Scarce British report on the traditional government of the matrilineal Khasi clans

Herbert, D. (Confidential.) Report on Successions to Siemships in the Khasi States.

€ 6,500.00

British government report by Captain D. Herbert, Indian Army, Deputy Commissioner, Khasi and Jaintia Hills, with the red "confidential" stamp appearing on the original front cover and the title-page of the publication. Likely part of a very small print run and difficult to locate on the market, with no copies listed on OCLC and only a 1991 facsimile reprint generally available to scholarship.

The text itself is detailed and thorough in the British colonial style, including eight folding genealogical tables and an extended appendix with numerous primary source documents recording legal and government proceedings and statements made by members of the clans of the Khasi states describing in their own words (in English or translated into English by the author) their systems of governance, social structure, and daily life.

Herbert explains in his summary that eligibility to hold the office of siem (ruler) is inherited by sons through the matrilineal line, though he has observed that the siem is always male, and also notes that traditionally candidates must be nominated and approved by a vote of the clan heads (a practice which he recommends the British "reestablish"). Herbert adds that the power of the siem is not absolute, with authority dispersed among various ministers, clan chiefs, elders and other figures, and in the case of the Siemship of Khyrim, a high priestess (ka siem-sad).

Altogether an exceedingly scarce report of remarkable historical import, revealing both the interests and preoccupations of the British Foreign Office and providing useful ethnographic data and records, especially in the appendix, for the history of the Khasi people of Meghalaya, Assam, and certain parts of Bangladesh.

Light wear, endpapers replaced.