In March 2008 we were in Shillong, Meghalaya. We were lucky, because our guide James had learned from a friend that there would be a ceremony of creating a new Khasi clan.
The Khasi people have a matrilineal culture. The youngest daughter always inherits the ancestral property, and as they are organized in clans, the children will always remain in their motherīs clan. Many Khasis have converted to Christianity and have given up their traditional culture. But we met a family that had preserved their culture and traditional religion. In this case they had a problem, because the mother was a Nepali and therefore did not belong to a clan. And of course the children could not become members of their fatherīs clan. To solve this dilemma it was necessary to create a new clan. So a priest was invited to perform the rites. Father and mother had written down 12 names that could possibly be the name of the new clan, their first choice (a combination of parts of their original names) in the first place.
With long prayers and an egg oracle the priest asked the supreme God U Blei Nongthaw, if the proposed name was accepted by Him. In the end the priest smashed the egg and read from the shells that already the first name was agreed to. With more prayers and rituals, to which always an egg, rice wine and rice flour belonged, each family member was separately taken up in this new clan. After the girl had become a new member of the clan, she got a small basket with a knife, symbols of a woman, and the boy received a bow and arrows, symbols of a man. During the rituals the priest poured rice wine over some rice flour. The paste that resulted from that was rubbed on one finger, first of the daughter, then of the father, the mother and finally the son. The father had to eat some rice flour and drink some rice wine for himself and for his children. Laughing, he remarked that he was lucky that he did not have ten children, because then he would leave the ceremony completely drunk.