Mother-right among Khasis and Malays
R.O. Winstedt, a senior Straits Settlements administrator, published “Mother-right among Khasis and Malays” in 1932 in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Writing from a position of deep familiarity with both the matrilineal Malays of Negri Sembilan and the secondary literature on the Khasis of Assam, Winstedt sets out to demonstrate that the near-identical systems of mother-right operating among these two peoples, separated by over a thousand miles, constitute one of the most remarkable convergences in comparative social organisation and point to a remote common ancestry.
Summary
The article opens by establishing the linguistic and archaeological preconditions for comparison. Winstedt notes that Father Schmidt’s 1890s classification placed Khasi within the Austro-asiatic family and Malay within Austronesian, yet the two languages retain striking phonetic, morphological, and lexical resemblances despite the vast time since their separation. Archaeologically, the Khasi adze is a high-shouldered neolith of Mon-Khmer type, differentiated from the pointed Indonesian (Malay) type by 2000 B.C. at the latest, and both peoples use menhirs for their dead, though the Khasi examples are more elaborate (p. 9).
The body of the article proceeds as a point-by-point comparison of kinship, inheritance, and political institutions. Winstedt demonstrates that the Khasi and Malay systems share an identical three-tier structure—clan, sub-clan, family—with the sub-clan bearing the same name in both languages: kpoh (Khasi) and perut (Malay), both meaning “womb” (p. 9). Both systems enforce strict clan exogamy, permit marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, prohibit marriage between children of sisters while forbidding (on different grounds) marriage between children of brothers, and vest custody of children in the mother upon divorce. Inheritance of ancestral property passes exclusively through the female line, with the youngest daughter receiving the principal share including the family house and jewellery. Chieftainships in both societies go to men who qualify through their mothers, and in both cases the wife’s eldest brother heads the married household (pp. 10–12).
Winstedt then extends the comparison beyond kinship to a catalogue of shared material and ritual customs: the bamboo knife for cutting the umbilical cord, preservation of the placenta in an earthen vessel, egg divination, leaf-omens, cock sacrifice, tuba fishing, identical hunting traps and snares, the absence of the potter’s wheel, and the taboo against using the sickle for reaping (pp. 12–13). He is careful to caveat that mother-right occurs independently among American Indians, the Nayars of Malabar, and in Melanesia, and that borrowed customs are not irrefragable evidence of racial connection. Nevertheless, he argues that the cumulative weight of linguistic, archaeological, and social evidence makes the Khasi–Malay resemblance “startling” and worthy of remark (p. 13).
Key Findings
- The sub-clan is called kpoh in Khasi and perut in Malay, both meaning “womb,” indicating a shared terminological root for the fundamental matrilineal unit (p. 9).
- In both systems the youngest daughter inherits the family house and jewellery as the “lion’s share”; in Khasi districts the house cannot be sold without unanimous consent of all sisters, and in Rembau the youngest daughter undertakes to care for her mother in old age in return (pp. 11–12).
- Property acquired by a man before marriage belongs to his mother (i.e., his clan) in both societies; property acquired after marriage goes to his wife and children, with kampong, rice-land, and orchards in Negri Sembilan going exclusively to girls while rubber land, money, and movables are shared equally, the sons’ shares reverting to the sisters (p. 12).
- Khasi Siem (chiefs) derive revenue from state lands, voluntary contributions for public ceremonies, and market tolls; the Ruler of Negri Sembilan was similarly supported by court lands, festival offerings, and a toll on cock-fights (p. 12).
- In three Khasi states the Siem family divides into Black and White branches from either of which a chief may be elected, a structure Winstedt links to the Malay system of rotation of offices and possible “black” and “white” Malay families (p. 12).
- Both peoples use identical hunting technology: spring-guns impelling arrows, pit-falls with bamboo caltrops, nooses for deer, concealed platforms releasing stone-weighted roofs, and bird-snares limed with jack-tree gum (p. 13).
Conclusion
Winstedt’s definitive takeaway is that while mother-right in isolation is too widespread a phenomenon to prove racial relationship, the convergence of the Khasi and Malay systems—across kinship structure, inheritance law, political succession, and a long list of material and ritual customs—combined with the linguistic and archaeological evidence, constitutes a body of similarity that “perhaps deserves remark” as indicative of a deep historical connection between the two peoples (p. 13).
Context
- Winstedt was a senior colonial administrator (C.M.G., D.Litt.) in the Straits Settlements and a prolific contributor to the JMBRAS; his command of Malay customary law in Negri Sembilan was well established by 1932, and the article draws heavily on his own prior publications and those of his administrative colleagues (Parr and Mackray, Taylor, de Moubray).
- All Khasi data are drawn second-hand from Lt.-Col. P.R.T. Gurdon’s The Khasis (1914) and a 1917 JRASSB article; Winstedt did not conduct fieldwork among the Khasis himself.