great flood, the legend runs, that the Khasi lost
the art of writing, the Khasi losing his book whilst he was swimming
at the time of this flood, whereas the Bengali managed to preserve
his. Owing to the Khasis having possessed no written character before
the advent of the Welsh missionaries there are no histories as is the
case with the Ahoms of the Assam Valley, and therefore no record of
their journeys. Mr. Shadwell, the oldest living authority we have on
the Khasis, and one who has been in close touch with the people for
more than half a century, mentions a tradition amongst them that they
originally came into Assam from Burma via the Patkoi range, having
followed the route of one of the Burmese invasions. Mr. Shadwell has
heard them mention the name Patkoi as a hill they met with on their
journey. All this sort of thing is, however, inexpressibly vague. In
the chapter dealing with "Affinities" have been given some reasons for
supposing that the Khasis and other tribes of the Mon-Anam family,
originally occupied a large portion of the Indian continent. Where
the actual cradle of the Mon-Anam race was, is as impossible to
state, as it is to fix upon the exact tract of country from which
the Aryans sprang. With reference to the Khasi branch of the Mon-Anam
family, it would seem reasonable to suppose that if they are not the
autochthons of a portion of the hills on the southern bank of the
Brahmaputra, and if they migrated to Assam from some other country,
it is not unlikely that they followed the direction of the different
irruptions of foreign peoples into Assam of which we have authentic
data, i.e. from south-east to north-west, as was the case with the
Ahom invaders of Assam who invaded Assam from their settlements in the
Shan States via the Patkoi range, the different Burmese invasions,
the movements of the Khamtis and, again, the Singphos, from the
country to the east of the Hukong Valley. Whether the first cousins
of the Khasis, the Mons, moved to their present abode from China,
whether they are the aborigines of the portion of Burma they at
present occupy, or were one of the races "of Turanian origin" who,
as Forbes thinks, originally occupied the valley of the Ganges before
the Aryan invasion, must be left to others more qualified than myself
to determine. Further, it is difficult to clear up the mystery of
the survival, in an isolated position, of people like the Ho-Mundas,
whose language and certain customs e