KOCH'II, a dark-skinned people in the northern parts of Rangpur, Purniah, Dinajpur, and Mai mansing, who have hitherto, erroneously Dalton thinks, been classed as belonging to the Lohitic or Indo-Chinese race. He believes them to be a branch of the great Bhuiya or Bhuniya family, whom he classes as Dravidian. They came from the W. and S., and overthrew the Kachari or Chntia. dynasty.
The Koch'h are one of the most ancient of the peoples in India. Those in Koch-Bahar must be regarded as the present nucleus of the race, but they are still numerous in the old Kamarupa and the ancient Matsiya-desh; that is, in Rangpur and Lower Assam and Purniah, extending west as far as long. 87° 45' E., or to the boundary of ancient Mithila, and east to long. 93° E.
In the north, the Koch'h established their dominion upon the ruins of the Aryan kingdom of Kamrup, which the Afghan king of Bengal had overthrown in 1489. The Koch'h gave their name to the native state of Koch-Bahar. The grandson of Haju, Violin Singh, with all the people of condition, adopted Hinduism, and took the name of Rajbansi ; but the mass of the Koch'h people became Muhammadans, and the higher grades, as Hindus, now reject and contemn the very name of Koch'h, and it is bad manners at the court of the descendant of Haju to speak of the country as Koch-Bahar ; and the chiefs accept the myth which, by a reflection on the chastity of the daughters of Haju, give them for ancestor the god Siva. The Rajbansi Koch'h are the dominant tribe. They are all very dark ; and as their cognates, the Kachari, Tech, Garo, are yellow or light-brown, and their northern. eastern, and western neighbours are as fair or fairer, it must be from contact with the people of the south that they got their black skins.
Koch - Bahar was delivered from the Bhutia tyranny by the treaty of 1772, in accordance with which the raja placed himself under British protection, and paid tribute to the East India Company.
The villages of the Pani-Koch'h lie along the skirts of the Garo Hills. They aro much mixed up with that people, and with the Ilabha, and in their religion, language, and customs appear to lean sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other.
They greatly respect the Garo for having retained their freedom in regard to food, which they, the Pani-Koch'h, resigned, and now they must not eat beef, and they reject dogs, cats, frogs, and snakes, which the Garos eat. They use tobacco and strong liquors, but refuse opium and hemp. They eat no tame animal without having first given one of their gods the refusal of it.
Like the Rabha, they call their supreme deity Rishi, and his wife is named Jago, and they sacrifice to these deities, to the sun and moon, also to rivers and hills. The women do all work which is not above their strength, such 'as felling trees and the like. When a woman dies, the family property is divided amongst her daughters; and when a man marries, he goes to live with his wife's mother, and obeys her orders and those of his wife. Widows left with property generally manage to select young men as second husbands. —Turner's Embassy, p. 11 ; Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnnds, vii. p. 367; Hodgson; E. T. Dalton, Ethnol. of Bengal, p. 91.