Khageswari Baruah is a Senior  Lecturer, Sivsagar College, Jaisagar. The article was a paper  presented in a VKIC organised seminar on Traditional Systems - Change and Continuity at Dibrugarh, 2003. Translated  from Assamese by Stuti Goswami, P.G. IV Semester, Dept. of English, Cotton College, Guwahati.