[ INTRODUCTION ]

Ki Hynniew Trep were the original settlers of KG Ri Hynniew Trep, known since the advent of the British as the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. Prior to its occupation by the British, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, this country extended towards the Brahrnaputra on the north, the Cachar Hills on the east, the Surma on the south and the Garo Hills on the west. The people called now the Khasis or Khyriams, Jaintias or Pnars or Syntengs, War, Bhois and Lyngngams according to the region they inhabit are ethnically one and the same, being the descendants of Ki Hynniew Trep. In fact, they refer to themselves, always as Ki Pateng Ki Hynniew Trep (the Descendants of Ki Hynniew Trep) or simply Ki Hynniew Trep and do so invariably and religiously in prayers and worship. The people generally known as the Khasis inhabit the Khasi Hills, and those known as the Jaintias (Pnars or Syntengs ), the part of it called Jaintia Hills. The Wars inhabit the Southern belt of the slopes to the valleys of the Surma; the Bhois and Lynngams inhabit the northern lower hills extending towards the Brahmaputra Valley. During the British regime they were on the whole called Khasis and Jaintias and after Independence, Khasi-Jaintias or Khasi-Pnars. They also generally refer to themselves likewise in ordinary talk and conversation. On all matters of na- tional importance or whenever there is a cause to fight unitedly, however, they take the name of Ki Hynniel Trep.

Ki Zvnniew Trep literally means The Seven Huts. According to a popular legend of Khasi-Pnars there was a time when all sixteen families, dwelt in heaven. People used to descend daily by the jingkieng ksiar (which literally means the' golden. ladaer ' but is actually meant to refer to a celestial pathway connecting heaven and earth) to come down to the earth  and cultivate. This continued until one day it was irretrievably destroyed. The seven families or Seven Huts who were on earth thus remained here forever and from them the race multiplied. This legend has been observed by anthropologists as having an interesting connection with a popular legend of the Mon Khmer people of Cambodia. It refers to fourteen boats of people setting out and seven disappearing mysteriously forever. All ancient cultures refer to a period of 'The Great Flood' .For e.g. the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern region have their reference to Noah's Ark. The Khasi-Pnars believe that they lost their script in this Flood.

Arthropolcgists do believe that the Khasis are the remnants of the first Mongolian overflow from the traditional cradle of the Indo-Chinese race and that they established themselves in their present habitat at a very remote period. Their language is the only surviving dialect of the Mon Khmer group of languages. There is a distinct similarity between the Khasi language and the Mon Khmer-Palaung dialects prevailing in Burma and Indo-China. Racially, the Khasis are very akin to the Indo-Chinese tribes but are by no means pure Mongoloid. At some early period they must have intermarried with another race predominantly the Austric race. Intermarriage with people of Aryan descent is a recent phenomenon. The earliest written literary reference to the Khasis is to be found in Sankardeva's Assamese paraphrase of Bhagavata Purana composed around A.D. 1500. However, in various San- skrit sources notably the chronicle of Kashmir i.e. Rajatarangini, reference is made to a hill people called .he Khasis. Those people dwelt chiefly in the mountains of Southern Kashmir where the descendants are to be found to this day. Khasis also are found in Gilgit, Chitral, Kumaon, Garhwal and also Doti district to Nepal. There are striking resemblances and similarities in some of the jewellery of the Khasas and the Khasis. One school of thought believes that they could be one and the same race having slowly inched eastward to : these eastern hills. Until about a hundred and fifty years ago the Khasis held a strong oral tradition. Parents, aunts and uncles from time in memorial have been handing down from generation to generation to their children, nieces and nephews those principles and precepts delivered in their own words and dialects to inculcate upon them how to live, work and conduct themselves honestly, honourably and decently at home, and in society. The Khasis have strong faith in God, the Creator and Dispensor who rewards or punishes people according to their deeds in his own good time, hence, the desirability and necessity for people to .be always careful to walk along the path of Truth. Radhon Singh Berry did a masterly Job to collect as many of those gems of thought as he could and put them down in writing in the poetic dialect of Sohra published for the first time in book form; Part I in 1902 and Part n in 1903.

Ki Hynniew Trep. Like all other tribes in North-East India, were innocent of the art of reading and writing till the advent of the Christian missionaries from the west. It was Rev. Thomas Jones of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists Foreign Mission, who first taught them the art by introducing the Roman alphabet. His mission was to Christianise the people branded by the west as heathens and infidels, not knowing the truth that they have very high moral, ethical and spiritual values. The Khasi Pnars believe in God who is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient. Accordingly they hold it a sacrilege to symbolise Him or picture Him in any shape or form. God's three commandment are: 

1) Kamai ia ka Hok which literally means -"earn righteousness". The import of this commandment is the primacy of the righteous life which Ki Hynniew Trep and their descendants should live throughout their lives on earth. To live a righteous life man must not only speak the truth and act fairly and justly in all his dealing with his fellow men but should also be honest in his thoughts and wishes.

2) 1ip Briew -Tip Blei: This literally translates into "Know man Know-God". The import of this commandment is that Man can only know God when he understands his fellow men. Knowing one' s fellow men connotes performance of one's duty to them that is to be compassionate and I helpful to one and all and never to cause harm and injury to anyone for one's profit and pleasure.

3) Tip-Kur Tip Kha means, "know one's maternal relations and paternal relations". The import of this commandment is seen in the social structure of the Khasi-Pnars. Ki Hynniew Trep take decent from the mother. The children take her surname/clan name. All those who descend from the First Ancestress, "Ka Iawbei" form one composite 'Kur' - clan. Marriage between members of the same clan is an unforgivable sin arid those who fall are outcasted. 'There is no curse which we dread more than that which makes his clan extinct. We consider it God's greatest blessing when the tribe and clan increases. So in our matrilineal society, contrary to the mistaken, idea of outsiders that women rule, a man is doubly honoured.

In his sister's home he is 'U Kni ha ka iap ha ka im' (an uncle in life and death) for he advises and protects. Although the youngest daughter is the custodian of the family property, she can make no decision regarding property and other major issues without the consent of her maternal uncles. In his wife's house he is 'U Kpa uba lah ba iai' (a father who is able and steadfast). He is the progenitor, God's instrument to increase his tribe and the clan of his wife and prevent it from extinction. Women are respected and are far from subservient but overlording women are deprecated. We have a saying " Adur lanot, wei ba la kynih ka 'iar kynthei" (woe worth the day when the hen begins to crow). The woman's husband's family, her children's paternal relations are the' Kha' and always very highly respected. Kha literally means to "give birth". The women do not participate in administration, legislation and judiciary in the traditional set up. So Tip Kur Tip Kha, the third commandment, entails one to do one's duties toward the 'Kur' and 'Kha' adhering with understanding and strictness to the code of conduct and the precepts laid down by the elders from time immemorial.

Ki Hynniew Trep are monotheistic. They do, however, invoke God by various names according to the need of the moment, as God has all the attributes of goodness and all the power to do good. So they call him "'lei long spah " when they pray to him to bless them in their venture in trade and business, "'lei Khyrdop, 'lei Kharai" when they pray to Him in time of war to protect and defend their homeland, "'lei long kur" when they pray to him for the increase of their tribe. Ki Hynniew Trep are not animists nor do they practise ancestor worship.
There are no specific and formal places of worship, God, the Creator of all fills heaven and earth. Every bit of ground is sacred and, therefore, prayer worthy. So God can be worshipped when one is alone, with other people, anywhere in the open or in one's home so long as the worshipper is clean in his heart.

A Khasi Pnar believes that when he dies his soul wings its way to God to be with the Khyndai Trep (the Nine Huts/Families) above. His body which he refers to a 'ruh pyut' (rotted cage), when purified by fire, returns to mother earth. But that indestructible part of him which he calls 'Ka rngiew' remains on earth to watch over his} kith and kin which probably means in English “the essence of a person's personality and being”. The Khasi-Pnars cremate their dead.

We have no fixed day of congregational worship. Every day is a day of prayer and every good thought, word and deed an offering and prayer to God. In every way and always he must remember God's commandment-

Earn Righteousness (Kamai ia Ka Hok), and walk on the path of truth. The pity is that in the colonial days the westerners puffed up by their power and authority looked down upon the subject races as inferior being uncivilized and uncultured. It was much more so in the case of the natives of the Hills who were ignorant of the three R's having no written history or literature, disdaining to learn their oral literature which they dismissed as mere myths and legends of unlettered people dominated by superstition and tear of the unknown. If they had deigned to come down from their high horse to study the tales and traditions of the people, their culture, customs, institution and noble concept of God-Man relationship, they would have been blessed with the joy of knowing their innate truthfulness, tolerance, goodness and pleasant disposition, glimpses of which shine through the pages of Ka Jingsneng Tymmen.

Rev. Thomas Jones believed that the best way to achieve his mission of converting the people to Christianity was by teaching them to read the Bible and other Christian literature in this own language. In his first letter home he wrote: "The only plan which appears to me likely to answer a good purpose is to establish schools in various villages to teach children and adults to read their own language and to instruct them in the principles of Christian religion; or in other words to give them the same kind of instruction as is given in Sunday Schools at home, and not to introduce any other feature, except what may be necessary to draw the children to the schools, or to train native teachers: and to make use of the natives to teach their fellow-countrymen to read. In this way wc shall not only bring up the young people in the knowledge of the gospel doctrines, but we shall also teach t11em to read; and when we shall.have translated the Holy Scriptures into their language. we shall have some. at least, in every family, able to read them, and I may add, able to understand them also, and I would regards this as an important step towards their evangelism”

As a very devoted aIld dedicated man he single-mindedly applied himself at once into the study of the Sohra dialect which he mastered ill six months only. He adapted the Roman script to write in this dialect which has since become the literary language of the Khasi-Pnars. In the beginning he established three Elementary Schools within three miles of each other in the cluster of villages constituting Soma, to pursue the plan he had chalked out. It proved to be a great success judging by the phenomenal progress of Christianity in all the Hill Territories of North-east India wherever Christian Missionaries came to preach the gospel, following in the footsteps of Rev. Thomas Jones. Indeed, till independence education in the Hill Territories of North-east India was practically in the hands of the Missionaries from the  West. The Govenm1ent kept the people severely isolated. almost insulated, taking little or no interest at all in promoting their economic development or social welfare. All the interest it took zealously was in the maintenance oflaw and order to make them loyal and obedient subjects to enable the White civilians, top-brass and box-wallal1S to regale and relax during tl1e hot weather peacefully and tranquilly in the bracing climate of the Hills away from the heat and the dust of the plains. Were it not for the missionaries the light of learning would have been closed to the people, even the partial or limited part of it. For the missionaries in the early period carried on with Elementary Schools only, raised late: - the few Middle English Schools wherever a Mission House was established for the residence of the missionary.

It was only at the turn of the last century that one or two English High Schools were established in Shillong where boys and girls from all the Hill Territories of North-east India came to study. It was for this reason that few families only could afford to give Secondary Education to their children and fewer still able to send them to !he plains for Higher Education, and : that too, limited to General Education only. But even among the able families only those with an understanding of the value of education did so. 

Ka Jingsneng Tymmen Part I contains 41 stanzas of 255 couplets: Part II, 68 stanzas of 374 couplets. The words of wisdom in these 629 couplets of Ka Jingsneng Tymmen mirror I the ethos of the Khasi-Jaintias marked by their sense of self- t respect, self -dependence, tolerance and understanding which makes them by nature helpful, considerate and sociable. This quality of theirs coupled with the beauty and grandeur of their land charms visitors from far and near, their own countrymen and foreigners as well. Rev. J .T. Sunderland, an American missionary, who came to our land on a visit unaffected by the colonialism of European nations, moved by the frank and friendly nature of the people, wrote a poem of 24 lines only, l short and sweet, which, like a rosebud spreading out, unfolds , the soul of the people. I take the liberty to quote it here as an, apt prelude to a better understanding of their concept of life and its living.