6 THE LUSHEI CLANS CHAP.

known as Kukis and where their appearance caused much
trouble, as, from the very nature of the cause of their
migration, much ill-feeling existed between them and the
triumphant Lushais. In Stewart's notes on Northern Cachar,
it is stated that the Old Kukis made their appearance in
Cachar about the end of the eighteenth century. These
Old Kukis include the Biate (Beteh) and Hrangchul
(E/hangkol) and other cognate clans who are now known to us
as Khawtlang. They claim the hills round Champhai as their
place of origin, and the sites are still known by their names.
We have seen that the Lusheis claim to have sprung from
a village south-east of Champhai, and that the Zadeng passed
through Champhai on their westward move, which ended
so disastrously for them. The advance of such bribes would be
slow, and would be largely regulated by the rate at which they
exhausted the cultivable land near their village sites; therefore
the appearance of the Biate and Hrangchul in Cachar at the
beginning of the nineteenth or end of the eighteenth century
fits in well with the date I had assigned for Thang-ura, the first
Lushei chief, before I had read Lieutenant Stewart's book.
These Khawtlang clans to this day have little power of
cohesion, and they naturally gave way at once before the
well-organised Lushais, and fled north and north-west into
Cachar and Manipur, passing through the territory of the
Thado clans and suffering considerably at their hands. When
the Thangur had firmly established themselves, and the capable
Sailo chiefs had come to the front, they felt equal to fighting
the Thado clans, which were as highly organised as themselves.
The Sailo chiefs triumphed, and hence the eruption of the New
Kukis, alias Thados, and cognate clans, into Silchar about
1848.

In Colonel Lewin's "The Hill Tracts of Chittagong and the
Dwellers Therein," page 109, is given an account of the " Cucis
or inhabitants of the Tipperah mountains," written by
J. Kennel, Chief Engineer of Bengal in 1800, With very
slight alterations, this account is applicable to the Lushais
of to-day, and I have no doubt that the Cucis therein described
were the Eivung, the advance-guard of the great Lushai
invasion.