CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS IN GARO - A SOCIETY BASED ON MOTHERHOOD

Like the Khasis the Garos are a matrilineal people. The unit or group on which society is based is the machong which has been translated by Colonel Dalton as, 'motherhood' , which is not the same thing as a family. All members of a machong claim descent from a common ancestress or mother, descent always being through the female or the mother. The father, both amongst the Khasis and the Garos, is more or less an outsider and his family is hardly recognized by the children. Machongs are generally named after animals, rivers, caves etc., e.g. the Rangsan machong or 'the children of the bear', the dove machong, Wasra machong (after the Wasra stream) etc