Origin of the Khasi – The  Hynniewtrep Hynniew Skum (Seven Clans)

In the beginning there was nothing but a vast emptiness on Earth. God had created only two beings-Ramew, the guardian spirit of Earth, and her husband Basa, who later came to be identified with the patron god of villages. The two lived happily enough for a time, but one thing began to plague their minds: they had no children. They wanted children, wanted them intensely, because Ramew and Basa realised life without them would be terribly lonely and monotonous. They prayed to their God, U Blei, to bless them with at least a child-or two-so that their line could continue.

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'O God, our Master, our Creator! O God, Giver and Keeper of Life!' they called upon him. 'We have been living on Earth, absolutely alone, for many years now. While we love each other and are happy with our own company, we wish our love to be fruitful. We wish to have children, the of our love, children who would lighten our days and ease the monotony of our existence. It doesn't seem right, O Keeper and Giver of Life, that the Earth you created should remain barren and empty like this. O Master Creator! We have each other now, but what about the future?"

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After many such entreaties, God granted them their wish and gave them five children of great powers and accomplishments, five children that people have come to call elemental forces. The Sun was their first daughter, followed by their only son, the Moon, and three other daughters, Water, Wind and Fire. Fire was the last born, the womb cleaning one, and it was always her duty to be at home, to cook their meals and tend to their daily needs as custom demanded.

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Ramew was delighted to see her children grow up and prosper. She was particularly delighted to see how they worked at reshaping the world into a pleasant land, giving life to tall trees and beautiful flowers everywhere.

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And yet, amidst all that plenty and peace, there seemed to be something wanting. That such loveliness should go untended and uncared for! That such plenty should benefit no one! It was not right, she felt. Ramew turned to God again.

“O God, our Master, our Creator! O God, Giver and Keeper of Life!' she beseech Him!” she beseeched Him. 'Please forgive me if I seem ungrateful and unhappy with my lot. I am indeed contented and pleased to see my children so powerful and accomplished. They have done wonders here on Earth. They have turned it into a pleasant land of peace and plenty. There are trees and beautiful flowers everywhere. There are fruits and plants of every kind and description. But it pains me to see that so much loveliness and abundance may one day go to waste, with no one to benefit from them. Because, my God, my Creator, my children, though bestowed with outstanding gifts, powers and accomplishments, are yet ill-equipped to look after all that they have created. The Sun and the Moon are too busy roaming the universe, tending their myriad duties. Water has its limitations and cannot travel the world freely. Wind is not suited for caretaking on her own, nor is Fire. Both of them can run wild if not properly tended. You see, my Lord, we need someone who would not only be the heir to all this bounty but someone who would be a caretaker of all these creations and watch over all my children, so that they do not become excessively wayward.’

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God, who understood the yearning of Ramew and who had watched her labour hard and long to make the world a fitting place for life, promised to indulge her wishes. He issued a decree declaring two powerful spirits of the mountains as the guardians of Earth.

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But instead of seeing to the welfare of the many living things, these sibling spirits began to tussle for power. This resulted in a terrible fratricidal battle, the scars of which can be seen till today.

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Responding to the complaints of Ramew against the mountain spirits, God then placed the responsibility of ruling Earth on animals, with the Tiger as the presiding administrator. But this also did not work as the Tiger began to rule like a despotic overlord and encouraged the law of 'might is right' everywhere.

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When, eventually, matters went out of control and degenerated into a state of pandemonium, Ramew once more raised her complaints with God and pleaded with Him for wise and conscientious overseers who would be a blessing on and not a curse to life on Earth.

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God, who is just and benevolent, listened with sympathy to the pleas of Ramew and came to the conclusion that none but the sixteen clans living in Heaven would be fitting caretakers of Earth. Accordingly, he summoned the greatest Council ever held in Heaven to elect the future guardians of Earth. After days of careful deliberation, God eventually declared that seven of the sixteen clans living in Heaven should descend to Earth, to till the land, to populate the wilderness, to rule and govern and be the crown of a creation. And from then on they would be known as the ‘Hynniew Trep’, or the Seven Huts, the Seven Families, the Seven Clans, who would later become the ancestors of the seven sub-tribes of the Khasi people, encompassing the Khynriam, Pnar, Bhoi, War, Maram, Lyngngam and the now never-heard-of Diko.

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God who had provided for happiness on Earth, endowing its soil with riches and the fruits of plenty through the children of Ramew, then made a covenant with the Seven Clans and as a token of that covenant, He planted a divine tree on a sacred mount called Lum Sohpet Bneng, which served as the Golden Ladder between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Man. This covenant declared that so long as the Seven Clans adhered to the three principles of Ka Tip Briew Tip Blei, Ka Tip Kur Tip Kha and Ka Kamai ia ka Hok, that is, so long as they were secure in the Knowledge of Man and God, in the Knowledge of one's Maternal and Paternal Relations, and so long as they lived on Earth in such a way as to earn Righteousness, they would never be left alone, but could come and go as they pleased between Heaven and Earth, through the Golden Ladder at Lum Sohpet Bneng-literally, the Mount of Heaven's Navel. The mountain is so called because it acted as an umbilical cord between God and Man, for even as a child is joined with the mother through this thread of flesh and blood, so also is Man joined with God.

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Everything was now well with the world. And as long as Man remembered God and his divine decree, as as long as he behaved in a manner befitting his celestial lineage, he prospered in life and never suffered real grief in any way. His life on Earth was one long tale of happiness

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But it is not in Man to be content with happiness alone. Like everything else in this world, he is essentially two-edged, capable at once of great good and great evil. Soon, he began to tire of tirelessly following the dictates of God; he wanted to branch out on his own, to determine his life independently according to his own instincts and inclinations. In this manner he strayed away from the principles of Ka Tip Briew The Blet. Ka Tip Kur Tip Kha and Ka Kamai ia ka Hok. Greed, the mother of all evils, sat supreme in his heart, and in his craving for power and pelf, he trampled on the rights of others. He began to cheat, to swindle, to steal and even kill to gain what his avaricious heart desired. Respect for fellow men, through which alone Man could approach God, was completely forgotten, as men tried their best to outwit each other for the sake of wealth, their new god.

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 God, on his part, was greatly vexed by Man's rebelliousness. He was sorely grieved that Man had chosen to ignore and slight the covenant, and since this was quite meaningless now, He decided to break off his ties with Man and closed forever the Golden Ladder to Heaven through Sohpet Bneng. Away from the remaining Nine Clans in Heaven, and bereft of God's guidance and blessing, the Seven Clans remained helpless orphans on Earth, amidst a new kind of darkness that bred all sorts of evil in the minds of men. Their Golden Age had ended.

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But where did this darkness come from? As evidence of His displeasure, God made an oak tree, situated on another sacred mount, grow day by day to a monstrous height and width, so that its shadow expanded to eclipse whole portions of the Earth in pitch darkness. The perpetual darkness caused by the branches of Diengïei, the name then given to this 'Tree of Gloom', made standing crops wilt and threatened to destroy all plant life, as well as making Man himself vulnerable a prey to wild beasts and many other evils.

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 Man panicked. But as is characteristic of him, instead of first turning inwards to examine his soul, then conceding his own aberration and approaching God with a repentant heart, he proudly sought his own solution to ever worsening the crisis that menaced his very existence.

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He convened an extended council to which male representatives of all the Seven Clans were summoned. After hurried consultations, the council resolved to bring down Diengïei, which was even then enlarging itself alarmingly. In passing the resolution, the council declared:

“We do not know the cause of this terrible darkness, nor why Diengïei has suddenly grown so malevolently huge. But we need not seek the reason immediately. What we need to realize is that our very survival is threatened; we must act quickly and decisively. We must bring down this Tree of Gloom before its foul shadow destroys us. In order to do this, each family must send at least one man, equipped with a large knife and an axe, to carry out the task.”

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Work on toppling Diengïei commenced immediately. The men chopped and hacked away from dawn to dusk, lopping off a bit of the trunk each day. But always, when they came back the next day, they found the tree whole again. It looked like it had never been touched.

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The men were dumbfounded, and some of them grew apprehensive, for it seemed to them that the tree had mysterious powers. How could they fight something that could heal itself as soon as it was cut? 

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While they sat brooding, in fear and confusion, a little wren called Phreit came flying to the paddy fields nearby. The bird had never seen men in such gloom before, but on learning the cause, it offered to reveal the secrets of Diengïei:

'It is not what you think, O men. Diengïei may have the power to grow with the swiftness of a bird's flight, but it does not have the power to heal itself. I know its secrets and I'm ready to help should you wish me to. All that I ask is that you allow me to feed freely in your paddy fields so that I too may survive.’

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By then the man were so thoroughly demoralised and desperate that they were prepared to listen to just about anyone with new ideas. Once the deal was struck, Phreit told them that it was not the magic powers of the tree that were responsible for its extraordinary recovery, but the licking of its trunk by the Tiger as soon as the men retired to their homes for the night. That was how the gashes filled up as fast as they were made.

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The Tiger (a symbol of all that was evil and cruel) wanted Diengïei to stand, as the expanding eclipse caused by its growth made his hunting easier. In fact, he was looking forward to the time when the whole world was totally blanketed in darkness, so that he could then start preying on Man too. To foil the evil designs of the Tiger, Phreit advised the men to fortify the portion of the trunk that they had hewn by placing knives and axes against it each night.

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Encouraged by this revelation, the men hustled back to the task, and at the end of their day's work, set their axes against the tree. The next morning, instead of a healed trunk, they discovered bloodstains on their axes and, later, they learnt that the Tiger had lapped his tongue to shreds, then, terrified, had fled the place for an unknown destination. They were elated. They fell upon the tree with fresh vigour and after some weeks found they had cut it down. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

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The pact made with the little Phreit marked the first gesture of Man towards repentance and humility. And that was why God had granted Man success in felling the Diengïei.