frontispiece
Group of Meches (Goalpara District).
From a Photograph by Mr. T. E. Emerson To face p. 5
Kachári Woman Weaving (Kamrup) ,, 20
Kachári Clothes ,, 21
Kachári Women Fishing (Kamrup).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 22
Kachári Girls Playing Jew's Harp (Gongina).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 30
Siju Tree (Euphorbia splendens).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 36
Kachári Village Interior (Kamrup District).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 56
Kachári Girl (Kamrup District).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 67
Gorge of the River Manás.
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 96
Kachári Man (Kamrup District).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 105
Group of Kachári Men (Kamrup District).
From a Photograph by Mrs. H. A. Colquhoun ,, 113
IN COLOUR
Kachári Man To face p. 10
Kachári Girl Fishing ,, 16
Kachári Woman ,, 60
Mech Girl ,, 82
Map Showing Area Occupied by the Bodo Races At end of Volume
INTRODUCTION
It is with some diffidence that I comply with Colonel Gurdon's request
that I should add a few words of preface and explanation to the last
literary work of an old friend and pastor, whose loss will long be
lamented in the Assam Valley, where he laboured as a missionary and
planter's chaplain for upwards of forty years. Mr. Endle's interest
in his Kachári flock was that of an evangelist rather than that of a
linguist or ethnologist, and this preoccupation has coloured his style
and affected the matter of his book in a way that, however pleasant and
natural it may seem to those who had the privilege of his acquaintance,
may perhaps require a few words of explanation for the benefit of
those who look for anthropology only, or linguistics, in his pages.
My first duty, then, is to say a few words about the author's life
and character. Sidney Endle was born about 1840 at Totnes in Devon,
of sturdy yeoman parentage. His grandfather was, it seems, proud of
being an armiger, and it is a family tradition that many Endles figured
in the ranks of the Catholic clergy of the West country. Mr. Endle
was educated at Totnes Grammar School, under the Rev. James Powney,
and early conceived a wish to enter the ministry of the Church of
England, and serve abroad as a missionary. With this view he entered
St. Augustine's College at Canterbury. Unfortunately the College
seems to have kept no written record of the dates at which one of
the most distinguished and devoted of its pupils entered and left
its roof. It was in February, 1864, however, that he was sent by
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to Tezpur, in Assam,
to be the assistant of Mr. Hesselmyer, then in charge of the Kachári
mission at that place. In 1865 he was ordained deacon by the Bishop
of Calcutta, and in the following year he was admitted to priest's
orders. Soon after he was transferred to the independent charge of
the S.P.G. mission among the tea-garden coolies at Dibrugarh in Upper
Assam. In 1869, on Mr. Hesselmyer's death, Mr. Endle was made chaplain
of the important tea-planting district of Darrang, with the charge
of the Kachári mission in that district, having his head-quarters
at Tezpur. His pastoral duties were thus two-fold. On the one hand,
he became the pastor of an European community scattered over an area
some 100 miles in length by 30 or 40 in breadth. It was his duty to
gather his flock round him at some convenient tea-garden, or at the
pretty little rustic church at Tezpur itself, where his congregation
included the small band of officials. He was everywhere welcome, and
it was not long before he was as popular as he was respected. One
of the most unworldly and simple of men, almost an ascetic in his
personal tastes and habits, he could sympathise with and understand
men whose training and ideas were different from his. He had a
native shrewdness and quiet sense of humour which stood him in good
stead in his dealings with men probably as varied in their origins
and temperament as are to be found in any collection of Englishmen
beyond the seas. His sermons--and he could preach with equal ease and
eloquence in English, Assamese, and Kachári--were ever those of a man
who to shrewd observation of the various life about him, native and
European, added an unwavering devotion to the responsibilities of his
calling. Authoritative, and even stern, he could be when he thought
it needful to assert his responsibility as a priest. But, somehow,
the occasion rarely occurred, since his was not the disposition that
demands impossible perfection of ordinary human nature. There was
no touch of intolerance in his gentle and (there is no other word to
describe him) saintly nature. I think he would have liked to have it
said of him that, like Chaucer's Parson,
He was a shepherd and no mercenerie,
And though he holy were and vertuous,
He was to simple men not dispitous,
Ne of his speech dangerous ne digne,
But in his teaching discrete and benigne.
Innumerable were the marriages and christenings he celebrated in all
parts of Assam, and it was characteristic of the man that he regarded
it as a duty to keep himself informed of the welfare, spiritual and
physical, of the children he held at the font. During his rare visits
to England he endeavoured when he was not busy preaching for his
mission, to visit those whom in their infancy he had admitted to his
Church. Few chaplains in India can have been so universally popular
and respected as he was, and this without in any way relaxing from
the dignity which, in his case, belonged rather to his sacred office
than to any consideration for his own person.
But he made no secret of the fact that his heart was chiefly in his
missionary work among his beloved Kacháris. The Bodos of the Kachári
dwars (the dwars or "doors" of the Kachári plains are the passes that
lead into the rough mountains of independent Bhutan) are, like most of
the aboriginal races of Assam, cheery, good-natured, semi-savage folk;
candid, simple, trustful, but incorrigibly disrespectful according
to Indian notions of good manners. To a casual observer, they may
well have seemed incapable of comprehending the gentle reserve
and unaffected unselfishness of their pastor's nature. Among them,
however, it was his delight to unbend, and give way to the almost
boyish simplicity and sense of fun which to the last were among his
most engaging traits. When Mr. Endle approached a Kachári village
during one of the prolonged preaching tours which were to him at once
a duty and the keenest of pleasures, he was always greeted with a
joyous and often noisy welcome. He travelled on foot, and the villagers
would turn out to see the gami-ni-brai, the "old man of the village,"
as they affectionately called him. He was often cordially invited to
share in the village festivities, and it was an interesting sight to
watch him seated in the midst of rough semi-savage folk, listening to
the tale of their simple joys and sorrows, enjoying their primitive
jokes, and, when occasion served, talking to them, as probably no one
else will ever be able to talk to them again, of the matters nearest
to the missionary's heart.
In all parts of the Kachári country, Mr. Endle established many
village schools, served by trusty converts. But his chief pride
was in the church he built at Bengbari, which, to his great joy,
was consecrated by Bishop Milman in person. Under its thatched roof
has now been placed a tablet to the memory of its founder.
No account of Mr. Endle's life, however brief, would be complete
without a mention of the fact that in 1875 he married Miss
Sarah Ewbank Chambers, who for twenty years shared his pastoral
anxieties. Mrs. Endle was much respected by the European community
throughout Assam, and her sudden death in Calcutta in 1895 was
universally regretted. How sorely her husband felt her loss, not even
those who knew him best were allowed to guess, but it was plain that,
from this time onwards, much of his old elasticity of mind and body
deserted him, and though he continued his work with unabated industry
the effects of age began for the first time to be apparent to his
friends. In 1884 Mr. Endle compiled his well-known manual of the
Kachári language, published by the Assam Secretariat Press. From time
to time he contributed papers on the subject of the Bodo people to the
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1891 he was elected
an Honorary Fellow of St. Augustine's College, in recognition of his
linguistic studies and of his eminence as a worker in the mission
field. In 1906 he was offered a canonry by the Bishop of Calcutta,
but characteristically refused a dignity which might have involved
absences from his missionary duties.
Such, briefly told, are the few outstanding events in a life wholly
devoted to pastoral work, of which little was known outside his native
flock. It was Mr. Endle's repeatedly expressed wish that he might end
his life and be laid to rest among his Kacháris. This wish was not
fulfilled. Towards the end of 1905 it was evident that his persistent
disregard of his personal comfort in an enervating climate had taxed a
naturally robust constitution. He was induced with some difficulty to
pay a brief visit to England for rest and change. He spent this holiday
chiefly in preaching for his mission and visiting old friends. He
was soon, perhaps too soon, back at his work. It could no longer be
hidden from himself or others that he had overtaxed his strength. This,
however, caused him no disquietude. He had done his day's work, and
was cheerfully ready to take his departure. In July 1907, he could
struggle no longer against growing weakness, and was placed on one
of the little mail steamers that ply up and down the Brahmaputra,
in the hope that river breezes, rest, and change of scene might bring
about some restoration to health. He himself, however, knew that his
end was near, and he passed away, painlessly and peacefully, on the
river bank at Dibrugarh, close to the scene of his first independent
missionary charge, entrusted to him more than forty years before.
So much by way of biographical introduction seemed necessary,
not only as an inadequate and too brief memorial of a singularly
unselfish and blameless career, but also as an explanation of some
features in Mr. Endle's book not usually found in anthropological
manuals. Of the subject of the book itself I may now be allowed to say
a few words, if only to show that it has an interest and importance,
from an ethnological point of view, which are perhaps disguised by
the author's characteristically modest estimate of his task and of
his power of dealing with it. The book is, primarily, a monograph
treating of that branch of the Kachári race which lives in scattered
hamlets along the foot-hills of the Himalayas in Northern Bengal and
Assam, intermixed now with Hindu people who have intruded into what
was once their undisputed home. In Assam proper the Hindus call them
Kacháris; in Bengal they are known as Meches. [1] Their own name for
their race is Boro or Bodo (the o has the sound of the English o in
"hot"). Among this northern branch of the race is embedded the tribe
of the Koch, whose name is pronounced locally as if it were Koss,
(to rhyme with our English "boss"). (Kachári, I may mention in
passing, is also pronounced as Koss-ari.) The Koch have gradually
become a semi-Hindu caste, most of whose members now talk the Indian
Bengali or Assamese. It also contains the surviving remnants of the
royal family of the great and powerful Koch empire, which, roughly,
covered the same area as the present province of Eastern Bengal and
Assam. It can be proved that the aboriginal members of the Koch caste
within quite recent times spoke the Boro language. In the East of the
Assam Valley was another powerful kingdom, that of the Chutiyas, whose
language was another branch of the speech described in this book. The
river names of the whole Brahmaputra Valley are Bodo names, and it is
demonstrable that the Bodos were the aborigines of the Valley. In the
great mass of hills, an outlying spur of the mountains of Upper Burma,
which divide the Brahmaputra Valley from that of the river Surma which
runs parallel to it from east to west are two more Bodo groups. The
most eastern of these comprises the Di-ma-sa, Great-River-Folk (di-
means "river" or "water,") people who were driven out of the valley of
the great river Brahmaputra in historical times, and finally became
rulers of what is now the great tea-planting district of Cachar or
Kachar. They either gave its name to or perhaps derived their Hindu
soubriquet of Kachari from this district. Of this branch of the race
an interesting description will be found in the supplement to this
book. At the western extremity of the range of hills is another group,
the Garos, of whom an excellent account has lately been published by
Major A. Playfair, I.A. (London, David Nutt, 1909). The Garos are of
peculiar interest as members of the Bodo family, because they were
head-hunters within the memory of men still living.
Finally in the range of hills in the south of the Surma Valley,
there are the Tipperahs whose language is obviously a branch of
the ancient Bodo speech; quiet inoffensive people, ruled over by a
semi-independent Raja who is also a great land-owner in the British
districts of Tipperah and Sylhet.
Now, the anthropologists rightly caution us against rashly concluding
that a common speech, where races are in contact, implies a common
origin, since everywhere, and especially among people who use an
unwritten language, nothing is more common than the borrowing of a
neighbouring tongue. But where, as here, we have five absolutely
separate communities of semi-savage people, who nowadays are not
so much as aware of one another's existence, and yet speak what is
to all purposes the same language, it is plain that they must have
been united at no very distant date by some common social bond. The
date cannot have been very distant, because in the unwritten speech
of semi-savage people phonetic decay acts very rapidly, and a very
few years may serve to disguise the relationships of adjacent and
cognate tongues. No one who has heard members of the five branches of
the Bodo race speak their respective languages can fail to recognise
that they belong to the same linguistic group. Moreover, this common
Bodo speech was, till within a few years ago, the language of the
Koches, the dominant and ruling tribe in the great Koch kingdom,
which survived, with something of its ancient prestige and power,
long enough to be visited by an Englishman, Ralph Fitch, in Queen
Elizabeth's time. It would seem, then, that the language spoken
in the ancient Koch kingdom, which extended from the Himalayas to
the Bay of Bengal, was the Koch or Bodo language, and the mass of
the people must have been of Bodo origin. In the Brahmaputra valley
these Bodos have survived in the midst of Hindu and Shan invaders and
settlers, of whom those who are interested in the subject may read
in Mr. E. A. Gait's admirable History of Assam, (Calcutta, Thacker,
Spink and Co., 1906). Here the anthropologist may come to the rescue
of the historian. The Bodo type of face and physical construction is,
as Mr. Endle says, of an Indo-Chinese kind, easily distinguishable
from the Arya-Dravidian type common in adjacent Bengal, and careful
measurements in the Brahmaputra and Surma Valleys ought to show how far
the old Koch element still persists, how far it has been obliterated
by inter-marriage with Indian immigrants.
It may, however, be assumed that the population of the Koch kingdom,
and therefore of its predecessor, the famous classical empire of
Kama-rupa, of which Sanskrit scholars may read in the Mahabharata
(perhaps in a late interpolation in the epic) was chiefly Bodo, of
the same type as the humble folk who are the subject of Mr. Endle's
book. Kama-rupa was visited in the first half of the seventh century of
our era by the famous Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang, whose interesting
account of the land and people may be found at page 22 of Mr. Gait's
History. "They adore and sacrifice," says the Chinese explorer,
"to the Devas and have no faith in Buddha."
It was apparently in the kingdom of Kama-rupa that there came into
being that form of Hinduism whose scriptures are the later Puranas
and the Tantras, the worship of Siva and his Sakti, that form of the
Hindu cult which, to this day and even in the temple of Kali-ghat in
Calcutta itself, is distinguished by sacrifice by decapitation. In
the earlier times of British rule, as readers of Mr. Gait's book may
find for themselves, the Hindus of Assam were much addicted to human
sacrifice by beheading, and, to this day, the appropriate method of
propitiating the terrible goddess Kali, the "dark one" (who is also
Dur-ga, "hard of approach"), is by bloody sacrifices. The Saiva or
Sakta form of Hinduism would therefore seem to be due to an engrafting
of Koch superstitions on the purer and humaner religious ideas imported
into India by the Aryan settlers to whom we owe the Vedas and the
religious literature based on those early pastoral hymns. From this
point of view, it is important to bear in mind that the Garos were
till lately headhunters, and that the Chutiyas were conspicuous,
even in North-Eastern India, for their addiction to human sacrifices.
How does it happen then, it may be asked, that the Bodos described
in this book are among the most innocent and kindly of semi-savage
people? The answer seems to be that the bulk of the inhabitants of
North-Eastern India were always simple inoffensive folk, and that it
was only the ruling tribes and families that were addicted to war,
rapine, torture, cruelty, and the religious developments that go with
these. If Assam is undoubtedly still the home of the Tantrik beliefs
which have their centre at the famous shrine of Kamaksa at the old
capital of the Koch monarchs (now known as Gua-hati or Gauhati),
Assam is also the home of the Visnu-ite reform, an attractive and
learned account of which will be found in a paper by Sir Charles
N. E. Eliot, published in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society"
for October, 1910. The common people in Assam, the rustic Hindus of
the Brahmaputra Valley, are in temperament and habits very like the
cheerful and smiling Bodo folk among whom Mr. Endle laboured, and of
whom he writes with such frank regard and appreciation. The climate
of the valley is enervating and soft, and any traveller in Assam
can see for himself how the once fierce and warlike Ahom invaders,
who gave its name to the country of Assam, have become as soft and
kindly in disposition as the Kacháris themselves. No more remarkable
instance of the effect of environment on national temperament could
be found anywhere, and the anthropological theories of Dr. Ridgeway
could hardly have a more remarkable support than he might find by
contrasting the semi-savage inhabitants of the Brahmaputra Valley
with the bloodthirsty and warlike tribes in the surrounding mountains,
their neighbours and relatives.
I have only to say, finally, that I have added, as an Appendix to my
old friend's book, a literal interlinear translation of three stories
from my little Collection of Kachári Folk-tales. In adding these I have
followed the example set by Sir Charles Lyall in his monograph on the
Mikirs. By means of this interlinear and word-for-word translation,
the comparative linguist may see for himself how far Kachári is still
a monosyllabic agglutinative language, and how far it has borrowed
the inflectional mechanism of Assamese and Bengali. There has, of
course, been mutual borrowing, and I, for one, do not doubt that the
syntactical peculiarities of Assamese are largely due to the fact
that it is a speech with an Aryan vocabulary spoken by a people who
are largely non-Aryan. Any careful reader of the stories in this book
can see for himself that the Bodo spoken in the Kachári dwars is the
language of a biglot people. Their picturesque agglutinative verb is
plainly a survival of days when the language was as monosyllabic as
Chinese. But the general structure of the language is now governed
by inflections obviously borrowed from Bengali and Assamese.
J. D. Anderson.
Cambridge,
December, 1910.
THE KACHÁRIS
SECTION I
Characteristics, Physical and Moral; Origin, Distribution and Historic
Summary, etc.
[Characteristics.]
I. 1. The people generally known to us as "Kacháris" differ in some
material ways from their Hindu and Musulmán neighbours alike in
things material and moral. They are certainly not a tall or handsome
race, and in general appearance bear some resemblance to the Nepáli,
being as a rule shorter and stouter than the people of North-west
India, though well fitted to bear up against physical fatigue
and hardship. [Physical] In face and figure they show a distinct
approximation to what is known as the Mongolian type, i.e., they have
square set faces, projecting cheek-bones, with almond-shaped eyes,
and scanty beard and moustache, the last-mentioned being often wanting
altogether. In this way they are well fitted for all forms of outdoor
(field and factory) labour that require strength rather than skill,
and may very reasonably be regarded as the "navvies" of Assam.
[Mental.]
2. In mental and intellectual power they are undoubtedly far below
their Hindu neighbours; for they possess neither the quickness of
apprehension, nor the astonishing power of memory, &c., characteristic
of the higher castes among the Hindus. On the other hand, what they do
succeed in mastering, often with much toil and painful effort, they
digest and retain with much tenacity. Among other social and mental
features of character there are two which are seldom wanting to the
"Kachári": (1) he is an intensely clannish being. A fine imposed
on one member of a village community is sometimes paid by the whole
body of villagers together. When employed in any considerable numbers
on a tea factory, the Kachári labourers so employed, resenting some
real or fancied wrong done to one of their number, will often leave
the garden in a body, even though there may be a month's pay due to
every one of them. Again they have (2) no small share of that quality
so powerful for good or evil, according as it is guided into right or
wrong channels, i.e., a certain strength of will, "what their friends
might call firmness, and their enemies might term obstinacy." If they
once make up their minds, and they are abundantly capable of doing
this, to act in a certain way, it is mere waste of time to attempt to
reason them out of their resolution, for nothing short of absolute
and overpowering physical force is of any avail to turn them from
the course they have once for all resolved to adopt and act upon.
[Moral.]
3. As regards the moral character of the Kachári race, those who know
them best will be the first to speak favourably of them. Like many of
the Sub-Himalayan hill tribes, they undoubtedly have a certain weakness
for what may be looked upon as their national beverage (Madh, zu), a
form of rice-beer. Of this, in itself a comparatively harmless liquor
when taken in moderation, they at times consume very large quantities,
especially at weddings, funerals, and at the January and April Bihu
festivals; and more particularly at what is known as the "first eating
of the new rice" (Nowán bhát khoa; Mikham gadàn zánai), which usually
takes place about the middle of December or a little earlier. At this
last-mentioned gathering the writer has sometimes seen well-nigh the
entire population of a Kachári village hors de combat from the effect
of over-indulgence in the national beverage. But they are certainly
not habitual drunkards, and in this matter Kacháris as a rule would
compare not unfavourably with the working man in more civilised lands;
e.g., in England. But apart from this particular failing, one almost
universal among hill tribes on this frontier, it is pleasing to be
able to say that among them are to be found many simple virtues of
great price, i.e., honesty, truthfulness, straightforwardness and a
general trustworthiness deserving of all honour. In illustration of
their simple truthfulness, even when involving serious consequences
to themselves, the writer recalls a story told him some years
ago by an officer in charge of the subdivision of Mangaldai, the
late A. J. Primrose, I.C.S. A Kachári of Sekhár Mauza was brought
before this magistrate on a charge (manslaughter) involving a
very heavy penalty, when he without hesitation admitted his guilt,
though the evidence against him was of the slightest, or at least
utterly insufficient to secure a conviction. The relations of the
sexes too are on the whole of a very sound and wholesome character,
far more so probably than in many countries boasting of a higher
civilisation. Infant marriage is as yet unknown among them, and
so far as the present writer has been able to ascertain during
the past forty years, the young people are as a rule chaste before
marriage and true to their marriage vows in after-life. But it must
be clearly understood that all this holds good of the Kachári in his
simple, patriarchal, village life, and there only. His innocence is
the innocence of ignorance, not the innocence of experience: and he
is as a rule free from certain forms of evil because in his village
life he has never come under any temptation to indulge in them. When
contaminated by civilization, e.g., when brought into contact with
our civil and criminal courts, much of this innocence must inevitably
disappear; and of this sad deterioration of character any man who
has been long in the country, and learnt to know the people well,
must have experienced many melancholy and painful illustrations.
[Origin, &c.]
II. The origin of the Kachári race is still very largely a matter
of conjecture and inference, in the absence of anything entitled to
be regarded as authentic history. As remarked above, in feature and
general appearance they approximate very closely to the Mongolian type;
and this would seem to point to Tibet and China as the original home
of the race. The Garos, a race obviously near of kin to the Kacháris,
have a tradition that in the dim and distant past their forefathers,
i.e., nine headmen, the offspring of a Hindu fakir and a Tibetan woman,
came down from the northern mountains, and, after a halt at Koch-Behar,
made their way to Jogighopa, and thence across the Brahmaputra to
Dalgoma, and so finally into the Garo Hills. It is not easy to say
what degree of value is to be attached to this tradition, but it
does at least suggest a line of inquiry that might well be followed
up with advantage. [2]
It is possible that there were at least two great immigrations from
the north and north-east into the rich valley of the Brahmaputra,
i.e., one entering North-east Bengal and Western Assam through
the valley of the Tista, Dharla, Sankosh, &c., and founding there
what was formerly the powerful kingdom of Kamarupa; and the other
making its way through the Subansiri, Dibong and Dihong valleys
into Eastern Assam, where a branch of the widespread Kachári race,
known as Chutiyás, undoubtedly held sway for a lengthened period. The
capital quarters of this last-mentioned people (the Chutiyás) was
at or near the modern Sadiya, not far from which certain ruins of
much interest, including a copper-roofed temple (Támár ghar), are
still to be seen. It is indeed not at all unlikely that the people
known to us as Kacháris and to themselves as Bada (Bara), were in
earlier days the dominant race in Assam; and as such they would seem
to have left traces of this domination in the nomenclature of some
of the physical features of the country, e.g., the Kachári word for
water (di; doi) apparently forms the first syllable of the names of
many of the chief rivers of the province, such as Diputá, Dihong,
Dibong, Dibru, Dihing, Dimu, Desáng, Diku (cf. khu Tista), &c., and
to these may be added Dikrang, Diphu, Digáru, &c., all near Sadiya,
the earliest known centre of Chutiyá (Kachári) power and civilisation.
[Distribution.]
III. But however this may be, there would seem to be good reason
for believing that the Kachári (Bada) race is a much more widely
distributed one than it was at one time supposed to be. They are
undoubtedly found well outside the limits of modern (political) Assam,
i.e., in North-east Bengal Koch-Behar, &c., and also in Hill Tippera,
where the language of the people gives decisive evidence that they
are of the Bada stock. But apart from these outlying members of the
race, there are within the limits of Assam itself at least 1,000,000
souls, probably many more, who belong to the Kachári race; though
many of the number have of late years become more or less Hinduised,
and have lost the use of their mother tongue. These may perhaps be
conveniently divided into a (1) Northern and (2) a Southern group,
the Brahmaputra being taken roughly as the dividing line, thus:--
+------------------+--------------+---------------------------+
| | Approximate | |
| Name. | numbers. | Chief habitat. |
+------------------+--------------+---------------------------+
| |
| I. Northern Group. |
| |
|1. Bårå (Kachári) | 272,500 | Western Darrang, Kachári |
| | | Duars, and in North |
| | | Kamrup. |
|2. Rábhá (Totalá) | 31,370 | Golpara. |
|3. Mech (Mes) | 93,900 | Do. |
|4. Dhimal | (See Bryan | North-east Bengal. |
| | Hodgson) | |
|5. Koch | 10,300 | On Northern Frontier from |
| | | Jalpaiguri to North-west |
| | | Darrang. |
|6. Solanimiyas |15-18 families| Only in Mangaldai |
| | only | Subdivision. |
|7. Mahaliyas } | | Western Darrang. All |
| Phulgariyas } | | slightly Hinduised |
| Saraniyas } | | Kacháris. |
| |
| II. Southern Group. |
| |
|1. Di-má-sá | | |
| "big-water-folk" | 15,931 | North Cachar Hills. |
|2. Hojáis | 2,750 | Do. and Nowgong. |
|3. Lálungs | 40,160 | South-west Nowgong and |
| | | adjoining districts. |
|4. Garos | 150,000 | On Garo Hills and at foot |
| | | of same. |
|5. Haijongs | 8,766 | On plains adjoining |
| | | southern slope of the |
| | | Garo Hills. |
|6. Hill Tippera | | |
| (Tripura) people | 105,850 | Hill Tippera, &c. |
+------------------+--------------+---------------------------+
To these may be added one or two smaller communities, e.g., the Moráns
and the Chutiyás in Upper Assam, whose language, not altogether extinct
as yet though apparently dying out rapidly, would seem to prove them
to be closely akin to the Kachári (Bada) race.
[Historic Sketch.]
IV. The only branch of this widely spread race that may be said to
have anything like an authentic history is that settled in what is
known as the once powerful kingdom of Kamarupa (Koch), the reigning
family of which is now represented by the Rajas of Koch-Behar,
Bijni, Darrang (Mangaldai) and Beltola. But on the history of this
(the Western) section of the Kachári race there is no need to dwell,
as it was very effectively dealt with some few years ago. [3] But
the earliest historical notices of the Eastern branch of the race
show that under the name of Chutiyás they had established a powerful
kingdom in the Eastern corner of the Province, the seat of Government
being at or near the modern Sadiya. How long this kingdom existed
it is now impossible to say; but what is known with some degree of
certainty is, that they were engaged in a prolonged struggle with
the Ahoms, a section of the great Shan (Tai) race, who crossed the
Pátkoi Hills from the South and East about A.D. 1228, and at once
subdued the Moráns, Boráhis, and other Kachári tribes living near
the Northern slope of these hills. With the Chutiyás the strife would
seem to have been a long and bitter one, lasting for some 150 or 200
years. But in the end the victory remained with the Ahoms, who drove
their opponents to take refuge in or about Dimápur on the Dhansiri at
the foot of the Naga Hills. There for a time the fugitives were in
comparative security and they appear to have attained to a certain
measure of material civilisation, a state of things to which some
interesting remains of buildings (never as yet properly explored)
seem to bear direct and lasting witness. Eventually, however, their
ancient foes followed them up to their new capital, and about the
middle of the sixteenth century the Ahoms succeeded in capturing
and sacking Dimápur itself. The Kachári Raja thereupon removed his
court to Máibong ("much paddy"), where the dynasty would seem to
have maintained itself for some two centuries. Finally, however,
under pressure of an attack by the Jaintia Raja the Kachári sovereign
withdrew from Máibong to Kháspur in Kachar (circa 1750 A.D.). There
they seem to have come more and more under Hindu influence, until
about 1790 the Raja of that period, Krishna Chandra, and his brother
Govinda Chandra made a public profession of Brahminism. They were both
placed for a time inside the body of a large copper image of a cow,
and on emerging thence were declared by the Brahmins to be Hindus of
the Kshatriya caste, Bhima of Mahabharat fame being assigned to them
as a mythological ancestor. Hence to this day the Darrang Kacháris
sometimes speak of themselves as "Bhim-ni-fsa," i.e. children of Bhim,
though as a rule they seem to attach little or no value to this highly
imaginative ancestry.
The reign of the last Kachári king, Govind Chandra, was little better
than one continuous flight from place to place through the constant
attacks of the Burmese, who finally compelled the unhappy monarch
to take refuge in the adjoining British district of Sylhet. He was,
indeed, reinstated in power by the aid of the East India Company's
troops in 1826, but was murdered some four years later, when his
kingdom became part of the British dominions. His commander-in-chief,
one Tulá Rám, was allowed to remain in possession of a portion of
the subdivision now known as North Cachar, a region shown in old maps
of Assam as "Tula Ram Senapati's country." But on the death of this
chieftain in 1854, this remaining portion of the old Kachári Raj was
formally annexed to the district of Nowgong.
As regards this last-mentioned migration, i.e., from Maibong to Kháspur
about A.D. 1750, and the conversion to Hinduism which soon followed it,
it would seem that the movement was only a very limited and restricted
one, confined indeed very largely to the Raja and the members of his
court. The great majority of his people remained in the hill country,
where to this day they retain their language, religion, customs,
&c., to a great extent intact. It is not improbable, indeed, that
this statement may hold good of the earlier migrations also, i.e.,
those that resulted from the prolonged struggle between the Ahoms
and the Chutiyás. When as a result of that struggle the defeated race
withdrew first to Dimápur and afterwards to Máibong, it is not unlikely
that the great body of the Chutiyás (Kacháris) which remained in the
rich valley of Assam came to terms with their conquerors (the Ahoms)
and gradually became amalgamated with them, much as Saxons, Danes,
Normans, &c., slowly but surely became fused into one nationality in
the centuries following the battle of Hastings. In this way it may
well be that the Kachári race were the original autochthones of Assam,
and that even now, though largely Hinduised, they still form a large,
perhaps the main, constituent element in the permanent population of
the Province. To this day one often comes across villages bearing
the name of "Kachárigaon," the inhabitants of which are completely
Hinduised, though for some considerable time they would seem to have
retained their Kachári customs, &c., unimpaired. It may be that,
whilst the great body of the Chutiyá (Kachári) race submitted to their
Ahom conquerors, the stronger and more patriotic spirits among them,
influenced perhaps by that intense clannishness which is so marked a
feature in the Kachári character, withdrew to less favoured parts of
the Province, where their conquerors did not care at once to follow
them up; i.e., the Southern section of the race may have made its way
into the districts known as the Garo Hills and North Cachar; whilst
the Northern section perhaps took up its abode in a broad belt of
country at the foot of the Bhutan Hills, still known as the "Kachári
Duars," a region which, being virtually "Terai" land, had in earlier
days a very unenviable reputation on the score of its recognised
unhealthiness. And if this view of the matter be at all a sound one,
what is known to have happened in our own island may perhaps furnish
a somewhat interesting "historic parallel." When about the middle of
the fifth century the Romans finally withdrew from Britain, we know
that successive swarms of invaders, Jutes, Danes, Saxons, Angles,
&c., from the countries adjoining the North and Baltic seas, gradually
overran and occupied the richer lowland of what is now England, driving
all who remained alive of the aboriginal Britons to take refuge in
the less favoured parts of the country, i.e., the mountains of Wales
and the highlands of Scotland, where many of the people of this day
retain their ancient mother speech: very much as the Kacháris of
Assam still cling to their national customs, speech, religion, &c.,
in those outlying parts of the Province known in modern times as the
Garo Hills, North Cachar and the Kachári Duars of North-west Assam.
[Final Separation of Northern and Southern]
V. It may perhaps be asked how a people so clannish and united as the
Kacháris are well known to be, should ever become so widely separated
as the Western (Bara) and Southern (Dimásá) sections now undoubtedly
are. The separation would seem to be almost final and complete. The
writer, e.g., has often tried [Sections of the race.] to ascertain
if the Kacháris of the Northern Duars retained any tradition of ever
having been subject to the Raja of Dimápur; but up to the present time
no trace of any such tradition has come to light. Intermarriage between
the two sections of the race is apparently quite unknown; indeed, the
barrier of language would of itself probably go far to prevent such
intermarriage: for although the two languages have much in common,
yet in their modern form they differ from each other nearly as much
as Italian does from Spanish; and members of the two sections of the
race meeting each other for the first time would almost certainly fail
to understand each other's speech. Perhaps the following tradition,
[4] which apparently describes one of the closing scenes in the
prolonged struggle between the Chutiyá Kacháris and the Ahoms, may
go some way to account for the wide separation between the Northern
and Southern sections of the race. The story is as follows:--Long,
long ago the Dimásá fought against a very powerful tribe (the Ahoms),
and being beaten in a great pitched battle, the king with all his
forces retreated. But presently further retreat was barred by a wide
and deep river, which could in no way be crossed. The Raja, being thus
stopped by a river in front and an enemy behind, resolved to fight
once more the next day, unless the problem of crossing the river could
be solved. With this determination he went to sleep and had a dream
in which a god appeared to him and promised to help him. The god said
that early next morning the king with all his people must boldly enter
the river at a spot where he would see a heron standing in the water,
and walk straight across the river, but no one must look back. Next
morning a heron was found, sure enough, standing in the water near the
bank; and the king, remembering his dream, led his people to the spot
and went into the water, which they found had shoaled enough to form
a ford and allow them to wade across. In this way he crossed with a
great part of his people. But still all had not crossed. There were
some on the other bank and some in the middle of the river, when a
man among the latter wondering whether his son was following him,
looked back, with the result that the water at once got deep and
every one had to save himself as best he could; while the men on
the other bank, having no chance of crossing, dispersed. They who
were caught in the middle of the river had to swim for their lives,
and were washed down to different places. Some saved themselves by
catching hold of Khágris (rushes) growing on the bank, and are to this
day called Khágrábária. Others caught hold of nals (or reeds) and are
thus called Nalbárias. The Dimásá are the people who crossed in safety.
It is fairly obvious that the Oriental love for the grotesquely
marvellous has had no small share in the development of this tradition;
but whilst making all due allowance for this, the writer ventures to
think that the tradition itself is not altogether without a certain
historic value. It probably represents the closing scenes in the
protracted struggle for supremacy between the Ahoms and the Chutiyás
(Kacháris) when the latter, finally beaten, endeavoured to escape
their foes by crossing the Brahmaputra to the South bank, using for
that purpose whatever material was at hand, e.g., rude dug-out boats
(khel náu), extemporised rafts (bhel), &c. The student of Assam history
will remember that a like mishap befell Mir Jumla's expedition for
the conquest of Assam; Rangpur, Ghergaon, &c., when a violent storm
or sudden rise in the river carried away or sunk the boats containing
his ammunition and other stores, and he was compelled to come to terms
with the Ahom rulers. A sudden storm or rapid rise in the river may
have prevented many of the fugitives from crossing, and these would
perforce have fallen into the hands of the Ahoms. The latter, acting
on the principle "Divide et impera," may have forced their captives to
take up their abode in the unhealthy (Terai) country now known as the
"Kachári Duárs," and further may have prohibited any communication
between the two severed fragments of the conquered race, which would
thenceforth naturally drift further asunder, until the separation
became as complete as it remains to this day.