4.3 Moosmai (the stones of the oath of allegiance)

4.3

 Moosmai  

(the stones of the oath of allegiance)

Around 1834, Alexander Lish of the Serampore Mission (Serampore was then under Danish occupation) built three schools at Cherra poonjee, Mawsmai and Mawmluh. The Serampore Mission, however, abandoned its efforts in the hills in 1838. They were followed by the Welsh Mission, and the first school was built in Mawsmai in 1842, a small village, 2 miles from Cherra punjee.

Sir Henry Yule (1 May 1820 – 30 December 1889) was a Scottish Orientalist[49]. He joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840 and traversed the Khasi Hills in 1844. He reported that after leaving the village and skirting the edge of the valley to the northwest there was one of the steepest and deepest precipices which these hills presented, and rushing over it was a magnificent waterfall. This went by the name of 'Luckae's Leap’[50],the legend being that Luckae, a Kassiah woman, married a wild Garrow, who during his wife's absence killed and cooked, and afterwards gave her to eat, her two children by a former marriage, on learning the nature of her meal she fled and leaped over the precipice, and by her name it has ever since been called.

In about 1850, Hooker reported that the journey from Therria Ghat to Churra was by relays of mules and ponies[51]. The ascent was at first gradual, along the sides of a sandstone spur. At about 2,000 feet the slope suddenly became steep and at the height of about 3,000 feet, all tree vegetation suddenly disappeared, and the scenery became barren and uninteresting[52]. There opened a magnificent prospect of the upper scarped flank of the Moosmai valley, with 4 or 5 beautiful cascades rolling over the table top of the hills, broken into silvery foam as they leapt from ledge to ledge of the horizontally stratified precipice, and throwing a veil of silver gauze over the gulf of emerald green vegetation, 2,000 feet below. The sublime scenery reminded Hooker of Rio de Jeneiro. 

It was also here at the village of Maosmai[53], on the edge of the cliffs, there were two well known groups of Khasia monoliths of unknown antiquity, from which the village took its name - the stones of the oath of allegiance. In each group there were five stones ranging from about 12-18 or 20 feet high. They stood in a line facing east on the edge of the stream that ran through the village. After the earthquake of 12 June 1897, one stone in each group had fallen.