Tribal Culture Faith History and Literature

This book will play a pioneering role towards construction of a systematic history of the various Tribes of northeast India. The study is based on oral historical literature and other sources collected by conducting a massive survey in more than one hundred villages located on India-Myanmar Boarder and the entire tract constituting the meeting point of the three great civilizations of India, China and the South-East Asia. The location of strategic Pangsau Pass in the region which facilitated the migration of the Kshatriya Tribes of India towards the South East Asia, and China and also the migration of the Tai Ahoms, Tangsas, the Tutsas, the Noctes, etc. towards Indian mainland from Southeast Asian region further adds to the significance of this work. The present work is divided in ten sections. The sections I and II give a comprehensive account on the geography, and political history of the Tirap Valley and the Patkai region. The third section gives an account of Tribal Mythologies and Cosmogony. The fourth section discusses the history of the migration of Indians to South-East Asia from thee age of Bhagwan Parshurama to the 600 CE and the migration of Kshatriya Tribes of South-East Asis, China and Mangolia to India from the early Medieval period and onwards. The fifth section deals with villages and the village society, its structure and the village administration. The sixth section discusses the tribal (the Tangsa) economy i.e. agricultural production and the seasons, farm technology, cropping pattern, etc. The seventh section discusses various stages in the life of an individual i.e. Birth, Marriage, Divorce, Death etc. and the ceremonies and rituals. Section VIII is devoted to tribal culture and religion whereas Section IX gives a detailed account of the Tangsa Pantheon along with the gods/goddesses worshipped by the Tangsas and the whole study is summarized in Section X.

Renowned social scientist and Senior Fellow of the Ministry of Culture, Union Government of India, Narayan Singh Rao, M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. (J.N.U.), was born and brought up in Udaipur, Mewar (Rajasthan). He had great expertise on Economic History of Medieval India and tribal culture and history of North-East India. He started his career from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi as researcher at the Centre For Historical Studies and Centre for the Study of Regional Development in the School of Social Sciences and got opportunities to work with National Labour Institute, Noida, South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, Department of Higher Education, Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh, Mewar Institute of Management, Ghaziabad and a host of academic as well as development organizations. He was awarded Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Fellowships by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), New Delhi. He successfully executed several major research and action-oriented projects supported by the government and non-government organizations. He organized and attended a number of national and international seminars. A large number of research papers authored by him have been published in reputed national and international journals. Besides this volume his major research work is entitled Rural Economy and Society. He is also member of Indian History Congress, North-East India History Association and the Board of Under-graduate Studies, Arunachal University, Itanagar. The main areas of his interests are socio-economic and cultural history of Medieval Rajasthan and the tribes of North-East India. He is also pursuing further research studies on the history and culture of the North East India as well as the South-East Asian countries.