कला और शिल्प परंपरा

Ka Shad Nongkrem (Ka Pomblang Nongkrem)अनुष्ठान

A thanksgiving and propitiation dance held at the ceremonial house of the Khyrim chieftaincy at Smit, south of Shillong. Pomblang means the beheading of goats, and the goat sacrifice is the formal core of it. The Syiem holds the political office and the Ka Syiem Sad, the high priestess through whom the line runs, holds the religious one — the two roles together are the clearest working illustration of how Khasi matriliny and Khasi office-holding fit each other. Unmarried women dance in the inner ground in crown and silk; men dance outside them with sword and yak-hair whisk.

कौन करता है: The Syiem of Hima Khyrim, the Ka Syiem Sad, and the people of the hima. मौका: Five days in November, at Smit

Ka Shad Suk Mynsiemअनुष्ठान

The dance of the joyful heart, held after sowing as a thanksgiving. The same spatial grammar as Nongkrem — women in the centre moving with small steps and downcast eyes, men circling outside at speed — and the occasion at which the indigenous Niam Khasi community is most publicly visible in a majority-Christian city.

कौन करता है: Unmarried men and women of the Seng Khasi. मौका: Three days in April, at Weiking ground, Shillong

Lahoलोक

A woman between two men, arms linked, the three of them stepping together to a chanted phawar rather than to drums. It is one of the very few dances in the hills where men and women dance linked, and it is danced for enjoyment rather than as a rite.

कौन करता है: Pnar men and women, in threes. मौका: Behdienkhlam, in July

Ka Shad Mastieh and the warrior dancesअनुष्ठान

The men's dance vocabulary is built around the waitlam sword in one hand and the symphiah whisk in the other, with a shield in some forms. It is danced on the outside of the circle and at a different tempo from the women's, and the two are never merged.

कौन करता है: Men. मौका: Festival grounds and hima occasions

Duitara

A four-stringed plucked lute with a wooden body and a hide face, played with a bamboo or bone plectrum. It is the accompaniment for narrative song and for phawar, and it is the instrument Khasi music is identified by.

Tangmuri and the drum set

The tangmuri is a double-reed shawm with a flared bell, and it leads the Nongkrem and Shad Suk Mynsiem grounds. It is played over ksing drums — bom, padiah and nakra — and the whole ensemble is loud, outdoor and designed to be heard across a hillside.

Phawar

Extempore rhymed couplets, called out rather than sung, in a high carrying voice with a response from the crowd. Used at festivals, at archery matches, at weddings and at funerals — the form is fixed, the content is improvised on the spot, and skill at it is a recognised social accomplishment.

Four-part harmony and the Shillong choral tradition

Welsh Presbyterian and Catholic missions put hymn singing in parts into ordinary village life from the mid-nineteenth century, and the result is that choral sight-singing is a common domestic skill here in a way it is nowhere else in India. Shillong's guitar, gospel and rock culture grew out of that training rather than out of imported records, and the Shillong Chamber Choir, founded by Neil Nongkynrih in the early 2000s, is its best-known institutional expression.

Maryngod and bom

The maryngod is a bowed string instrument of the Jaintia hills, played with the drums at Behdienkhlam. The Pnar instrumental repertoire is drum-led where the Khasi one is reed-led.

Khasi-language stage drama

A twentieth-century Shillong tradition of written plays in Khasi, staged by amateur companies and church and school groups. It is one of the few places where Khasi is used as a literary rather than a spoken language, alongside poetry.

Ka jingiathuhkhana

The storytelling that carries the clan histories, the ancestress narratives and the origin accounts. Because Khasi had no script before the nineteenth century, the entire pre-colonial record of the hills is a spoken one, and the monoliths function as its punctuation.

Cane and bamboo work Across the Khasi and Jaintia hills

Baskets, mats, stools, fish traps and the umbrella-like knup rain shield worn over the back while working in the rain. Almost every household object here was bamboo before it was plastic.

सामग्री: Cane, bamboo. तकनीक: Split-cane coiling and plaiting. The signature object is the khoh, a deep conical carrying basket slung from a headstrap so the load bears on the forehead and spine rather than on the shoulders — the only workable way to carry weight up a forty-degree slope.

Ryndia eri silk जीआई पंजीकृत Ri Bhoi (Umden–Diwon)

Eri is spun rather than reeled, because the moth is allowed to emerge and break the filament — which is why the cloth is matte and slightly slubbed rather than lustrous. Granted a geographical indication in 2025.

सामग्री: Eri silk, lac, turmeric, bark and iron mud dyes. तकनीक: Hand-reeling of open-ended cocoons, hand-spinning, and loin or frame loom weaving.

Khasi handloom products जीआई पंजीकृत East Khasi Hills, Ri Bhoi, West Jaintia Hills

Granted a geographical indication in 2025, covering the woven output of Khasi, Bhoi and Jaintia weavers.

सामग्री: Cotton, eri and mulberry silk. तकनीक: Frame-loom weaving of check, stripe and plain grounds for jainsem, dhara and shawls.

Larnai (Lyrnai) black pottery जीआई पंजीकृत West Jaintia Hills

A single Pnar village that has supplied cooking and storage pots to the Jaintia hills for generations, granted a geographical indication in 2024 as Lyrnai pottery.

सामग्री: Local clay and serpentinite temper. तकनीक: Hand-built without a wheel, shaped on a flat stone, burnished, and open-fired, then blackened. The clay and the temper both come from within walking distance of the village.

Living root bridge cultivation East Khasi Hills (War slope)

A structural technology rather than a decorative craft. A dead timber bridge in this climate rots in a few years and is torn out by monsoon spate; a living one gets stronger, because it is still growing. The jingkieng jri landscapes entered UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list in 2022.

सामग्री: Ficus elastica aerial roots, bamboo and areca scaffolding. तकनीक: Pliable secondary roots of the rubber fig are guided across a stream on a hollow areca-trunk or bamboo scaffold; over fifteen to thirty years they thicken, self-graft where they touch, and take the load, at which point the scaffold is discarded. Stone and earth are packed into the deck as it widens.

Lakadong turmeric जीआई पंजीकृत West Jaintia Hills (Lakadong)

A landrace with an unusually high curcumin content, grown around Lakadong village in the Jaintia hills and granted a geographical indication in 2024.

सामग्री: Turmeric rhizome. तकनीक: Grown on hill slopes without synthetic input, boiled, sun- and smoke-dried, and ground.

Khasi Mandarin जीआई पंजीकृत East and West Khasi Hills, Ri Bhoi

The plateau's commercial orange, known locally as soh niamtra, holding a registered geographical indication. It is the fruit that comes up the escarpment road in winter, and the sweet counterpart to the wild Citrus indica protected in the Garo Hills.

सामग्री: Citrus reticulata. तकनीक: Grown on terraced slopes in the mid-altitude belt, often interplanted with betel and areca.

Khasi iron smelting Nongkrem and the central plateau

An extinct industry, and the region's most under-told one. Radiocarbon dates from slag at Nongkrem put iron production here at over two thousand years, and in the early nineteenth century the hills were exporting on the order of a couple of thousand tonnes of iron a year down to Bengal, much of it for boat-building. It disappeared from the export returns between 1858 and 1876 once imported industrial iron undercut it.

सामग्री: Titaniferous magnetite sand washed from weathered granite. तकनीक: Above-ground bloomery furnaces of about half a cubic metre, charged in alternating layers of washed ore and charcoal and blown through kaolin clay tuyeres, with earlier slag recharged into the furnace to raise the yield.

Sohra honey, bay and cinnamon जीआई योग्य East Khasi Hills (Sohra)

The southern slope grows cinnamon and bay in quantity and produces a distinctive orange-blossom honey, most of which leaves the hills unbranded.

सामग्री: Apis cerana honey, cinnamon and bay from the escarpment forests. तकनीक: Log and box hives kept in orange and betel gardens; bark and leaf stripped and shade-dried.