Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 1.djvu/137

 KACHAEIS OF ASSAM.

HE Kacharis of Assam (not to be confounded with the people of Cachar) are originally of Tamulian (not, as generally supposed, of Arian) race. Hodgson, a high authority in these matters, considers them "demonstrably identical with the Bodo;" indeed they call themselves Bodo. They are a very numerous race, and occupy a large proportion of Central and Lower Assam, outside the forest limits, besides inhabiting the forests from the Sunna river through the Bhootan and Sikliim Terai, up to the Konki.

They may, in fact, be said to extend from the 25° to 27° N. lat. and from 88° to 93° 30' E. long. They are erratic cultivators of the wilds; though no longer savages or herdsmen, but wholly cultivators, they are so little connected with any one spot, that then language contains no word for village. They never cultivate the same land beyond the second year, nor remain in the same neighbourhood after the fourth or fifth year. After four or five years, to allow the jungle to grow and the land to resume its former high productiveness, they return, unless forestalled by others, and resume the identical fields they tilled before, but never the houses or site of the old settlement, that being thought unlucky. In our own territory they are very lightly taxed for the lower lands, and are gradually settling down. Those who inhabit the territories of native states retain their migratory habits, but pay a trifling tax for the privilege of cultivating lands from which malaria effectually excludes all other races. They share in the marvellous freedom from the effects of malaria which characterises nearly all the Tamulian aborigines of India, as the Coles, the Bheels. and the Guilds, who are all fine and healthy races of men, though dwelling where no other human beings can exist—a fact, by the way. which shows that they must have lived in these wilds for many centuries, as nothing but a very great length of time could have so completely acclimatized them.

Their religion is of the simplest kind, and while it is entirely free from barbarous rites, does not hamper the transactions of life with tedious ceremonial observances. The Kaehari (or Bodo) "is born, is named, is weaned, is invested with the toga virilis, without any intervention of the priest, who is summoned to marriages and funerals, chiefly, if not solely, to perform the preliminary sacrifice, which is