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Meghalaya With The Khasis
Portraying India
The Khasi are the hill people of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, spread across plateaus and slopes that now form eastern Meghalaya, making them the state’s largest ethnic group. “Khasi” serves as a collective name for several closely related groups – Khynriam, Pnar (Synteng), War, Bhoi, Lyngngam – who share language and customs. The term comes from the Austroasiatic word “khasi,” meaning “hills.” Linguistically, they have similarities to the Mon-Khmer dialect of the Austroasiatic family, linking them to groups in Southeast Asia.
In local and oral traditions, the Khasi define themselves as Ki Hynniew Trep (“children of the seven huts”). The tale goes begins in heaven where sixteen families were created, of which seven were sent to earth to care for it. A golden tree grew at Sohpet Bneng – the navel of heaven – connecting sky and soil like a ladder they could climb freely. There were three simple rules: know God and other people, stay close to your kin, and earn your keep honestly. When human greed led to the cutting of the celestial tree, the seven families were left stranded on earth. This narrative can be heard in songs at festivals, in speeches by revival groups like Seng Khasi, in debates about land and identity.
Other stories recall a great flood in Sylhet plains that drove them uphill, where they lost their writing but kept oral memory alive. Historical records, including Hamlet Bareh and Seng Khasi’s 1967 work, trace early Khasi groups moving through the Patkai hills before settling in the Khasi Jaintia highlands. Megaliths in Assam echo this path. Their villages sit in a landscape of ridges, valleys, and small market towns, where oral stories and origin myths still play a major role in how they see themselves as one people in a rapidly modernising state.
The community follows a matrilineal system. This is not to be confused with matriarchal society. The elderly tell of a time when they were once patrilineal, however, a devastating war took their land and with it the Khasi men who were warriors (soldiers). To keep their identity alive for the children left behind, the ancestors decided surnames would pass through mothers instead. Women keep their clan name after marriage, and men traditionally move to the wife’s household, at least until the birth of the first child. The ancestral house and key family property usually pass to the youngest daughter. However, with the introduction of Christianity (mid 19th century), it influenced these marriage practices to some extent.
In whistling Kongthong village, this bond sings out. Mothers give their child musical names – a unique lullaby born from hill streams or bird songs. Mothers hoot it across valleys to call her child home from play or fields. They keep an official name on paper, but at home, everyone uses the tune. Hoots echo soft through the trees, carrying farther than shouts as whistling is considered a bad luck here which might wake forest spirits.
“I will go to ri Sohra to be among the hills,
The land of u tiew sohkhah and u tiew pawang lum;
The land of ka sim pieng, the land of u kaitor,
The land of valour, the land of culture.”
Ri: country
Sohra: Cherrapunji
U tiew sohkha and u tiew pawang lum: orchids
Ka sim pieng and u kaitor: songbirds
For the Khasis, land and forests have always been sacred. Land here belongs to everyone. The village council, called the darbar, distributes it for a small fee and settles disputes at the local level. Family arguments, land disagreements, all of it gets resolved through values of dignity, honesty, truth, and justice. Certain patches of forest are set aside as sacred groves, owned collectively and protected for rituals and cultural practices. Villagers refrain from cutting trees, plucking fruits, or hunting here. At the same time, wet rice cultivation has been practiced in valley bottoms and on terraced hillsides to meet food needs. The monsoons are heavy and the land is steep, so Khasi farmers learned to balance two systems. They practiced shifting cultivation on the hills, moving between plots and letting fields rest to recover. In the lowlands where water was reliable and slopes gentler, they built permanent rice terraces.
Fields are farmed for a few seasons, then left fallow so the soil can regenerate. When given enough time to rest, this method keeps the land fertile and supports a wide range of plants and animals. The sacred groves play their part too. They protect medicinal plants and wildlife, acting as natural reserves held in place by customary law. Community forests provide bamboo and timber for building and craft.
This same ecological thinking shows up in the living root bridges, called jingkieng jri. Instead of cutting wood, Khasi communities guide the aerial roots of rubber fig trees across streams using bamboo scaffolding. The roots grow slowly, thickening over years until they form bridges strong enough to carry people and goods. These bridges stay alive, part of the forest itself, growing stronger with time.
Meghalaya, the wettest place on Earth, is defined by verdant hills, larger than life waterfalls, and its distinct root bridges. Here, the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo hills invite some of the heaviest monsoon rains in the world. Its cultural life is closely tied to land and community practice. Matrilineal inheritance, protected sacred groves, and village-based land management remain visible parts of social organisation. In Shillong, local markets carry music and crafts forward, while in the southern Khasi hills, living root bridges reflect indigenous environmental knowledge. The state reveals itself most clearly through its communities, terrain, and long-held systems of living with the landscape.
At Tushita, we marvel at India with you. After 45 years of travelling the country, we’re still enamoured by its beauty every day. From Ladakh, where Tushita was anointed by a Buddhist monk in 1977, to Tamil Nadu, where we worked with locals to showcase one of the oldest cultures in the world, we are partners in your journey to discover our part of the world.
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