428 On the Meris and Abors of Assam. QNo 162. 



have a very scanty supply of it, and gladly take our salt from the Meris 

 when they can get it. I presume it to be an importation : what they ex- 

 port in return I know not, but most likely cotton and munjeet. Be- 

 tween the Duphla and Meris countries there is a tribe called " Auks" 

 and " Auka Meris" by the Assamese, who never visit the plains, but yet 

 appear, from all I have been able to glean regarding them, very superior 

 to the tribes of this family we are acquainted with. Surrounded by lofty 

 mountains, the country they inhabit is an extensive valley, represented 

 as being perfectly level, and watered by a branch or perhaps the principal 

 stream of the Soondree, and richly cultivated. They are said to possess 

 fifteen large villages, the cultivation of one adjoining that of the other, 

 so that there is no waste land between. Their chief cultivation and sole 

 staple appears to be rice, to rear which they irrigate the land, and are 

 said to have magnificent crops in return. Their lands are not, I am told, 

 adapted to the cultivation of cotton, but they procure as much of it as 

 they require from the Abors in exchange for rice. In industry and art 

 they are acknowledged by the Meris to be very much their superiors, 

 who however, perhaps for this very reason, look upon the Aukas as their 

 inferiors in the scale of creation. The Auka ladies wear blue or black 

 petticoats, and jackets of white cotton of their own manufacture : their 

 faces are tatooed " unde nomen" Auka, which is given to them by the 

 Assamese. They call themselves " Tenae." The males do not rejoice 

 in much drapery ; they wear a girdle of cane-work painted red, which 

 hangs down behind in a long bushy tail I am told, and must have a 

 comical effect. Of their religion all I have heard is, that every fourth 

 year there is a kind of religious jubilee devoted to sacrificing and feast- 

 ing at the different villages by turns ; and on these occasions, some one 

 officiates as priest : other particulars in which they differ from the Meris 

 have been related to me. The Meris, however extensive the family 

 and the number of married couples it includes, all occupy one house. 

 The young men of the Tenae tribe when they marry leave their 

 fathers' house, and set up for themselves. During the Moamorya troubles 

 many of the Assamese of this division are said to have sought and 

 found in the Tenae valley a refuge from the persecutions of that sect, 

 the refugees appear to have been generously treated, and no obstacles 

 were opposed to their return to their own country when the dangers that 

 threatened them were removed ; but I have sometimes heard that a few 



