Origin and History
The origin of the Khasis has not been satisfactorily explained by the historians. The Khasi language is classified as part of the Austroasiatic language family; Peter Wilhelm Schmidt believed that the Khasi people are related to the Mon-Khmer people.
The Khasi mythology traces the tribe's original abode to Hynniewtrep ("seven huts"). According to the Khasi mythology, "U Blei" (the Creator God) had originally distributed the human beings to 17 heavenly huts (Khad Hynniew Trep). The residents of seven of these households were allowed to descend on the Earth with the help of a ladder resting on the Sohpetbneng peak (located in the present-day Ri-Bhoi district).
The Khasis first came in contact with the British in 1823, after the latter captured Assam. The area inhabitated by the Khasis became a part of the Assam province, after the small Khasi Hill States entered into a subsidiary alliance with the British.
Read more about this topic: Khasi People
Famous quotes containing the words origin and/or history:
“There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)