GARO HILLS are in the S.W. corner of the province of Assam, lying between lat. 25° 9' and 26° V N., and long. 89° 52' and 91° 3' E. Tho principal ranges are the Tura and Arbela Hills, which run east and west, some of the Tum peaks rising to 4500 feet. Tlae Garo Hills farm a mountainous projection between Goa'para. and the Ilengal district of Mymensing, and aro now a revenue district of British India, with an area of 3180 square miles, and an estimated population of 80,000 or 100,000. Garo is a term applied to the people by the Hindus ; but they consider them selves as forming three or four nationalities, with different names. The most eastern,bordering on the Khassya, are called the Nunya, the central tribo are the Lyntea, and the remainder are the Abengya. Each tribe has its dependent and independent branches. The Nunya resemble the Kbassya in feature and complexion and in language. The language of the western Garo is unintelligible to the Nunya. The Bengali people, however, only distinguish the Garo as the Malawa and the Be rnalawa, which, like the Bori and Abor of Upper Assam, means dependent and independent.
The Gar° build large houses on the lower hills ; the bamboo floor is from four to ten feet from the ground. One corner is enclosed as a bed-room for the parents and girls, who alone stop at home. Every village has its Deka-cha.ng or bachelors' ball, in which all the boys and unmarried men sleep. Several of the petty rajas of Kannup, whose estates skirt the Khassya and Garo Hills, are Hinduized Garo who have maintained their foot ings in the valley during changes of dynasty. The Garo have many slaves, called Nokol. A freeman, Nakoba, must not marry a slave girl, nor even keep her as a concubine. The men are lively, good-natured, hospitable, frank, and truthful. The young women male the first advances, the newly married man is taken to the bride's home, and the descent of property is in the female line. The women wear a short kilt. The clans are divided into different houses, called Maliari (Buchanan calls these Chatsibalc), which may bo translated motherhood& The man who marries the favourite daughter of the house must also marry her mother on the death of her father, and in this way he succeeds to the family property. Among them and the Kliassya, in all domestic matters, the women enjoy a high social position. They never cut the
hair of the head.
Cotton is their chief husbandry. They practise the jhumia mode of cultivation. Their weapons are swords, spears, bamboo shields. They use sharp bamboo panji or stalces, four inches long, as a means of opposing invasion. They cat omni vorously, kine beef, pork, deer, tigers, dogs, snakes, and frogs, but hold milk in aversion. They rear kine, goats, swine, dogs, cats, fowls, and ducks. They eat dried fish and tortoises, which they buy in the plains ; and their hills supply them vvith deer, wild hogs, frogs, and snakes.
They believe in demons, imps, and witches ; they think that the souls of certain persons can leave their human frames and take up their abode in the body of a tiger or other animal. A small dish of bell - metal with embossed figures, called a Deo-Kora, is hung up as a household god, and worshipped and sacrificed to ; and the Garo believe that when the household are asleep, the Deo, or figure of the Kora, issues in search of food, and returns to its Kora to rest. They burn their dead, and bury tho ashes near the door of the hut. At the time of cremation, dogs aro sacrificed in order that they may direct tho spirit on his way. They sacrificed human beings to their spirits, and to the manes of their chiefs, but in a treaty in 1848 they consent,ed to abstain from hanging huinan skulls in their houses. A party of them, however, in May 1860, murdered sixteen natives of the plains in the north of the Maimansing district, and after wards mutilated the bodies. They confessed the crime, and three were executed in their own vil lages before their own people. Their accomplices, in number some twenty men, were condemned to transportation for various periods. Their object was not so much plunder as human heads to offer to their spirit of the mountains. The raja of Nus tung, one of the Khassya states, subsequently undertook to aid in repressing their raids.
The attempt to enumerate them at the census of 1871 disturbed them, and in 1872-73 an expedi tion had to put them down. The Garo erect carved posts as monuments. The Khassya and the Ho also erect monumental stones.—Bach.11am. in Linn. 7'r. xvii. p. 209 ; Campbell's Ethnology ; Dalton's Ethnology; Indian Antiquary, October 1873 ; Imp. Gaz.