Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem, literally dance with a happy heart, is one of the most celebrated dance festivals of the Hynñiew Trep people. It marked its hundredth anniversary in the spring of 2011. According to historical records,1 it was in 1910 that Seng Khasi, whose aims are the preservation of Khasi religion and culture, formally formed a resolution to organise an annual thanks-giving dance known as Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem. Of course, before this, there was already a dance festival organised at Mawkhar since 1909, but it was more of an informal get-together than an official event. Therefore, the first enactment of Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem could be said to have taken place on 14 and 15 April 1911 at the picturesque green slope by the winding and then limpid stream of Wah Umkhrah. The spot was then called Lum Weiking after (or so the story goes) a whirlpool (now no more) swirling at the bottom of the slope. It was from the whirlpool that Shad Suk Mynsiem—now evolved into a three-day extravaganza—got its other name, Shad Weiking or Weiking Dance. But this is not the only reason Shad Suk Mynsiem has also been called Shad Weiking. As will be shown, the name ‘Weiking’ is actually a description of the dance—its circular pattern and eddying motions.
But though its performance at the Weiking Ground started in 1911, that was not when it really began: that was merely its renaissance. This renaissance was in keeping with Seng Khasi’s objectives ‘To advance the culture of the Khasi people’ and ‘To express man’s thankfulness and joy to God, the Creator, for His protection and His blessings throughout the year’.2 The true beginnings of Shad Suk Mynsiem were in the dim past of mythic times, that is, at the very beginning of the history of the race.
Aristotle maintained that dancing was one of the oldest imitative arts known to man, imitating ‘character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement’. 3 As demonstrated by the Khasi scholar A. S. Khongphai,4 Aristotle’s statement is borne out by the action of a child just beginning to stand. If the child is held under the armpits, it will immediately start moving rhythmically, as if to express its joy and gratitude for all the blessings it has received. And so it is with man; he dances to articulate his joy and happiness and acknowledge his gratefulness to God for all he has given him. And so it was with the ancient Hynñiew Treps, forefathers of the Khasi people.
The first reference to the dance of the happy hearts could be found in one of the earliest khanatangs, ‘sacred myths’, of the Khasis.5 This khanatang reveals that, in the beginning, there was nothing but a vast emptiness on earth. God had created only two beings—Ramew, the guardian spirit of the earth, and her husband Basa, who later was identified with Ryngkew, the patron spirit of villages. The two were blessed by God, after due entreaties by Ramew, with five children that people have come to call elemental forces. The Sun was their first daughter, followed by their only son, the Moon, and three other daughters, Water, Wind, and Fire. Ramew was delighted to see her children grow up and prosper. She was particularly delighted to see how they worked at reshaping the world into a pleasant land, giving life to tall trees and beautiful flowers everywhere. And yet, amidst all that plenty and peace, there seemed to be something wanting. That such loveliness should go untended and uncared for! That such plenty should benefit no one! It was not right, she felt. Ramew turned to God again, who finally elected, through the Dorbar Bneng, the council of heaven, seven of the sixteen clans living in heaven to descend to earth to till the land, to populate the wilderness, to rule and govern and above all, to be the conscientious caretakers of all life and all creations. And from then on, they would be known as Ki Hynñiew Trep, or the Seven Huts, the Seven Families, the Seven Clans, who would later become the ancestors of the seven sub-tribes of the Khasi people.
God, who had provided for happiness on earth, endowing its soil with riches and the fruits of plenty through the children of Ramew, then made a Covenant with the Hynñiew Treps. As part of the Covenant, he gave them Lai Hukum, Three Commandments, including ka tip briew tip Blei (the knowledge of man, the knowledge of God), ka tip kur tip kha (the knowledge of one’s maternal and paternal relations) and ka kamai ïa ka hok (the earning of virtue). As a token of the Covenant, God also planted a divine tree on a sacred mount called Lum Sohpet Bneng, which served as Ka Jingkieng Ksiar, the golden ladder, between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.
The Covenant declared that so long as the seven clans adhered to the Three Commandments, they could come and go as they pleased between heaven and earth, via the golden ladder at Lum Sohpet Bneng, the mountain of heaven’s navel. The mountain would act as an umbilical cord between God and man, for even as a child is bonded with the mother through this thread of flesh and blood, so also is man bonded with God.
But this ideal state of happiness and tranquillity did not last long. It is not in man to be content with happiness alone. Like everything else in this world, he is essentially two-edged, capable at once of great good and great evil. Soon, he began to tire of following the diktats of God; he wanted to branch out on his own, to determine his life independently, according to his own instincts and inclinations. In this manner, he strayed away from the Three Commandments. Greed, the mother of all evils, sat supreme in his heart, and in his craving for power and pelf, he trampled on the rights of others. He began to cheat, to swindle, to steal and even kill to gain what his avaricious heart desired. Respect for fellow men, through which alone man could approach God, was completely forgotten, as men tried their best to outwit each other for the sake of wealth, their new god.
God, on his part, was vexed by man’s rebelliousness. Sorely grieved that man had chosen to ignore and slight the Covenant, he broke off all ties and forever closed the golden ladder to heaven through Sohpet Bneng. Away from the remaining nine clans in heaven and bereft of God’s guidance and blessing, the Hynñiew Treps remained helpless orphans on earth amidst a new kind of darkness that bred all sorts of evil in the minds of men. Their Golden Age had ended.
And that was not all. As evidence of his displeasure, God made an oak tree on another sacred mountain grow to a monstrous height and width so that its shadow threw whole portions of the earth into pitch darkness. The perpetual darkness caused by the branches of Diengïei, the name given to this tree of gloom, made standing crops wilt and threatened to destroy all plant life while making man himself vulnerable, a prey to all sorts of evils.
Man panicked. But as is characteristic of him, instead of turning inwards to examine his soul, conceding his mistakes and missteps, and approaching God with a repentant heart, he proudly sought his own solution to the ever-worsening crisis that threatened his very existence. It was only when, in his desperation, he was ready to listen to one of the lowliest of creatures, the little wren called Phreit, that God permitted him into the mystery of Diengïei, which, as the little bird had put it, ‘... did not have the power to heal itself, though it did have the power to grow with the swiftness of a bird’s flight’. With the help of Phreit, man learnt how the Tiger had healed the gashes on the trunk by licking over them.
Tiger (a symbol of all that was evil) wanted Diengïei to stand as the expanding eclipse it caused made hunting easier. In fact, he was looking forward to a time when the entire world was blanketed in darkness so that he could start preying on man too. To foil the evil designs of Tiger, Phreit advised the men to fortify the portion of the trunk they had hewn by placing knives and axes against it each night. This shredded the Tiger’s tongue and eventually enabled man to cut down the tree of gloom.
After the fall of Diengïei and the return of light to earth, there was much rejoicing among earth’s inhabitants: men, animals, birds and all other living creatures. It was to celebrate the event that man prepared a huge dancing ground and organised a dance festival participated by all manner of creatures, including heavenly beings like the Sun and the Moon. And that was how the dance of the happy hearts was born.
But at that time, only the dancing ground had anything in common with the dance as it is today. The ground was circular and cleared of all obstacles, and to make dancing easy, the organisers covered it with pure sand. The dancers, however, did not follow any particular pattern. Being a joyous festival of diverse creatures, it was very much a chaotic affair, and each dancer danced according to their inclinations and style. It was only much later that the dance became a human-specific celebration.
The happiness brought by the fall of Diengïei did not last very long. The Sun and the Moon were insulted by the motley gathering for arriving late at the festival when all the others had abandoned the arena and were engaged in other forms of pleasure. Enraged by the unwarranted insults, brother and sister vowed never to show their faces to the world again. The Sun, who was especially stung by the evil insinuation that she and her brother were behaving like husband and wife, went to hide in Krem Lamet Krem Latang, the cave of the sanctified leaf, which was somewhere beyond the valley of death on the way to the house of God.
From that day, the whole world was thrown, once again, into perpetual night. Man was stupefied. To experience a second darkness so soon after the harrowing first, filled him with dread and there was much fear and shedding of tears among the other earthlings. Man convened Ka Dorbar ki Laiphew Jingthaw, the council of diverse creatures, to choose someone from among them to bring the Sun back into their midst. The first choice fell on the Elephant, the largest and strongest. But after the Elephant, who personified brute strength and reflected man’s pride in his own strength had refused to go to Krem Lamet Krem Latang, and after the Hornbill, cocksure and proud of his good looks and accomplishments, had failed in his task, it was eventually the Rooster, then a desperate featherless wretch lying low among small plants and dark holes, who finally succeeded in persuading the Sun to return to earth.
The Rooster, now invested with the forked tail of the Drongo and cloaked from head to foot in finery and warm feathers bright with all sorts of brilliant colours, returned to earth in triumph, and amidst a thunderous reception, the victorious fowl was awarded the title of U Saw Shyrtong, or the Purple Crest. But glory did not make the Rooster forget that it was his humility, his self-abasement before the goddess, which had carried the day for him. So he remembered his pledge to the Sun, and when dawn came, he shook his shield and sounded his bugle thrice at regular intervals. And then, like the lifting of a veil, darkness was removed, and light filtered into the world once more, filling it with the joy of living.
But again, this happiness and tranquillity did not last long. When U Syiem Lakriah, the leader of the Seven Clans, grew old and infirm, his powers began to wane, and his hold over ki laiphew jingthaw, the diverse species of creation, began to fail. U Thlen, who represented the spirit world in his council of ministers, was the first to rebel against him. Thlen had always been envious of Lakriah and the Hynñiew Treps. He believed he was superior to them in every way and much more deserving than them to rule.
One day, during an open session of Ka Dorbar ki Laiphew Jingthaw, the council of diverse creatures, he openly contested the sanctity of the Covenant. To everyone’s shock and horror, he proclaimed:
‘From this day forth, I will cease to live by the Covenant made between Ka Mei Hukum and the Hynñiew Treps. I find that living in the knowledge of man and God, in the knowledge of one’s maternal and paternal relations, or earning virtue, does not suit my purposes. From now on, my sustenance is humankind; my earning is pelf.’
From then on, virtue ceased to reign, happiness ceased to exist, and chaos sat upon the throne of innocence. The animals, too, clamoured for their interests, and the divine word was totally forsaken.
Before things could get out of hand, Ka Mei Hukum intervened and called for a council of diverse creatures to decide the fair share of God’s blessings for each being. In the council, she directed man, the spirits and the animals to appear before her after ‘nine days and nine nights’. The animals, however, impatient to know of their portion, went to her after only seven days and seven nights had elapsed. Seeing that they had violated her directive, she gave them an inferior share, comprising great strength but little ingenuity. She reserved for man, who had acted according to her wishes, the superior portion, comprising great ingenuity, though only a little strength. Ka Mei Hukum also took away the Spoken Word from the animals and ended their verbal interaction with mankind forever. And Thlen, who did not turn up at the council, was condemned to live in the wilderness as a demon, who, later, true to his vow, fed on human flesh.
During that parting of ways, the animals sought to destroy the Hynñiew Treps with their brute strength. But the Hynñiew Treps, who still retained their link with Ka Mei Hukum through the Covenant, pleaded with her to come to their aid. Ka Mei Hukum appeared before them and taught them how to make ka tiar ka sumar, the weapon the protection, to defend themselves from animals. These were the names then given to the bow and arrow, which later came to be known as tieh kpong and nam pliang, respectively.
Thus, with the help of the bow and arrow, man gained the upper hand over all animals, and to commemorate this victory over the animals, he organised a mammoth dance festival, inviting everyone from the four corners of Ri Hynñiew Trep. This was the second edition of the great dance of the happy hearts, but in human terms, it was also the first. It was then that the dancing pattern, which has continued to these days, was first drawn. The dance being a victorious celebration, it was thought appropriate to fashion the form in such a manner that it would also serve as a reminder to all future generations of that epic struggle between man and the animals. Accordingly, after much deliberation, the movement of a weiking or ‘whirlpool’ was adopted as the most fitting pattern to express at once the ideas of unity, peace, and security associated with the dance, which alone could ensure the survival and prosperity of the race.
A description of this prototype model is also found in the myth of Ka Shad u Laiphew Mrad (The Animal Dance Festival).6
According to this myth, a long, long time ago, when animals were not the savages they are now, they are said to have lived in a peaceful community, fraternising in one language, even though they could no longer communicate with man. There was no hostility or quarrel between them; the Tiger did not hunt the Goat, the Lion waited on the Cow, and the Elephant communed with the Ant ...
In that paradise-like state were three friends who never parted company—Shakyllia the Grass-babbler, Diengkhied the Porcupine, and Risang the Squirrel. One day, the three friends, while on a tour of the neighbouring countryside, came upon a circular dancing ground where humans celebrated their annual spring festival. Once or twice, they had been lucky enough to witness the celebrations. They had seen
maidens clad in silk and velvet and adorned with sparkling ornaments, gliding in a slow and solemn dance around the centre of the ground, their gold and silver crowns glinting in the sun with each movement. Young men had pranced in a ring around them, their silver swords flashing, their silver quivers jingling. And around them had stood a multitude of cheering, admiring onlookers. What a charming sight it had been!
The dance pattern described in the story is precisely the pattern of Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem today. Unmarried girls, dressed in the finery of silk and velvet, adorned with a gold or silver crown and gold and silver ornaments inlaid with precious stones, can be seen shuffling slowly in the middle of a circular field. Around them are the men, mostly young, dressed as princes and armed with silver swords and quivers of silver arrows, dancing energetically around them. This demonstrates the Khasi idea of unity between men and women whose roles are clearly defined. The women in the inner circle signify their role as the custodians of the home, and the men forming a parapet of braves around them signify their role as protectors. This protective role is clearly spelt out in the three silver arrows male dancers carry in their silver quivers. These arrows are used as a reminder both of man’s lordship over animals and the qualities of manhood that he must carry, and they represent weapons to defend one’s self, one’s family and clan, and the territorial rights of one’s village, raij (province), and hima (state).
The Shad Suk Mynsiem at Weiking Ground, Shillong.
Once these roles are fulfilled sincerely, there is peace all around. The women have nothing to worry about when their men are so joyfully ready to sacrifice their all for their hearths and homes. They are in an absolutely tranquil state, as is reflected in their slow and sedate dancing. Ka Shad Suk Mynsiem is, therefore, not only a celebratory festival to give thanks to the Creator for the protection and blessings received throughout the year but can also offer profound lessons for anyone willing to learn.
References
1 These records can be found at the office of Seng Khasi Kmie, Mawkhar, Shillong.
2 Roy, Hipshon, editor. Khasi Heritage. (Shillong:Seng Khasi, 1979). i.
3 Aristotle. ‘Poetics’, Makers of Literary Criticism, ed. B. Rajan & A. G. George, (Asia Publishing House, 1984),24.
4 Khongphai, A. S. ‘Shad Suk Mynsiem Dance’. Khasi Heritage, ed. Hipshon Roy, (Shillong:Seng Khasi, 1979),129.
5 Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing. Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends. (New Delhi:Penguin, 2007),1-4.
6 Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing. Funeral Nights. (New Delhi: Westland/Context, 2021),50.
Dr Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, poet, writer, and translator, and writes in both Khasi and English. Nongkynrih works as Reader in the Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. He ws awarded a ‘Fellowship for Outstanding Artists 2000’ by the Government of India. He also received the first North-East Poetry Award in 2004 from the North-East India Poetry Council, Tripura. He bagged the Bangalore Review June Jazz Award (2021) and the Sparrow Literary Award (2022). He teaches literature at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Recently he was awarded the 2024 Shakti Bhatt Literary Prize for his contribution to Indian literature
