602 Notes on Northern CacJiar. [No. 7 . 



The Nagas and other neighboring tribes hold them in great respect, 

 owing to trials of strength in former days, when the Cacharees 

 revenged themselves on the Nagas and took fearful retribution for 

 injury done. In no case moreover, except one, have the Angami 

 Nagas, who make fearful ravages into North Cachar and deal whole- 

 sale slaughter among the Meekirs and Nagas of the country, attacked 

 a Cacharee village. And it is odd to remark, that this village of 

 Cacharees, Semkur, is generally considered as an out-caste com- 

 munity, and is more assimilated to the Naga, than the Cacharee, 

 many of the customs of the Semkur Cacharees being the same as 

 those of the Nagas, and unpractised by Cacharees in general. This 

 difference is supposed to arise from certain privileges, enjoyed by 

 the Semkur people, under their old rulers, in connexion with the salt 

 wells in the neighbourhood of their village. Their revenue being 

 paid in salt, and their time chiefly occupied in manufacturing it, a 

 difference of pursuits left the Semkur Cacharees much to themselves, 

 and enabled them to enjoy less community with the others ; thus 

 they became less influenced by the general voice of the people and 

 by popular fashion, as to changes in manners and customs, and, I 

 think, we see in the Semkur Cacharees of to-day what the whole 

 clan must have been many years back, and the similarity of this one 

 village to the Nagas in many respects leads us to believe that the 

 whole clan of Cacharees must have come originally from the Naga 

 stock. Indeed some people go as far as to say that the Purbuttia 

 Cacharees were coerced by the old Eajahs of Cachar, into their present 

 state of civilization, having been formerly Nagas, and that they were 

 forced to adopt " dhoties" and the Hindu religion. How far this 

 may be true I have no warrant for saying. 



In religion the hill Cacharees are Hindus, but even more unorthodox 

 than the Hazai, and retaining many more superstitions of their old 

 faith, many of their observances being similar to those of the Nagas. 

 They have not any castes among them, neither have they the dis- 

 tinctive title common to the Hazais. They look down upon their 

 brethren of the plains, as weak and effeminate ; and these latter do not 

 fail to grind them when placed in power, and able to do so with 

 impunity. Each family lives in a separate house, communities being 

 formed into villages of between twenty and one hundred houses. The 



