MONG THE KHASIS

There are, perhaps, no people among whom the family in the full
maternal form can be studied with more advantage than the Khasi Hill
tribes, in the north-east of India. This race has a special interest
as a people who, in modern times, have preserved their independence
and their ancestral customs through many centuries. We find
mother-descent strictly practised, combined with great and even
extraordinary rights on the part of the women. The isolation of the
Khasis may account for this conservatism, but, as will appear later,
there are other causes to explain the freedom and power of the Khasi
women. We are fortunate in having a fuller knowledge of the Khasi
tribes, than is common of many primitive peoples. Their institutions
and interesting domestic customs have been carefully noted by
ethnologists and travellers, and in all accounts there is united
testimony to the high status of the women. I will quote a statement of
Sir Charles Lyell,[73] which affirms this fact very strongly--

[73] In an Introduction to _The Khasis_, by P. R. Gurdon.
This work, written by one who had a long and intimate
knowledge of the Khasi tribes, gives an admirable account of
the people, their institutions and domestic life. See also
Sir J. Hooker, _Himalayan Journal_, Vol. II, pp. 273 _et
seq._; Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_; and a
series of papers by J. R. Logan, in the _Journal of the
Indian Archipelago_, 1850-1857. Mr. Frazer (_The Golden
Bough_, Part IV, _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, p. 387) gives a
short account of the Khasis; also McGee in the article _The
Beginning of Marriage_ already quoted.

"Their social organisation presents one of the most perfect
examples still surviving of matriarchal institutions carried
out with a logic and a thoroughness which, to those
accustomed to regard the status and authority of the father
as the foundation of society, are exceedingly remarkable.
Not only is the mother the head and source and only bond of
union of the family, in the most primitive part of the
hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of real
property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted.
The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to
their mother's clan; what he earns goes to his own
matriarchal stock, and at his death his bones are deposited
in the cromlech of his m