The Khasi flood tradition and the lost bridge or separation of peoples

Record summary

Khasi oral traditions recorded by nineteenth-century missionaries and ethnographers include accounts of ancestral origins, separation, and catastrophic environmental change. Some versions have been compared with flood traditions because water, lost connections, and the survival or dispersal of communities structure the narrative. The material is important for studying how a living oral tradition was reframed through Christian and colonial categories. Researchers should identify the Khasi term, collector, informant, and locality, since ‘Khasi flood myth’ can refer to several different narratives in modern secondary writing.