Great Assam Earthquake of 12
June 1897 (8.1)
At about 5.15 p.m. in the
afternoon of Saturday, 12 June 1897, there burst on the western portion of Assam
an earthquake which, for violence and extent, had not been surpassed by any on
record[1].
Lasting about two and a half minutes, it had not ceased at Shillong before an
area of 150,000 square miles had been laid in ruins, all means of communication
interrupted, the hills rent and cast down in landslips, and the plains fissured
and riddled with vents, from which sand and water poured out in most astounding
quantities. Ten minutes had not elapsed from the time when Shillong was laid in
ruins before about 1.75 million square miles had felt a shock which was
everywhere recognised as one quite out of the ordinary.
In Shillong, some tremors were noticed a few days previously by some
‘sensitive persons’, but if actually perceived they must have been very slight
indeed. On 11 June 1897, a severe shock commenced without any warning and some
people noticed a rumbling sound for 10 or 15 seconds before the shock. All the accounts from Shillong agreed that the
first indication was a rumbling sound, like that of a rapidly moving cart. A
Mr. R. S. Strachey, who was riding at the time at Shillong Peak, some 1,400
feet above Shillong, stated that his attention was first attracted by the
rustling.
The shock was of considerable duration, and maintained roughly the same
amount of violence from the beginning to the end. It produced a very distinct
sensation of sea-sickness. The earth movement was exceedingly sudden and
violent. The feeling was as if the ground was being violently jerked backwards
and forwards very rapidly, every third or fourth jerk being of greater scope
than the intermediate ones.
Richard
Dixon Oldham was the Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, based in
Calcutta[2].
He reported that the surface of the ground vibrated
visibly in every direction, as if it was made of soft jelly, and long cracks
appeared at once along the road. The sloping earth-bank round the water tank,
which was some l0 feet high, began to shake down, and at one point cracked and
opened out bodily. The road was bounded intermittently by low banks of earth,
about 2 feet high, and these were all shaken down quite flat. The school
building, which was in sight, began to shake at the first shock, and large
slabs of plaster fell from the walls at once. A few moments afterwards the
whole building lay flat, the walls collapsed and the corrugated iron roof lay
bent and broken on the ground.
Remarkably, Oldham reported
that a pink cloud of plaster and dust was seen hanging
over every house in Shillong at the end of the shock. Oldham’s
impression at the end of the shock was that its duration was certainly under 1
minute, and that it had travelled from south to north. Several other observers
agreed with him in limiting the first and great shock to 40 or 50 seconds. When
subsequent tremors were included, the shocks lasted for a full 2 minutes. The
violence of the shock could be imagined from the fact that the whole of the
damage done was completed in the first 10 or 15 seconds of the shock.
From an architectural point
of view, before the earthquake, the buildings of Shillong were of broadly three types, which corresponded to three
degrees of ruin:
Stone Buildings — Every bit of solid stone
work in the neighbourhood of Shillong, including most of the bridges, were
absolutely levelled to the ground. The stone houses, and conspicuously the
church, were reduced to flat heaps of single loose stones, covered with torn
and burst sheets of corrugated iron - the remains of the roofs.
Oldham noted that the walls
did not show the slightest partiality in their direction of falling. The stones
had in every case been shaken loose, and had collapsed equally on both sides of
the line of the wall. Heaps of stones along the roads, broken for mending
purposes, which stood 1 foot high before the shock, were flattened, roughly
circular patches 3 or 4 inches in thickness.
Two tall monuments (the
Quinton and Willians monuments) of excellent cut stone work, about 20 or 30
feet in height, were in ruins, though in each case some feet of the masonry at
the base still retained an upright position — the individual stones were shaken
from each other. The ruins were scattered most impartially on all sides in a
rough circle. The pinnacle of the larger Quinton monument has been thrown down
bodily, and lay some feet from the centre of the stone work.
Ekra-built Buildings – These had a wooden frame
work, with walls of san grass covered
with plaster. About half the buildings of this description were ruined in the
same way as the stone buildings. All the large ekra buildings were utterly ruined inside, the chimneys in all
cases being of stone work, the whole of which had fallen with the plaster from
the walls, and in many cases the roofs also.
Small outhouses and villages
of ekra-work had in some cases
escaped with the loss of the plaster. Some of the new larger buildings would
also have escaped, but for the stone chimneys, which had in every case wrecked
the house.
Plank Buildings — These were built on the
"log hut" principle, a
wooden frame work covered with planks, resting unattached on the ground. The
only buildings of this type were stables or outhouses. In every case they had
escaped untouched, except where the supporting stonework had been shaken away,
when they had been slightly displaced.
Apart from the buildings in
Shillong, Oldham noted that trees had not suffered much, only two were brought
down by the shock, and as they were leaning over to begin with, their direction
of fall did not give any evidence. In Shillong itself the roads and hillsides
were cracked in all directions, but the cracks merely showed the lines of
weakness in the ground, which had been simply shaken down by the violent
vibrations, which had apparently acted in every direction.
Oldham also reported that
small banks of earth had been flattened everywhere, and the band of the
artificial lake (Ward’s Lake) — a bank some 150 yards long and 30 or 40 feet
high, made mostly of earth, gave way almost at once when the great shock began.
The centre half of it had been carried bodily away down the valley below by the
rush of water.
On the hills round Shillong
four or five considerable landslips could be seen. Patches of hillside debris
had fallen from steep nala banks,
carrying trees and undergrowth with them, and marked patches of red soil on the
hill — the largest was about 300 feet in width and the same in height.
Another account is that of
the Assistant Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Division, contained in his
official letter, dated 12 July 1897, Shillong, and addressed to the Director
General of Telegraphs. He reported that the hill that he was on at the time
simply felt as if it was being rapidly moved in a horizontal plane backwards
and forward. This motion was so violent that he was unable to stand, and had to
crawl on his hands and knees and hold on to a tree for support.
He also examined several stone structures, the Church, Telegraph Office,
Divisional Superintendent's and Sub-Divisional officer's offices, and found
they had simply collapsed, owing to the stones being shaken out of their
position, the debris remaining all round the site, with a slightly greater
accumulation on the north side. The roof in all these cases has simply fallen
almost exactly over the place where the supporting walls were. The Quinton
Memorial, which was a stone spire, had collapsed, and the stones it was built
of were simply lying piled round the base.
Oldham had also received a number of accounts which
indicated that there was a very marked undulation of the surface of the ground.
Loose stones lying on the surface of the roads were tossed in the air "like peas on a drum."
This vertical movement was accompanied by a more marked backward and forward
movement of the ground, the sensation produced was more like being "shaken like a rat by
a terrier."
At Shillong the exact time of the commencement of
the shock was given by J. C. Arbuthnott, Deputy Commissioner, as 5.11 pm or
5.12 pm. The Assistant Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Division,
reckoned the shock ended at 5.16 pm and estimated the duration of the whole
earthquake to be about 1.5 minutes.
At Tura, Oldham was informed that a hanging lamp
was kept constantly swinging for three or four days. Some idea of the
frequency of the earthquakes in Shillong could be gathered from the fact that a
record kept on the night of the 19 June 1897, seven days after the earthquake,
showed an average of one shock every 8 minutes.
J. G. Morgan, a Telegraph
employee, noted that before he noticed no thunder or lightning on the evening
of 12 June 1897[3].
But when he was at the office, trying to restore communication, in handling the
wires, the Telegraph Master, Signallers and himself experienced many electric
shocks, some of them of considerable severity. Nearly all these shocks were
sometimes preceded, but more often followed by, an earth tremor. Owing to the
testing instruments and indicators being buried under the office ruins, he was
unable to find the direction of these currents. At Nongpoh too, while he was
working Shillong on the evening of 16 June 1897, he noticed much the same.
The same employee gave
evidence of the loudness of the sounds in the epicentral tract. He found that
the crash of houses, falling within thirty yards of him, was completely drowned
by the roar of the earthquake, and all the accounts from the epicentre and its
neighbourhood mentioned the loudness of the sounds heard at the time of, and
immediately after, the earthquake.
Oldham recorded that at
Shillong the gate pillar of the Ferndale
Hotel was twisted. Both the gate pillars of Beauchamp Lodge were twisted as well. He also informs us that the
gate pillars of Fenton’s Hotel on
either side of the gateway were built of cubical blocks of stone coping, facing
the four cardinal points and these were similar to the Inglisby gate pillars. At Ashley
Hall, there were two pillars built of rubble stone masonry, the longer
sides of each facing north and south. The pillars in Col. Macgregor’s house
were damaged as well.
Oldham noted very matter of
factly, that the large bridge on the Gauhati Road about 1.5 miles from
Shillong, over the Umkra river, had suffered severely. The abutment on the
south-west side fell entirely, carrying the girders with it. The two piers and
the abutment on the north-east side, of more recent construction, remained
standing, though somewhat cracked. It appeared that the piers were recently
widened and that the vertical cracks near the lower sides of them occurred at
the junction of the newer and older masonry.
Numerous landslips had
occurred along the steep hill sides between Shillong and the crossing of the
Umiam river, 8 miles from the Station. At the Bishop's Fall, about 2 miles from
Shillong, the precipitous cliff on the right of the fall, down which the path
was carried, slipped down entirely into the basin at the foot of the fall.
However, the crest of the fall was not affected. Some fine slips were seen on
the hillside facing the fall.
At the Khasia Bazar at Maokhar, just outside Shillong
on the Gauhati road, was a collection of the large monolilhs of quartzite set
up in former times by the Khasias as ancestral memorials. Several of these had
fallen and some of them were broken through at ground level or a foot or so
above it.
In
1906, Gurdon noted that all previous shocks were thrown into insignificance by
the catastrophe of 12 June 1897[4].
The whole of Shillong was levelled to the ground, masonry houses collapsed, and
roads and bridges were destroyed all over the District. The total number of
lives lost was 916. Most of the causalities occurred in the cliff villages near
Cherrapunji, and were due to the falling of the hill sides, which carried
villages with them or buried them in their ruins.
Gurdon noted that prior to 1897 most of the
public offices and private houses were built of rough hewn masonry. The
earthquake of 12 June 1897 reduced them to a heap of ruins in the space of a
few seconds, wrecked the water supply, and destroyed the embankment which
dammed up the waters of the lake near Government House. The shock occurred on
Saturday afternoon, when nearly everyone was out of doors, and only 2 Europeans
and 27 locals were killed. Had it taken place at night, there would have been
few survivors. He reported that the station had since been rebuilt, but the use
of brick and stone had been assiduously avoided.
In 1910, John Hughes
Morris wrote that the year 1897 would be long remembered in the history of the
Welsh Mission as the year of the great earthquake[5].
He remarked that of all the dark years through which the Welsh Mission had been
called to pass, this was undoubtedly the darkest. The first shock occurred
shortly after five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, 12 June 1897. In a few
seconds every building in Sylhet, Khasia and Jaintia, was levelled to the
ground.
The Government
offices, mission premises, including the 16 mission houses, the two hospitals
(Cherra and Jowai), thirty chapels, the Theological Institution, and a large
number of schools, many of which, in the principal villages, were handsome and
substantial buildings - the fruit of the sacrifices of the home and native
churches for over half a century – were swept away at a single stroke.
He paints a grim
picture of the aftermath - whole villages were completely destroyed, large
portions being buried, with their inhabitants, under the terrible landslips
following the upheaval. All the missionaries were providentially saved, but the
number of deaths among the native population was appalling. The disaster
occurred at the height of the rainy season, the sufferings of the homeless
missionaries and natives were painfully intensified. Added to this, fevers and
epidemics (including cholera) following the shock and the exposure, made
fearful ravages among the terror-stricken people.
Within a few seconds every masonry building
in Shillong was levelled to the ground[6].
The direction was roughly from southwest to northeast and it was felt over an
area of 2.8 million square kilometres, from Rangoon on the southeast to Kangra
on the northwest, and serious damage was done to masonry buildings over an area
of 232,000 square kilometres.
There were only 29 deaths in Shillong, 10 of
which occurred in the Secretariat Press. The Europeans killed were Mr. McCabe,
the Inspector-General of Police, and Mr. Rossenrode, a pensioner of the Survey
Department[7].
The total number of lives lost in the Khasi Hills District was 916. Most of
these casualties occurred in the cliff villages near Sohra, and were due to the
falling of the hill sides, which carried villages with them or buried them in
their ruins[8].
Philemon informs us that two ladies happened
to be bicycling along the road in front of All Saints Church when the edifice
collapsed with a roar of falling masonry and corrugated iron sheets amid clouds
of dust. One lady said to the other, "Dear
me! that must be an earthquake." They both jumped off their cycles in
their interest to see what had fully happened to the Church, and then for the
first time they felt the shock, for they could not stand and were shaken off
their feet and fell on the road with their bicycles. The Church was totally
destroyed. The Church plate and registers, being in the safe built into the
vestry wall, were left undamaged and also the big Bible which was found upon
the lectern standing in its place, almost unscathed[9].
Philemon notes that the earthquake took place
at a time, when, after a wet day, all the children were playing outdoors and
nearly all the residents were outdoors as well, otherwise the death toll would
have been terrible. Later, rain fell continuously for twenty four hours, and
people were compelled to seek shelter in huts, out-houses, and many residents
took refuge in the open sheds, exposed to wind and rain on all sides. On
Sunday, 13 June 1897, the day after the earthquake, short services were held in
the Bandstand on the cricket ground (present Garrison Ground) and the whole
congregation spontaneously joined aloud in the general thanksgiving.
Shillong was completely cut off from the
outer world. Telegraphic communication with Guwahati was, however, resumed on
16 June 1897 and the road was once more open to cart traffic on 8 July 1897[10].
The residents of Shillong took this terrible calamity with wonderful courage
and resource and took up their residence in their outhouses and cooch houses
with such furniture as they were able to get together from the wreck of their
houses, and set to building grass huts pending the erection of new houses. Many
of the residents had taken refuge in the open shade on the cricket ground and
in the Laban marketplace, where the Pinemount School playground is situated
now. The total population after 1897 was estimated to be 8,384 in the Shillong
area.
When Tom La Touche
arrived in Shillong in July 1897, they were all talking of removing Shillong
1,000 feet higher up the hill where it ought to have been built at first[11]. La Touche was of the
view that if they did that, in another 20 years or so, it would be a really
fine hill station. A great many of monuments in the cemetery had been thrown
down or shifted. The Public Works Department were going to put everything there
straight as soon as things are settled down a bit.
On 9 July 1897 wrote from Tezpur[12] that the unfortunate clerks (European) at Shillong who
had been investing their savings in houses had lost everything.
On 16 July 1897, La Touche was rigging up
a seismometer and had to visit Golam Hyders's shop. Several babus
accosted him when La Touche was out that morning and wanted to know if the
place was safer or whether it would disappear one fine day. He always told them
that it was as safe as any other place. The continued shocks kept the babus
in a state of panic.
On 17 July 1897, LaTouche
noted that a game of cricket was to be played. He
imagined Mr. Cotton would stop all games, as far as he could, for a month after
the earthquake, at least he would not allow any of the civil officers to play. On 24 July 1897, the usual Saturday cricket match was going on just below the
house all afternoon, but La Touche could not see the field because of the
trees. The Ghurka pipers were playing a Scotch reel. They and the band took it
in turns to play. As soon as the band stopped the pipers struck up and
according to La Touche, they played very well too.
Most importantly, immediately after the
widespread havoc of the earthquake, the people of Shillong changed the pattern
of building stone houses to wooden houses following the Japanese formula now
known as Assam type houses. Shillong was soon
rebuilt and took on a distinctive architectural character of its own after this
event.
It appears that the reconstruction of
Shillong took place in relatively quick time. In 1906, Gurdon noted that the
town had been laid out with great taste and judgement among the pine woods at
the foot of the Shillong range, which rose to a height of 6,450 feet above the
sea[13].
It was surrounded with rolling downs, and visitors enjoyed facilities for
riding and driving, polo, golf, and cricket, which could not usually be
obtained in the hill stations of the Himalayas.
Medical work in the region commenced in 1878
with the arrival at Mawphlang of the Rev. Dr. Griffith Griffiths and his wife.
Here a medical dispensary was set up, to be followed by a hospital in 1883.
After the great earthquake of 1897, medical work was transferred to the
neighbourhood of Shillong.
The Shillong Golf Club was started in 1898 by
a group of British Civil Service Officers. At first, the Golf game in Shillong
was introduced with a 9-hole course in the Laban area. Captain Jackson was the
real architect, who had given it a new look while giving the Golf Links an
excellent layout in preserving the natural beauty of the area. The Golf links
spread out to the bordering pine forests and small hills which extended to
Mawpat and Mawlai villages on the far sides.
At the
end of the 19th Century the Brahmos had decided to start a Brahmo
Mission to propagate the Brahmo faith among the Khasis[14]. Almost all the earlier schools and mainly the girls’ schools of Shillong
were established by the Brahmos. Like
non-Brahmo Bengalees, many Assamese
and Khasis of that time felt attracted to the new ideals of the Brahmo faith. The Seng Khasi movement seems to be the product of that spirit. It is
said that the Mawkhar Brahmo Samaj
Hall was given to the Seng Khasi unit
for initially carrying out their activities. Jibon Roy and some other
enlightened Khasis had established this organisation to revive the traditional
Khasi faith and religion in the face of growing Christianity.
Christianity began to pose a
threat to the Khasi identity and culture, and so a small group of educated
social reformers formed a socio-cultural association on 23 November 1899 called
the Seng Khasi[15]. The formation of
this association has been described by one of its leaders in the following
words:
“Urged by a deep concern for the future of their
race whose social structure was being eroded, whose moral fibre weakened and
whose bond of unity disintegrated by the inroads made by foreigners, especially
the Welsh Calvinistic Mission, who mercilessly attacked, denigrated and
maligned their religion, condemned their culture, sixteen Khasi non-Christian
young men met together on the 23rd November 1899 in the Brahmo Samaj
Hall at Mawkhar in Shillong to form an association to forge and mould again its
people and to revive the moral teachings and tenets passed on from generation
to generation.”
The Seng Khasi leaders emphasise the importance of religion for
retaining social cohesion and fellowship. The constitution of the Seng Khasi states that it is an
organisation of all the Khasis who adhere to the traditional religion. These
Khasis are described as Khasi Khasis to differentiate them from the Christian
Khasis.
Babu Jeebon Roy had
initiated acquiring a place and purchased a site at Mawkhar together with a
small house on it at a cost of Rs. 430 and it was in that small house that the
present Seng Khasi Institution was
established.
At the turn of
the century the Brahmo Samaj was
well-established in the Khasi Hills and among the Khasi people. At this time
the Brahmo Samaj had also built links
with the Unitarian Church which had also appeared in the Khasi Hills. The
fairly substantial number of Brahmos
prompted the local government to declare the llth day of the month of Magh as a
holiday for Brahmos to celebrate and
partake in their annual socio-religious festival known as Maghotsav.
In 1899, the Mawkhar
Bengali Middle English School was established. At the turn of the century, the
schools were classified into four categories - High Schools, Middle Schools,
Upper Primary Schools and Lower Primary Schools. Many schools were opened by
the Christian Missionaries to make the people in Shillong literate and to improve the life style of the people[16].
After the earthquake of 12
June 1897, the European and Eurasian Girls Boarding and Day School was opened
again in the name of Shillong Government School for European and Eurasian
children upto the level of Primary School[17].
In July 1900, Miss Ellen Hughes was appointed by the Government as Head
Mistress of the Shillong Government School for European and Eurasian children.
At the end of 1904 the scholars numbered 38, of whom 13 were boarders.
The Shillong Indian Club,
which, after its restoration since the memorable earthquake of 1897, was
destroyed by fire on 12 January 1900[18].
This catastrophe involved the destruction of almost all the property (including
the valuable library) of the Club. The work of the Institution had been resumed
with books mostly presented by the members and other liberal-minded gentlemen.
The library had been located in the "Quinton Memorial Hall" just
constructed, with corrugated iron roof.
In 1901, John Murray
reported that from Chatack a boat (sometimes a steamer) took a traveller in
half a day to Companyganj, from where there was a steam tramway to Teria Ghat Dak Bungalow, at the foot of the Khasia
Hills[19].
From Teria Ghat to Cherrapunji Dak
Bungalow, on the crest of the hill, there was a good but very steep Bridle
Path. Special arrangements had to be made for ponies, but coolies could be got at Teria in the morning.
Travellers were warned that
from May to October, they should expect heavy rain on the southern face of the
Khasia Hills, and all baggage, especially bedding, should be properly protected
by waterproof covering of some sort.
The distance to Shillong was
32 miles by a good road. A tonga
could be obtained by addressing the Manager of tonga service at Shillong. There was a small Dak Bungalow at Serarim, 8 miles from Cherrapunji, and a good one
at Dumpep, half-way to Shillong. The journey from Teria to Shillong was
fatiguing, and the traveller had to rough it out and wait in some discomfort
the arrival of his luggage at the different stages. But the scenery was
magnificent and the climate very delightful. Travellers were advised that warm
wraps were absolutely necessary.
At that time, Shillong was
much more conveniently reached from the north via Dhubri, the Brahmaputra
river, and Gauhati. There was a regular service of steamers from Goalundo, in
connection with the train from Calcutta, for Chandpur, from where the Assam
Bengal Railway ran to Laksam Junction station. Here there was a very good road of
63 miles, from Gauhati to Shillong Dak
Bungalow, the headquarters of the Assam Government, and a military cantonment.
The roadside vegetation in itself made this journey a pleasure.
There was a daily tonga-pony service in 8 hours to
Shillong, but if the traveller wished to be independent, he was encouraged to
engage a tonga beforehand by
addressing the Manager of the tonga
service at Gauhati. There were small Dak
Bungalows at Barni Hat (16 miles), at Naya Bungalow (45 miles), and Borpani (54
miles). And at the half-way house, Nangpoh, there was a very comfortable
bungalow, with servants and all necessaries. After the last bungalow at
Borpani, the ascent became nearly continuous, and the pine forests gave the
landscape a European appearance. There was an almost total absence of mist, the
great drawback of Indian hill-stations. These charecteristics made Shillong one
of the most desirable hill residences in India.
A prominent Bengali to visit
Shillong was Swami Vivekananda. It
was thought that the climate and sylvan forests of Shillong would help Swami
Vivekananda regain his health after recovering from a prolonged illness. He
visited Shillong and stayed there for about 18 days in April-May 1901, at the
residence of the Zamindar of
Sunamganj at Laban. The house was demolished sometime in 2002. Only a plaque
still stands announcing his visit. The Swami
had come at the request of Sir Henry Cotton, the ‘nationalist’ Chief
Commissioner of the Province of Assam. On that occasion he delivered a
memorable speech on ‘Indian Civilization’ at the Quinton Hall.
In 1901 Khyrim (Khairam or Nongkhrem) had a
population of 31,327 and during 1903-04, its gross revenue was Rs. 12,161.
Similarly, in 1901 Mylliem (or Mulliem) had a population of 17,863 and during 1903-04,
its gross revenue was Rs. 9,619.
[1]Report on
the Great Earthquake of 12th June 1897, by R.D. Oldham,
Superintendent, Geological Survey of India, 1899. Memoirs of the Geological
Survey of India, Vol. XXIX, Branner Geological Library, Stanford University
Library.
[2]By far the most detailed account of the earthquake is contained in
Thomas Henry Digges La Touche’s field reports to Richard Dixon Oldham, then the
Acting Director at the Geological Survey of India in Calcutta.
[3]Mr. J. G. Morgan, Assistant Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Sub-Division, in a letter to the
Director General of Telegraphs, dated
l2 July 1898.
[4]The Khasis,By Major P.R.T.
Gurdon, I.A. Deputy Commissioner Eastern Bengal and Assam Commission, and
Superintendent of Ethnography in Assam.Published under the orders of the
Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1906.
[5]The History
of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Foreign Mission to the end of the year
1904, John Hughes Morris, 1910.
[6]Assam
District Gazetteers, Volume 10, B.C. Allen, Baptist Mission Press, 1906,
Harvard University, pg.34.http://www.archive.org/stream/assamdistrictga00allegoog#page/n48/mode/1up.
[7]Ibid.
[8]Philemon, E.
P. 1995, Cherrapunjee: the arena of
rain - a history and guide to Sohra & Shillong / E.P. Philemon
Spectrum Publications, Guwahati.Taylor, S.B ; op. cit., 1939, p. 9.
[10]Assam
District Gazetteers, Volume 10, B.C. Allen, Baptist Mission Press, 1906,
Harvard University, pg.36.http://www.archive.org/stream/assamdistrictga00allegoog#page/n48/mode/1up.
[11]Electronic
Supplement to Tom LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897:
Letters from the Epicenter, by Roger Bilham, University of Colorado at Boulder.
[12]Page 7 of 11. An Electronic Supplement to Bilham, R.,Tom
LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: letters from the
epicenter. Seism. Res. Lett. 79(3), 426-437, 2008. doi:
10.1785/gssrl.79.3.426.
[13]The Khasis,By Major P.R.T.
Gurdon, I.A. Deputy Commissioner Eastern Bengal and Assam Commission, and
Superintendent of Ethnography in Assam.Published under the orders of the
Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1906.
[14]Social
movements in North-East India, by Mahendra Narain Karna.
Emancipation of Women: A note on the Brahmo Samaj Movement in Shillong (S.S.
Chaudhuri, S. Chaudhuri and S.B. Chakrabarti). Collection
of papers presented at a seminar with special reference to women, youth and
religion in August 1994 at Shillong, Indus Publishing, 1998.
[15]Khasi Jaintia Folklore:
Context, Discourse and History by Soumen Sen.National Folklore Support Centre
(2004).
[16]Philemon, E.
P. 1995, Cherrapunjee: the arena of
rain - a history and guide to Sohra & Shillong / E.P. Philemon
Spectrum Publications, Guwahati.Dasgupta, N; "Education in Shillong:
A Profile", Shillong Centenary Souvenir, 1976, pg.36.
[17]Philemon, E.
P. 1995, Cherrapunjee: the arena of
rain - a history and guide to Sohra & Shillong / E.P. Philemon
Spectrum Publications, Guwahati. Ray, B. Datta; "Early Educational
Experiences in Shillong", Proceedings of N.E.I.H.A, Guwahati, 1988, pg.
338-345.
[18]The
Theosophist, Theosophical Society (Madras, India), New York Public Library,
1901, Page xxxi.
[19]A handbook for travellers in
India, Burma, and Ceylon, John Murray 1901, Harvard University, pg.277.
http://www.archive.org/details/ahandbookfortra52firgoog.
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