KASIA or Khasiya, a race occupying the hill s S of the valley of the Brahmaputra, in lat. 25° 20' to 28 7' N., long. 52' to 92° 11' E., between Cherra punji and the Shillong mountain. 'rho Kasia are the ablest bodied of the borderers of Assam, and differ very little from the Garo. They are arranged in petty rajaships. Nat-worship scents the cult of the Kama. They dread snakes. They build their houses on piles. They trap fish. They distil and drink intoxicating liquors, and between Ring. hot and Cherry, and in other places, they have bridges of the fibres of the iudia-rubber tree. The Kasia is distinguished from all the surround ing languages—Indian, Ultra-Indian, and Tibetan —by its direct and prepositional ideology. It is a fragment of the Mon Kambojan formation of languages, and is a remnant of an older formation which preceded the Burma-Tibetan in Northern They have the Mongolian type of features in the highest development. Colonel Yule mentions that porters of the Kasia nation used often to carry down from the coal mines of Chermpunji to the plains, a distance of 11 miles, loads of two maunds or 16.5 lbs. of coals. Their strength and bulk of leg were such as be had never seen elsewhere. In the upper parts of the Kasia country, monumental stones arc scattered on every wayside. These are of several kinds, but the most common is com posed of erect oblong pillars, sometimes almost quite unhewn, in other instances carefully squared and planted a few feet apart. The number com posing one monument is never under three, and runs as high as thirteen •, generally it is odd, but not always so. The highest pillar is in the middle (sometimes crowned with a circular dish), and to right and left they gradually diminish. In front of these is what English antiquaries call a crom lech, a large flat stone resting on short rough pillars. These form the ordinary roadside resting place of the weary traveller. The blocks are sometimes of great size. The tallest of a thick cluster of pillars in the market-place of Murteng in the Jaintia country, rising through the branches of a huge old tree, measured 27 feet in height above the ground. A flat table-stone or cromlech, near the village of Sailankot, elevated 5 feet from the earth, measured 32 feet by 15, and 2 feet in thickness. In other instances the monu ment is a square sarcophagus, composed of four large slabs, resting on their edges and well fitted together, and roofed in by a fifth placed horizon tally. In Bell's Circassia may be seen a drawing of an ancient monument existing in that country, which is an exact representation of a thousand such in the Khassya Hills, and nearly as exactly a description of them, though referring to relics on the eastern bank of Jordan, may be read in Irby and Mangles' Syrian Travels. The sarcophagus is often found in the form of a large slab accurately circular, resting on the heads of many little rough pillars close planted together, through whose chinks you may descry certain earthen pots, con taining the ashes of the family. Belonging to the
village of Ringhot, in the valley of Mausmai, deep in the forest, is a great collection of such circular cineraries, so close that one may step from slab to slab for many yards. Rarely may be seen a simple cairn or a pyramid some 20 feet in height, and sometimes one formed in diminishing stories, like the common notion of the tower of Babel, or like the pyramid of Saceara in Egypt. But the last is probably rather a burning place than a monument, or at least a combination of the two. The upright pillars are merely cenotaphs, and if the Kasia be asked why their fathers went to such expense in erecting them, the invariable answer is, ' To preserve their name.' Yet to few indeed among the thousands can they attach any name. Many of the villages, however, seem to derive their appellations from such erections, as may be seen from the number commencing with man, which signifies a stone ; e.g. mausmai, the stone of the oath ; mau-mlu, the stone of salt ; mau-flong, the grassy stone ; and others. Mausmai, the oath stone, suggests that these pillars were also erected in memory of notable compacts. On asking Umauz the origin of the names, his answer was a striking illustration of many passages in the Old Testament: There was war,' said he, between Cherry and Mausmai, and when they made peace and swore to it, they erected a stone as a witness (Sakhi ke wast6 was his expression). Genesis xxxi. 45 : 'And Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar.' Genesis xxxi. 47 : And Laban called it Jegar saliadutha: but Jacob called it Galecd' (both signi fying the heap of witness). Genesis xxxi. 51, 52 : And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee ; this heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, to do me harm,' etc. See also Joshua xxiv. 26. The name of maumlu, the salt stone, is probably of kindred meaning, as the act of eating salt from a sword-point is said to be the Kasia form of adjuration. These large stones are also frequently formed into picturesque bridges for the passage of brooks. There is at Murteng a bridge of this kind, consisting of one stone, 30 feet in length. It is stated by Pember ton that Kai is the real name of the people, and Kasia the title bestowed on them by the Bengali. But Kasi is the only name which they acknowledge as that of their country and race. —Latham ; Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1853 ; Yule, Cathay, do. Embassy; Journ. of Beng. As. Soc.; Postans' Personal Observations, p. 15.