 Karbi culture by singing songs and taking me to attend pujas observed by the hill Karbis. Due to their publicity that after a long time, a good man had come to Hamren as S.D.O.( Civil) who was very sympathetic to them. One good thing I learnt from Bajong Phura who, one evening, on my request, came to my residence and sang the Karbi Ramayan or Sabi Alun which is the song of Sita. I tape-recorded the entire singing of the verses. Later on, at about 5 A.M. next day, we had a cup of tea and breakfast. Then Bajong Phura told me that he had not sung the Lanka Kanda part as it was believed that if the Lanka Kanda of Ramaya was sung, there would be quarrels in the village. With a mischievous smile,he said, “ I do not want Sir to quarrel with his wife.” Later on, I translated the Sabi Alun into English in verse and presented it before the august gathering in the Intertiol Ramaya Conference in Lucknow in 1986. When I sang the first stanza of Karbi Ramaya, : Obong Sabi mir lori..” reading out my verse, the scholars,both tiol and intertiol applauded it. It was Mamoni Roisom Goswami who, after seeing my article in Prantik invited me for presenting the tribal version of Ramaya. The Thai scholar who was present later met me and said, “ The story of creation of Kusa by the sage Valmiki by his mental powers when he found the child Laba not being present in spite of search is the same as the Thai version.” He gave me a book “Thai Ramaya” in English saying that Ayudha was situated in Thailand and there is a city med Lubpuri after Lab. The mes of a line of Thai kings were Rama. Hanuman was a funny character. I gave a copy of my translation in verse to him for his reference. Then coming back to Dispur, I translated the Thai Ramaya into Assamese in 1986 which is record of sorts as it is the first book on Thai version of Ramaya.
After some months, when the rainy season was over and winter set in, I called Bajong Phura and asked him, without reference to the incident of murder, why they were afraid of the child lifters and who lifted the children and why. What he told me saddened my heart at the level of ignorance of the hill tribes and their strong superstition in believing that the sacrifice of a child would make some tribes rich. He told that as the Karbi are living near the Jaintias and the Khasis who believed that they would get rich if they appease the Serpent god by offering blood of a child on a platter which would be taken by a serpent. The Karbis have no such superstition. But, in the past during the rule of the Jaintia kings and Khasi Siems, they were to fall an easy prey to the child lifters. Then I started reading about the Serpent god belief amongst the Jaintias and the Khasis. It was found that they believed that U Thlen, believed to be a huge ske required appeasement by human sacrifice. To get rid of the ske god reared by the keeper, the householders used to throw their money, orments and valuables so that the ske god (thlen) did not enter into their houses. The ske-keeper used to collect all these and get rich. No other person could collect any such money or valuables. The keepers of ske gods increased in order to get rich. Such ske-keepers would lift children so that they could offer blood to the ske on a platter by cutting their fingers.
The Karbis, who were, for some time, domited by the Jantia kings used to fall an easy prey to the child lifters ( Phrangkodang) as there are Karbi people living near the Jaintia hills. There were several fights against the Jaintias by the Karbi Recho ( Karbi King) and one Karbi hero whose me is enshrined in the hearts of the Karbis was Thong Nokbey who was so courageous that he defeated the Jaintias. Many big stones lying here and there in the Hamren sub-division were said to be lifted by Thong Nokbey who was a great Karbi hero.
The S.P. of the district, who came with the D.C. Karbi Anglong to enquire into the case suspected the cause of killing the labourers to be a suspected case of sodomy. In course of enquiry, it transpired that it was a 12 year old Garo boy, the son of a Chowkidar of the PWD Office, Hamren who being frightened informed the boys of the school that some labourers of Agricultural Farm were luring him to go with them by offering him some sweets to him in the tea stall near the PWD office and the Agriculture farm. He reported excitedly to his fellow students in the School that he was about to be lifted by them for sacrifice. He escaped their clutch by refusing to take sweets and running away. Although the S.P. suspected it to be a case of sodomy, I was uble to accept it. By this time, I came to learn that the fear of lifting of a child by the Serpent worshippers for getting rich is ingrained in the psyche of the Karbi people. In the past, they suffered at the hands of such child-lifters so much that the Council of Elders headed by the local King ( Karbi Recho) and his counsellors ordained that the child lifters should be punished by death. So when the local Headman ( Habai in Karbi) was consulted, he along with some elders decided that the child lifters be punished with death. So the labourers were stoned to death. I was surprised that such a cruel thing like killing a child for wealth by worshiping the serpent god was there in the ancient time and the fear was ingrained in the minds of the Karbis still now although no such thing took place and the Jaintias and the Khasis who were mostly Christian do not.
This laid the foundation of my research on the Karbis of the hills. I found that the hill Karbi is peace-loving people and during my four years of stay in Karbi Anglong, not a case of theft or robbery was reported. They are strongly patriarchal and only the male members inherit the lands and properties. They prefer MBD (Mother’s brother’s daughter) type of marriage and never allow FSD (father’s sister’s daughter) and being strongly exogamous prohibit marriage in the same clan. In Hamren subdivision, it was seen that the traditiol Local Council used to enforce the social rule of exogamy very strictly. The couple was compelled to separate and the girl was married to a young man of a different clan. One old gentleman confided in me saying that in the ancient time, the couple which did not obey the orders of the traditiol council was called to the community fishing and the man and the woman were speared to death. He added that such killings did not take place now-a-days and the couple was separated from each other even forcibly. Although the preferred marriage of the son of a family is with the materl uncle’s daughter, the family may pay fine to the materl uncle if some other girl is chosen by the son or by the family for him. There is an interesting system of apprenticeship for one year for the would be bridegroom to test his capacity for running a family and doing the jhum( slash & burn) cultivation.
Strange is the way they look at life. While rains during the marriage ceremony in the plains are a good omen, it is a very bad omen for the Karbis. They even postpone the ceremony if rains fall on that day. Their belief that they are reborn in the same clan is so strong that a Karbi gentleman who took me to his village pointed out to me a bamboo groove proudly saying that it was planted by him. When I told him that the bamboo grove is very old, he promptly replied that it was planted by him in his earlier birth in the said village. He explained that he was the re-incartion of his grandfather Hemari Ronghang as it was found out during his ming ceremony that he, as a child stopped crying when the me Hemari was called out from the list of his forefathers. I enjoyed my stay there so much that I studied both Karbi and Lalung the tribes.
The only duty all the Magistrates loved was to go out to the headquarters of the Development blocks fixing dates for renewal of gun-licenses. I fully enjoyed such outings as I could visit the interior villages to see for myself the way of life of the aborigil people. The day fixed for renewal of gun licenses of the villagers always was a festive day for all. The villages of different villages belonging to various tribes came to the place notified donning their colourful dresses with great joy and enthusiasm. Even the womenfolk used to come carrying food for their men-folk. All the adult male members of the hills love to possess a gun especially for hunting. So the only request made by them was to issue gun licenses to buy single barrel or double barrel guns. There are tigers, deer and other games like birds of all hue and colour that they want to kill. The Karbis have the tural fear for tigers as they think that if a person is killed by a tiger, his me is totally deleted from the list of