56-768: The Boro (बर'/बड़ो [bɔɽo] ), also called Bodo , are a Tibeto-Burman speaking ethnolinguistic group native to the state of Assam in India . They are a part of the greater Bodo-Kachari family of ethnolinguistic groups and are spread across northeastern India . They are concentrated mainly in the Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam, though Boros inhabit all other districts of Assam and Meghalaya . Boros were listed under both "Boro" and "Borokachari" in The Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950, and are continued to be called so in
112-517: A Central branch of Tibeto-Burman based on morphological evidence. Roger Blench and Mark Post (2011) list a number of divergent languages of Arunachal Pradesh , in northeastern India, that might have non-Tibeto-Burman substrates, or could even be non-Tibeto-Burman language isolates : Blench and Post believe the remaining languages with these substratal characteristics are more clearly Sino-Tibetan: Notes Bibliography Constitution of India Too Many Requests If you report this error to
168-537: A clean surface near a home or courtyard is prepared. Usually, worship offerings include a betel nut called a 'goi' and a betel leaf called a 'pathwi' or 'bathwi' and rice, milk, and sugar. Another important Hindu festival, the Kherai Puja, where an altar is placed in a rice field, is the most important festival of the Boros. However, caste and dowry practices are not practised by the majority of Boro Hindus, who follow
224-438: A cohesive nationality. And by 1901 the official definition of a tribe was set down by Risley. Within this formulation Northeast India was seen as a special case that required separate legislation. The elites from these social groups, including that from the Boros, used these categories for political articulation. The Tribal League , a full political organisation, emerged in 1933 as the common platform for all plains tribes of
280-868: A huge family consisting of all the Eurasian languages except the Semitic , "Aryan" ( Indo-European ) and Chinese languages. The third volume of the Linguistic Survey of India was devoted to the Tibeto-Burman languages of British India . Julius Klaproth had noted in 1823 that Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese all shared common basic vocabulary , but that Thai , Mon and Vietnamese were quite different. Several authors, including Ernst Kuhn in 1883 and August Conrady in 1896, described an "Indo-Chinese" family consisting of two branches, Tibeto-Burman and Chinese-Siamese. The Tai languages were included on
336-579: A long period, leaving their affiliations difficult to determine. The grouping of the Bai language , with one million speakers in Yunnan, is particularly controversial, with some workers suggesting that it is a sister language to Chinese. The Naxi language of northern Yunnan is usually included in Lolo-Burmese, though other scholars prefer to leave it unclassified. The hills of northwestern Sichuan are home to
392-1048: A neologism and insisted on the use of the name Kachari and pointed to the Kachari's contribution to the Assamese culture to underline their historical political legacy. Those of the Kacharis who preferred to progress socially by initiation into the Ekasarana Dharma are called Sarania Kachari and are not considered as Boros today. The period from 1919 saw the emergence of different Boro organisations: Bodo Chatra Sanmilan (Bodo Students Association), Kachari Chatra Sanmilan (Kachari Students Association), Bodo Maha Sanmilan (Greater Bodo Association), Kachari Jatiyo Sanmilan (Kachari Community Association), etc. These organisations pushed divergent means for social and political progress. For example, Bodo Chatra Sanmilan advocated giving up tribal attributes and wanted women to follow
448-688: A new Bodo Identity. Whereas earlier educated Kacharis like Rupnath had few options for social mobility other than assimilating into the Hindu lower castes, thus the Brahma religion developed by the Bodos that asserted respectable and autonomous Bodo identity while rejecting the cast dominance, and by the 1921 census the Boros began giving up their tribal names and identifying themselves as Boro by caste and language and Brahma by religion. Additional avenues, via conversion to Christianity , were already available by
504-561: A plains tribe in the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution , and have special powers in the Bodoland Territorial Region , an autonomous division ; and also as a minority people. Boro is the self-designation or autonym of the community. Boro comes from Bara-fisa , which means "son of Bara", and Bara stands for "man" or "male member" of the group. In the cognate language Kokborok , Borok means man ('k' being
560-689: A set of rules called Brahma Dharma. A majority of the Bodo people still follow Bathouism, but in censuses, they are often classified as Hindus, as their native religion has no official recognition under the Indian constitution . Christianity is followed by around 10% of the Boros and is predominantly of the Baptist denomination. The major Boro Churches associations are the Boro Baptist Convention and Boro Baptist Church Association After
616-720: A suffix for nouns) and so logically, Boro would mean man even in the Boro language . Generally, the word Boro means a man , in the wider sense Boro means a human being (but not specific to a female member of the family) in the languages used by the Bodo-Kachari peoples . The Boro language is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It belongs to the Boro–Garo group of the Tibeto-Burman languages branch of
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#1732772725465672-524: A valid subgroup in its own right. Most of the Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken in remote mountain areas, which has hampered their study. Many lack a written standard. It is generally easier to identify a language as Tibeto-Burman than to determine its precise relationship with other languages of the group. The subgroupings that have been established with certainty number several dozen, ranging from well-studied groups of dozens of languages with millions of speakers to several isolates , some only discovered in
728-574: A wealth of data on the non-literary languages of the Himalayas and northeast India, noting that many of these were related to Tibetan and Burmese. Others identified related languages in the highlands of Southeast Asia and south-west China. The name "Tibeto-Burman" was first applied to this group in 1856 by James Logan , who added Karen in 1858. Charles Forbes viewed the family as uniting the Gangetic and Lohitic branches of Max Müller 's Turanian ,
784-522: A wide group of peoples that included in the minimum the Mech and the Kacharis. This led to two type of approaches to the Boro identity: one is the notion of a wide group was picked up by Kalicharan Brahma and his peers who posited the Boro identity in opposition to the caste-Hindu Assamese , and the other one, Jadunath Khakhlari who accepted the notion for the greater Bodo race but at the same time criticised it as
840-641: Is Burmese , the national language of Myanmar, with over 32 million speakers and a literary tradition dating from the early 12th century. It is one of the Lolo-Burmese languages , an intensively studied and well-defined group comprising approximately 100 languages spoken in Myanmar and the highlands of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and southwest China . Major languages include the Loloish languages , with two million speakers in western Sichuan and northern Yunnan ,
896-510: Is a suffix in Boro language, which means folk. Some of the important clans of Boros are: Tibeto-Burman languages The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family , over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia . Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from
952-610: Is an extensive literature in Classical Tibetan dating from the 8th century. The Tibetic languages are usually grouped with the smaller East Bodish languages of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh as the Bodish group. Many diverse Tibeto-Burman languages are spoken on the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Sizable groups that have been identified are the West Himalayish languages of Himachal Pradesh and western Nepal,
1008-504: Is central to the family in that it contains features of many of the other branches, and is also located around the center of the Tibeto-Burman-speaking area. Since Benedict (1972), many languages previously inadequately documented have received more attention with the publication of new grammars, dictionaries, and wordlists. This new research has greatly benefited comparative work, and Bradley (2002) incorporates much of
1064-656: Is known from inscriptions using a variant of the Gupta script . The Tangut language of the 12th century Western Xia of northern China is preserved in numerous texts written in the Chinese-inspired Tangut script . Over eight million people in the Tibetan Plateau and neighbouring areas in Baltistan , Ladakh , Nepal , Sikkim and Bhutan speak one of several related Tibetic languages . There
1120-448: Is now accepted by most linguists, with a few exceptions such as Roy Andrew Miller and Christopher Beckwith . More recent controversy has centred on the proposed primary branching of Sino-Tibetan into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman subgroups. In spite of the popularity of this classification, first proposed by Kuhn and Conrady, and also promoted by Paul Benedict (1972) and later James Matisoff , Tibeto-Burman has not been demonstrated to be
1176-499: Is spoken in an area from eastern Nepal to western Bhutan. Most of the languages of Bhutan are Bodish, but it also has three small isolates, 'Ole ("Black Mountain Monpa"), Lhokpu and Gongduk and a larger community of speakers of Tshangla . The Tani languages include most of the Tibeto-Burman languages of Arunachal Pradesh and adjacent areas of Tibet. The remaining languages of Arunachal Pradesh are much more diverse, belonging to
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#17327727254651232-465: Is then divided into several branches, some of them geographic conveniences rather than linguistic proposals: Matisoff makes no claim that the families in the Kamarupan or Himalayish branches have a special relationship to one another other than a geographic one. They are intended rather as categories of convenience pending more detailed comparative work. Matisoff also notes that Jingpho–Nungish–Luish
1288-449: Is widely used, some historical linguists criticize this classification, as the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages lack any shared innovations in phonology or morphology to show that they comprise a clade of the phylogenetic tree . During the 18th century, several scholars noticed parallels between Tibetan and Burmese, both languages with extensive literary traditions. In the following century, Brian Houghton Hodgson collected
1344-692: The Akha language and Hani languages , with two million speakers in southern Yunnan, eastern Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, and Lisu and Lahu in Yunnan, northern Myanmar and northern Thailand. All languages of the Loloish subgroup show significant Austroasiatic influence. The Pai-lang songs, transcribed in Chinese characters in the 1st century, appear to record words from a Lolo-Burmese language, but arranged in Chinese order. The Tibeto-Burman languages of south-west China have been heavily influenced by Chinese over
1400-602: The Jingpho–Luish languages , including Jingpho with nearly a million speakers. The Brahmaputran or Sal languages include at least the Boro–Garo and Konyak languages , spoken in an area stretching from northern Myanmar through the Indian states of Nagaland , Meghalaya , and Tripura , and are often considered to include the Jingpho–Luish group. The border highlands of Nagaland , Manipur and western Myanmar are home to
1456-590: The Koch , the Ahoms , and British colonialism —the Boros resisted entry into their fiscal systems and moved slowly but continuously to avoid them. Due to the expansion of these states and the expansion of tenured peasantry, the Boros were those who finally converged close to the forested regions of the lower Himalayan foothills. In this habitat, the Boros practised shifting cultivation for self-sustenance and controlled forest products. To cultivate in this difficult terrain
1512-478: The Songlin and Chamdo languages , both of which were only described in the 2010s. New Tibeto-Burman languages continue to be recognized, some not closely related to other languages. Distinct languages only recognized in the 2010s include Koki Naga . Randy LaPolla (2003) proposed a Rung branch of Tibeto-Burman, based on morphological evidence, but this is not widely accepted. Scott DeLancey (2015) proposed
1568-673: The Tamangic languages of western Nepal, including Tamang with one million speakers, and the Kiranti languages of eastern Nepal. The remaining groups are small, with several isolates. The Newar language (Nepal Bhasa) of central Nepal has a million speakers and literature dating from the 12th century, and nearly a million people speak Magaric languages , but the rest have small speech communities. Other isolates and small groups in Nepal are Dura , Raji–Raute , Chepangic and Dhimalish . Lepcha
1624-697: The tribal identity among the Boro and other groups. The Tribal League, which included Boro leaders such as Rabi Chandra Kachari and Rupnath Brahma , succeeded in protecting the Line system in 1937 against the proposal by the Muslim League. Around 1.45 million Bodos are living in Assam, thus constituting 4.53% of the state population. A majority of them around 68.96% alone are being concentrated in Bodoland Territorial Region of Assam, numbering 1 million out of total 3.15 million population, thus constituting 31% of
1680-524: The 18th century and then slowly became less mobile; even during the colonial period, most Boros refused permanent land tenure or made no effort to secure landholding documents. When the Koch dynasty (1515–1949) consolidated its rule in the 16th century into the regions that the Boro people had settled in, it demarcated the region north of the Gohain Kamal Ali —which came to be called the Duars —as
1736-568: The 21st century but in danger of extinction. These subgroups are here surveyed on a geographical basis. The southernmost group is the Karen languages , spoken by three million people on both sides of the Burma–Thailand border. They differ from all other Tibeto-Burman languages (except Bai) in having a subject–verb–object word order, attributed to contact with Tai–Kadai and Austroasiatic languages . The most widely spoken Tibeto-Burman language
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1792-435: The Boros developed innovative low-cost irrigation systems that supported shifting cultivation. Landholding, sowing and harvesting, irrigation, and hunting were all performed collectively. As those who controlled forest based produce, they emerged as intermediaries in the trade in these as well as other goods between the plains and the hills and complex relationships developed. The Boros remained shifting cultivators at least till
1848-522: The Brahmaputra valley that included the Boro , Karbi , Mising , Tiwa and the Rabha . This formation excluded the hills tribes which were not allowed political participation. The colonial state and ethnographers' desire to define the tribal people, the need of the people to define themselves, and the earlier pre-political associations were significant contributory factors in the development of
1904-587: The Census of India documents. Boros speak the Boro language , a Boro-Garo language of the Tibeto-Burman family, which is recognised as one of twenty-two Scheduled languages of India . Over two-thirds of the people are bilingual, speaking Assamese as second language. The Boro along with other cognate groups of Bodo-Kachari peoples are prehistoric settlers who are believed to have migrated at least 3,000 years ago. Boros are mostly settled farmers, who have traditional irrigation, dong. The Boro people are recognised as
1960-658: The Simon Commission included, among others, Kalicharan Brahma and Jadav Khakhlari. The delegation submitted that Goalpara should remain with Assam and should not be included with Bengal ; and that the Boros were culturally close to the Assamese. The only human category in the pre-colonial times was jati . In the early 19th century the East India Company became interested in the 'tribal' question owing to situations arising out of insurgencies against local rulers who were seeking British protection; but over
2016-588: The Sino-Tibetan family. It is an official language of the state of Assam and the Bodoland Territorial Region of India . It is also one of the twenty-two languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India . Traditionally, Boros practised Bathouism , which is the worshiping of supreme God , known as Obonglaoree . The shijou tree (in the genus Euphorbia ) is taken as
2072-460: The associations felt particularly pressed to show that the Boros were not primitive as some other tribal groups and at the same time did not fall into the caste- Hindu hierarchy. The demand for community rights was made for the first time when at the 1929 Simon Commission the Boro leaders evoked colonial imagery of backward tribes and requested protection in the form of reserved representation in local and central legislatures. The Boro delegation to
2128-587: The basis of vocabulary and typological features shared with Chinese. Jean Przyluski introduced the term sino-tibétain (Sino-Tibetan) as the title of his chapter on the group in Antoine Meillet and Marcel Cohen 's Les Langues du Monde in 1924. The Tai languages have not been included in most Western accounts of Sino-Tibetan since the Second World War, though many Chinese linguists still include them. The link between Tibeto-Burman and Chinese
2184-454: The break-up of Kamarupa around the 12th century till the colonial times (19th century) and beyond different ethnic groups settled in different ecological regions but the constant movements and intermixing of peoples led to the development of distinctive but hybrid cultural practices. According to Saikia (2012) , even as different state systems emerged, expanded, and fell—such as the Mughals ,
2240-399: The classification of Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Burman languages, Shafer (1955) and Benedict (1972) , which were actually produced in the 1930s and 1940s respectively. Shafer's tentative classification took an agnostic position and did not recognize Tibeto-Burman, but placed Chinese (Sinitic) on the same level as the other branches of a Sino-Tibetan family. He retained Tai–Kadai (Daic) within
2296-500: The family, allegedly at the insistence of colleagues, despite his personal belief that they were not related. A very influential, although also tentative, classification is that of Benedict (1972) , which was actually written around 1941. Like Shafer's work, this drew on the data assembled by the Sino-Tibetan Philology Project, which was directed by Shafer and Benedict in turn. Benedict envisaged Chinese as
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2352-416: The first family to branch off, followed by Karen. The Tibeto-Burman family is then divided into seven primary branches: James Matisoff proposes a modification of Benedict that demoted Karen but kept the divergent position of Sinitic. Of the 7 branches within Tibeto-Burman, 2 branches (Baic and Karenic) have SVO -order languages, whereas all the other 5 branches have SOV -order languages. Tibeto-Burman
2408-424: The ideals of Sita of Ramayana . Even as self-assertive politics was on, the Boros were not ready to severe their relationship with the greater Assamese society, with even Kalicharan Brahma advocating Assamese as the medium of instruction in schools, and Boro associations seeking patronage from Assamese figures who showed sympathy for their cause. In the absence of an acknowledged past history of state formation ,
2464-478: The indigenous elite, were not exposed to education till the end of the 19th century, and it was by the early 20th century when a class of Boro/Kachari publicists finally emerged—a small Kachari elite formed in the early 20th century from among traders, school teachers and contractors. Foremost among them was Kalicharan Brahma , a trader from Goalpara who established a new monotheistic faith called " Brahma -ism" and most importantly, claimed for himself and his peers
2520-400: The late 19th century especially with the evangelical work of Sidney Endle who is also known for his tome "The Kacharis", and this formed a parallel stream of Boro articulation till much later times. Boro as a self-referential term for all Kacharis was reported by Montgomery in 1838. Bodo was a term reported by Brian Houghton Hodgson (1847) as a endonym that, he speculated, encompassed
2576-459: The most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages , which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail. Though the division of Sino-Tibetan into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches (e.g. Benedict, Matisoff)
2632-565: The newer data. George van Driem rejects the primary split of Sinitic, making Tibeto-Burman synonymous with Sino-Tibetan. The internal structure of Tibeto-Burman is tentatively classified as follows by Matisoff (2015: xxxii, 1123–1127) in the final release of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT). The classification of Tujia is difficult due to extensive borrowing. Other unclassified Tibeto-Burman languages include Basum and
2688-566: The region where non-Brahmin culture could thrive. After the Ahom kingdom consolidated its power in western Assam in the 17/18th century it made special arrangements with Bhutan to share administrative and fiscal responsibilities. But when the British banned forest lands from being used for cultivation in the last quarter of the 19th century the Boros suffered a major habitat loss since the forest lands historically used for shifting cultivation and
2744-545: The region's population. In Bodoland's capital Kokrajhar , they are in minority, forming only 25% of the town's population. The history of the Boro people can be explained from folk traditions. According to Padma Bhushan winner Suniti Kumar Chatterjee , mythologically , Boros are "the offspring of son of the Vishnu ( Baraha ) and Mother-Earth ( Basumati )" who were termed "Kiratas" during the Epic period. Aroi or Ari or Ary
2800-683: The small Ao , Angami–Pochuri , Tangkhulic , and Zeme groups of languages, as well as the Karbi language . Meithei , the main language of Manipur with 1.4 million speakers, is sometimes linked with the 50 or so Kuki-Chin languages are spoken in Mizoram and the Chin State of Myanmar. The Mru language is spoken by a small group in the Chittagong Hill Tracts between Bangladesh and Myanmar. There have been two milestones in
2856-469: The small Qiangic and Rgyalrongic groups of languages, which preserve many archaic features. The most easterly Tibeto-Burman language is Tujia , spoken in the Wuling Mountains on the borders of Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou and Chongqing. Two historical languages are believed to be Tibeto-Burman, but their precise affiliation is uncertain. The Pyu language of central Myanmar in the first centuries
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#17327727254652912-426: The small Siangic , Kho-Bwa (or Kamengic), Hruso , Miju and Digaro languages (or Mishmic) groups. These groups have relatively little Tibeto-Burman vocabulary, and Bench and Post dispute their inclusion in Sino-Tibetan. The greatest variety of languages and subgroups is found in the highlands stretching from northern Myanmar to northeast India. Northern Myanmar is home to the small Nungish group, as well as
2968-485: The source of other produce suddenly became unavailable to them. To alienate indigenous peasants from their lands was a stated colonial aim, to make them available as labour in other enterprises. Boros identity formation began in the colonial period, when the Boro elite and intelligentsia began differentiating themselves from the Assamese caste - Hindu society. The Boro, as well as many other communities as also much of
3024-452: The symbol of Bathou and worshiped. It is also claimed as the supreme god. In the Boro language, Ba means five and thou means deep. Since Boros believe in the five mighty elements of God – land, water, air, fire, and ether – the number five has become significant in the Bathou culture, which is similar to the five elements of other Asian religions. According to Bathouism, before the creation of
3080-470: The universe there was simply a great void , in which the supreme being 'Aham Guru', Anan Binan Gosai or Obonglaoree existed formlessly. Aham Guru became tired of living a formless existence and desired to live in flesh and blood. He descended on this great void with all human characteristics and created the universe. In addition to Bathouism, Boro people have also been converted to Hinduism , especially Hoom Jaygya . For this worship through fire ceremony,
3136-659: The years the East India Company/ British Raj evolved its role as saviours of the not the local rulers but the local people by offering to protect them against these rulers just as the primitive people of Africa needed protection. The notion of primitive vs non-primitive difference was further refined by the introduction of European notions of racial differences and by the census of 1872, categories such as 'aboriginal tribe' and 'semi-Hinduised aboriginals' emerged. The 1881 census proposed that India consisted of two hostile populations and thus did not possess
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