f the State is a woman, who combines
in her person sacerdotal and regal functions (p. 70).

The Khasi language, so far as known, is the only member of the
Mon-Khmer family which possesses a grammatical gender, distinguishing
all nouns as masculine and feminine; and here also the feminine
nouns immensely preponderate (p. 206). The pronouns of the second
(me, pha) and third person (u, ka) have separate forms for the sexes
in the singular, but in the plural only one is used (phi, ki), and
this is the plural form of the feminine singular.

It may perhaps be ascribed to the pre-eminence accorded by the
Khasis to the female sex that successive censuses have shown that the
women of this race considerably exceed the men in number. According
to the census of 1901, there are 1,118 females to every 1,000 male
Khasis. This excess, however, is surpassed by that of the Lushais,
1,191 to 1,000, and it may possibly be due to the greater risks to life
encountered by the men, who venture far into the plains as traders and
porters, while the women stay at home. Habits of intemperance, which
are confined to the male sex, may also explain a greater mortality
among them.

It would be interesting to investigate the effect on reproduction
of the system of matriarchy which governs Khasi family life. The
increase of the race is very slow. In the census of 1891 there were
enumerated only 117 children under 5 to every hundred married women
between 15 and 40, and in 1901 this number fell to 108. It has been
suggested that the independence of the wife, and the facilities which
exist for divorce, lead to restrictions upon child-bearing, and thus
keep the population stationary. The question might with advantage be
examined at the census of 1911.

The next characteristic of the Khasis which marks them out for special
notice is their method of divination for ascertaining the causes of
misfortune and the remedies to be applied. All forms of animistic
religion make it their chief business to avert the wrath of the
gods, to which calamities of all kinds--sickness, storm, murrain,
loss of harvest--are ascribed, by some kind of propitiation; and in
this the Khasis are not singular. But it is somewhat surprising to
find among them the identical method of _extispicium_ which was in use
among the Romans, as well as an analogous development in the shape of
egg-breaking, fully described by Major Gurdon (p. 221), which seems
to have been known to diviners in