Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/109

 MISHMIS (ASSAM).

ISHMI is the name of a tribe of apparently Chinese or Indo-Chinese stock, who inhabit the hills above the rapids of the Brahmaputra. They are a small, active, hardy race, with the Tartar cast of features; excessively unclean hi then habits, with an indifferent reputation for honesty. Like other hill people they have a prodigious muscular development of the lower limbs. They are divided into three principal sections, called respectively, Indi, Taron or Digars, and Maiyi or Mene.

Their language, which is of monosyllabic or Chinese character, is unwritten; distinguished by very peculiar tones, and some of the consonants extremely difficult of enunciation.

Their dress, which is of the scantiest description, is chiefly of cotton of then own manufacture. The men wear a jacket and an apology for a dhoti. The women are more decently attired; they wear a profusion of ornaments, especially heavy strings of beads.

A Mishmi house is thus described: they are thatched with leaves, and are generally of great length, which, however, varies with the rank of the possessor.

"Khasha's house is certainly 160 feet in length; it is divided into twenty apartments, all of which open into a passage, generally, it would appear, on the right side of the house as one enters, along which the skulls and jawbones of the various cattle killed during the possessors lifetime are arranged. In each apartment there is a square fire-place, consisting merely of earth, about which the bamboos are cut away. As no exit for the smoke is allowed, the air of the interior is dense and oppressive." The object of keeping these skulls is as a record of hospitality: he who has the best stocked Golgotha is looked on as the man of greatest wealth and liberality, and, when he dies, the whole smoke-dried collection is piled on his grave as a monument of his riches and a memorial of his worth. The grain is kept in small granaries away from their houses; and. as they tolerate polygamy, it is provided, to prevent quarrels, that each wife shall have her distinct granary.