Kuki (Indic people); Lushai (Asian people); Lushai language
This term Kuki, like Naga, Chin, Shendu, and many others, is not
recognised by the people to whom we apply it, and I will not attempt
to give its derivation, but it has come to have a fairly definite
meaning, and we now understand by it certain closely allied clans,
with well marked characteristics, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman
stock. On the Chittagong border the term is loosely applied to most
of the inhabitants of the interior hills beyond the Chittagong Hill
tracts; in Cachar it generally means some family of the Thado or
Khawtlang clan, locally distinguished as New and Old Kukis. In the
Lushai Hills nowadays the term is hardly ever employed, having been
superseded by Lushai. In the Chin Hills and generally on the Burma
border all these clans are called Chins.
The term Lushai, as we now understand it, covers a great many clans;
it is the result of incorrect transliteration of the word Lushei,
which is the name of the clan, which, under various chiefs of the
Thangur family, came into prominence in the eighteenth century and
was responsible for the eruption into Cachar of Old Kukis at the end
of that century and of the New Kukis half a century later.
The Lusheis, however, did not eject all the clans they came in contact
with, many of them they absorbed, and these now form the bulk of the
subjects of the Thangur chiefs. In this monograph Lushai is used
in this wider sense, Lushei being used only for the clan of that
name. Among the people themselves the Lusheis are sometimes spoken
of as Dulian, at the derivation of which I will hazard no guess,
and the general population of the hills is spoken of as Mi-zo. Among
inhabitants of the Lushai Hills are found a very considerable number
of immigrants, or descendants of immigrants from the Chin Hills,
who are found living among the Lushais under the Thangur Chiefs or
in villages under their own chiefs. I have made no attempt to deal
with these, as their proper place is the Chin Hills monograph, and
Messrs. Carey and Tuck have already described them very fully in
their Chin Hills Gazetteer.
I am conscious that there are many omissions in this book; the subject
is a very wide one and the difficulty of getting at the facts from so
many different clans, each speaking a different dialect and scattered
over an area of about 25,000 square miles is extremely great. I trust
therefore that my readers will excuse all shortcomings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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