The House-Warming Ritual of the Khasi-War

Teiborlang Dkhar, Dr. Shashi Punam

Abstract: House-warming ritual or ?Leh niamShad Kiew iing? among the Mawja, a ?War? sub-tribe of the Khasis. This Mawja has a unique celebration for housewarming in the form of ritual dance. The celebration starts right from the collection of the house-building materials. On the finishing day, after getting the permission from house owner, they start the celebration and it lasts for three consecutive nights. In this celebration, first, they perform a ritual to invoke God which is followed by the five kinds of folk dance. This paper is a case study focusing on the five ritual house-warming dances and the meaning behind this dance. The main objective of this paper is to describe the origin and meaning of the dance. The methodology used in this paper is unstructured interviews as well as from secondary resources.

Keywords: Meghalaya India, Khasi-Pnars, Mawja, the origin of the house warming, House design and house construction, House warming of the War, Conclusion