704 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



this extensive region, and have written descriptions of its inhabitants. Travellers who 

 have approached the hills from the side of India have applied to the places and people such 

 names as the natives of Bengal have been in the habit of using, whilst those who have 

 entered from the Burmese frontier have employed Burmese names to designate the 

 same tribes and localities. As regards the Hillmen themselves, as they usually neither 

 recognise nor pay allegiance to any central authority, they do not apparently possess race 

 or tribal names, but call themselves after the village, or group of villages, in which they 

 live ; or after the petty chief who for the time being exercises authority over them. 

 In some villages no chief appears to be recognised, and the government is a democracy 

 in which all the men are on an equality. The want of a common tribal name is also 

 accentuated by the fact that in adjoining hill ranges the language in use possesses such 

 dialectic differences that the words employed are often mutually unintelligible — a con- 

 dition which is probably due to the state of constant feud in which the people live, so 

 that they have had but little intercommunication with each other, except as enemies. 



The name by which the Hillmen on the north-east frontier first became known to 

 Europeans was that of Kookie, which is a Bengalee word for highlander, and is also 

 written Kuki or Cuci. As Kookie it appears in a letter addressed in 1777 by the 

 Chief of Chittagong to Warren Hastings.* In 1778 the Honourable Robert Lindsay, 

 who was Collector at Sythet, speaks of the hill people as Kukis.t He describes them as 

 living more in the style of the brute creation than other savages that he had seen. 

 Their habitations were on spreading trees to defend them from beasts of prey ; their 

 food was wild honey and the fruits of the forest. The form Ciicl was used by Mr John 

 Rawlins J in 1790 in his description of the mountaineers of Tipra (Tipperah), to the east 

 of Bengal, and it was also employed by Mr J. Rennel in 1800 to designate the same 

 people. § 



Mr John Macrae, surgeon at Chittagong, writing in 1801, || states that the Kookies 

 or Lunctas, who live in the mountains north-east of Chittagong, are active mountaineers, 

 but not tall. The face, he says, is like that of eastern Asiatics, broad and round ; the 

 nose is flat, the eye small. The men go naked, hence the term Luncta, though the chiefs 

 wear a black loin cloth, and the women an apron. The chiefs bring the hair forward 

 and tie it in a bunch to overshade the forehead, whilst the other Kookies wear it loose 

 over the shoulders. 



Colonel Lewin, who acted for many years as Deputy Commissioner in the Chitta- 

 gong district, and who also accompanied the Lushai Expedition of 1871-72, uses the term 

 Lhoosai or Lushai as equivalent to Kookie, and states that it is derived from " Lu, 

 signifying head, and " sha," to cut, from the practice of decapitating their enemies. In 



* Quoted in the Report on the Hill Tracts of Chittagong, by Deputy Coimnissioner T. H. Lewin. Calcutta, 1869. 



t The Thackerays in India, by Sir W. W. Hunter. London, 1897. 



+ Asiatic Researches, 1790, vol. ii. p. 187. 



£ Quoted in Deputy Commissioner Lewin's Report, p. 109. 



|| Asiatic Researches, 1801, vol. vii. p. 183. 



