CHAPTER III

THE OLD KUKI CLANS

THE term Old Kukis has long been applied to the- clans which
suddenly appeared in Cachar about 1800, the cause of which
eruption I have explained when dealing with the history of the
Lushais, but Dr. Grierson in the Linguistic Survey has included
in this group a number of clans which had long been settled in
Manipur territory, and my enquiries all go to prove the correct-
ness of this classification. It appears practically certain that
the ancestors of the Old Kukis and the Lushais were related and
lived very close together somewhere in the centre of the hills
on the banks of the Tyao and Manipur rivers. The Old Kuki
clans of Manipur seem to have been the first to move, as
records of their appearance there are found in the Manipur
chronicle as early as the sixteenth century, and, though the
chronology of the chronicle is not beyond suspicion,! think this
may be taken as proof that these clans appeared in Manipur a
good deal earlier than their relations the Bete and Ehangkhol
entered Cachar. What the cause of this move was it is impossible
to say. Probably quarrels with their neighbours, coupled with
a desire for better land, combined to cause the exodus, and the
movement, once started, had to continue till the clans found a
haven of rest in Manipur, as their relatives did centuries later
in British territory; for they were small, weak communities, at
the mercy of the stronger clans, through whose lands they passed.

All these Old Kuki clans are organised far more democratically
than the Lushais or Thados. Lieut. Stewart in his Notes on
Northern Cachar says:—" There is no regular system of govern-
ment among the Old Kukis and they have no hereditary chiefs as

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