606 Notes on Northern Cachar. [No. 7. 



courts, paying revenue regularly, and working hard at their vocation 

 as cultivators. They rear rice and cotton in abundance, disposing of 

 the latter to Cossiahs and to merchants who come up the Dyung. 



When not employed in agriculture they fell large trees, construct 

 canoes, and float them down to market in Assam, realizing consider- 

 able profit by this manufacture. The labour of their cultivation is 

 greater than that of the other tribes, as bamboo jungle is scarce in 

 their locality, and they are necessitated to clear forest land. 



The Meekirs build their homes on high muchans or platforms, sup- 

 ported on posts, several feet from the ground. One timber laid 

 slanting against the platform, with notches cut upon it, serves as a 

 ladder to enter the house ; this may be withdrawn at pleasure, as a 

 guard against wild beasts. The houses are generally very large, several 

 families at times living in the same tenement in order to avoid 

 payment of the house-tax. The house, however many may be living 

 in it, is not divided into rooms, but men, women and children of 

 different families to the number of thirty or forty sleep altogether in 

 the same apartment, in a state of almost entire nudity. 



The Meekirs have no regular religion, many of them, especially 

 those in Assam, have been converted to Hinduism, but they are allow- 

 ed by their priests to retain most of their former superstitions and 

 customs, and are only enjoined to discard the use of spirits, in lieu 

 of which they take to the much more demoralizing vice of eating 

 opium. The unconverted Meekirs delight in grog, and take it to 

 excess, most of their ceremonies being celebrated by drunken orgies. 

 But they are peaceful in their cups, and disturbances seldom or never 

 occur. The Meekirs eat pigs and goats as well as fowls, and in fact 

 all animals, but they refrain from killing the cow, more from 

 prudential than religious motives. They worship the sun and moon, 

 and large rocks and trees in the forest, which they consider the 

 abiding places of unknown and invisible deities, to whom they offer 

 boiled rice, fowls, goats, and pigs as sacrifices. There is no re- 

 ligious ceremony connected with marriage among this tribe. A 

 bargain is made and a contract entered into, and man and woman 

 are husband and wife. Polygamy is discountenanced though practis- 

 ed. A feast is always given in commemoration of a marriage, and 

 likewise on the birth of a child. 



