110-532: Bodo–Kacharis (also Kacharis or Bodos ) is a name used by anthropologists and linguists to define a collection of ethnic groups living predominantly in the Northeast Indian states of Assam , Tripura , Meghalaya and West Bengal . These peoples are speakers of either Bodo–Garo languages or Assamese . Some Tibeto-Burman speakers who live closely in and around the Brahmaputra valley, such as
220-504: A host of men, a band of comrades as well as a swarm or flock of animals. In Classical Greek , the word took on a meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group", mostly translated as " nation , tribe, a unique people group"; only in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further narrowed to refer to "foreign" or " barbarous " nations in particular (whence the later meaning "heathen, pagan"). In
330-708: A Sanskritised approach to the language in his Asamiya Bhaxar Byakaran ("Grammar of the Assamese Language") (1859, 1873). Barua's approach was adopted by the Asamiya Bhasa Unnati Sadhini Sabha (1888, "Assamese Language Development Society") that emerged in Kolkata among Assamese students led by Lakshminath Bezbaroa . The Society published a periodical Jonaki and the period of its publication, Jonaki era , saw spirited negotiations on language standardisation. What emerged at
440-421: A focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "... categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact, and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in
550-467: A host of other ethnic groups that fall under the Kachari umbrella. Eventually the appellation kachari was retained only by those groups that have been fully integrated into Assamese society, such as Sarania Kachari , Sonowal Kachari , whereas others who were formerly called Kacharis have assumed ethnonyms, such as Boro or Dimasa . Kachari is pronounced as Kachhāri or Kossāri. The origin of
660-503: A mercurial character. Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization." This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity
770-510: A narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with some groups having mixed genetic ancestry. By way of assimilation , acculturation , amalgamation , language shift , intermarriage , adoption , and religious conversion , individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be divided into subgroups or tribes , which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from
880-609: A period when the Prakrit was at the cusp of differentiating into regional languages. The spirit and expressiveness of the Charyadas are today found in the folk songs called Deh-Bicarar Git . In the 12th-14th century works of Ramai Pundit ( Sunya Puran ), Boru Chandidas ( Krishna Kirtan ), Sukur Mamud ( Gopichandrar Gan ), Durllava Mullik ( Gobindachandrar Git ) and Bhavani Das ( Mainamatir Gan ) Assamese grammatical peculiarities coexist with features from Bengali language . Though
990-519: A preoccupation with scientists, theologians, and the public. Religious institutions asked questions about whether there had been multiple creations of races (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference and found that white Europeans were superior. The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of attributing
1100-412: A process known as ethnogenesis, a period of several generations of endogamy resulting in common ancestry (which is then sometimes cast in terms of a mythological narrative of a founding figure ); ethnic identity is reinforced by reference to "boundary markers" – characteristics said to be unique to the group which set it apart from other groups. Ethnicity theory argues that race
1210-563: A ruling clan among themselves who are termed as Hasnusa. Some Dimasa scholars opined that they were also known as Hasnusa at some point of time in History. Among Chutias , Burok means noble/great men. The Chutias who were thought to be healthy and strong was termed as Burok and took up the administrative and military roles in the Chutia kingdom. Even the Matak king Sarbananda Singha belonged to
SECTION 10
#17327764801661320-472: A slightly different set of "schwa deletion" rules for its modern standard and early varieties. In the modern standard / ɔ / is generally deleted in the final position unless it is (1) /w/ ( ৱ ); or (2) /j/ ( য় ) after higher vowels like /i/ ( ই ) or /u/ ( উ ); though there are a few additional exceptions. The rule for deleting the final / ɔ / was not followed in Early Assamese . The initial / ɔ /
1430-519: A stand-in for "paganism" in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an "ethnic character" (first recorded 1953). The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Depending on context, the term nationality may be used either synonymously with ethnicity or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state). The process that results in emergence of an ethnicity
1540-420: A vowel length distinction, but have a wide set of back rounded vowels . In the case of Assamese, there are four back rounded vowels that contrast phonemically, as demonstrated by the minimal set: কলা kola [kɔla] ('deaf'), ক'লা kóla [kola] ('black'), কোলা kwla [kʊla] ('lap'), and কুলা kula [kula] ('winnowing fan'). The near-close near-back rounded vowel /ʊ/ is unique in this branch of
1650-675: Is water in Austroasiatic. The Kacharis were the first people to rear silkworms and produce silk material and were considered to be associated with ashu rice culture in Assam before the advent of sali (transplanted rice) was introduced from the Gangetic plains. These peoples aren't culturally uniform. Bodo, Deori, Tripuri and Reang follow patrilineal descent, Garo, Rabha and Koch follow Matrilineal descent, Dimasa follows both bilateral descent, and Tiwa follows ambilineal descent. Some of
1760-537: Is a neutral blend of the eastern variety without its distinctive features. This core is further embellished with Goalpariya and Kamrupi idioms and forms. Assamese is native to Assam . It is also spoken in states of Arunachal Pradesh , Meghalaya and Nagaland . The Assamese script can be found in of present-day Burma . The Pashupatinath Temple in Nepal also has inscriptions in Assamese showing its influence in
1870-443: Is a social category and is only one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Other criteria include "religion, language, 'customs', nationality, and political identification". This theory was put forward by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of "culture". This theory was preceded by more than 100 years during which biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism
1980-423: Is called ethnogenesis , a term in use in ethnological literature since about 1950. The term may also be used with the connotation of something unique and unusually exotic (cf. "an ethnic restaurant", etc.), generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived after the dominant population of an area was established. Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership,
2090-420: Is called ethnogenesis. Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although historians and cultural anthropologists have documented that many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention. Ethnic groups can form a cultural mosaic in a society. That could be in a city like New York City or Trieste , but also
2200-582: Is derived from the Tibetan Hbrogpa . The umbrella name "Bodo", denoting the umbrella group, is resisted by numerically smaller groups such as the Dimasas. Unlike Hodgson's assumption, Boro is no longer considered as the "core" of the Boro–Garo languages. Therefore, it has been suggested that the whole group should not be called "Bodo". The term Kachari has been used through much of history to denote
2310-641: Is generally assumed—which suggests that when the Indo-Aryan centers formed in the 4th–5th centuries CE, there were substantial Austroasiatic speakers that later accepted the Indo-Aryan vernacular . Based on the 7th-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang 's observations, Chatterji (1926) suggests that the Indo-Aryan vernacular differentiated itself in Kamarupa before it did in Bengal, and that these differences could be attributed to non-Indo-Aryan speakers adopting
SECTION 20
#17327764801662420-565: Is mostly used by mixing of modern day assamese and the Moran words which prevail have great similarities with Bodo and dimasa language. They were also known as Habungiya or Hasa where "Ha" means soil and "Sa" means son or Son of soil. The Deoris (who were priests by profession) also have the Burok clan among them. They call themselves Jimochayan (children of the sun) and have maintained their traditional culture and language. Historically, they lived in
2530-786: Is never deleted. Modern Assamese uses the Assamese script . In medieval times, the script came in three varieties: Bamuniya , Garhgaya , and Kaitheli/Lakhari , which developed from the Kamarupi script . It very closely resembles the Mithilakshar script of the Maithili language , as well as the Bengali script . There is a strong literary tradition from early times. Examples can be seen in edicts, land grants and copper plates of medieval kings. Assam had its own manuscript writing system on
2640-655: Is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no "ethnics"; there are only "ethnic relations". In the U.S., the OMB says the definition of race as used for the purposes of the US Census is not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference". Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by
2750-442: Is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation. Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that include common culture, common language, common history and common territory), choosing instead to define ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories determined by
2860-455: Is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation , particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism . Ethnicity may be construed as an inherited or societally imposed construct. Ethnic membership tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage , ancestry, origin myth , history , homeland , language , dialect , religion, mythology , folklore , ritual , cuisine , dressing style , art , or physical appearance . Ethnic groups may share
2970-431: Is the belief that some races, specifically white Europeans in western versions of the paradigm, are biologically superior and other races, specifically non-white races in western debates, are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify enslavement of African Americans and genocide of Native Americans in a society that was officially founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to be
3080-536: Is the closely related group of eastern dialects of Bengali (although a contrast with dental stops remains in those dialects). / r / is normally realised as [ ɹ ] or [ ɻ ] . Assamese is unusual among Eastern Indo-Aryan languages for the presence of /x/ (realised as [ x ] or [ χ ] , depending on the speaker and speech register), due historically to the MIA sibilants' lenition to /x/ (initially) and /h/ (non-initially). The use of
3190-459: Is unique in the group of Indo-Aryan languages as it lacks a dental-retroflex distinction among the coronal stops as well as the lack of postalveolar affricates and fricatives. Historically, the dental and retroflex series merged into alveolar stops . This makes Assamese resemble non-Indic languages of Northeast India (such as Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan languages ). The only other language to have fronted retroflex stops into alveolars
3300-558: Is written in the Assamese alphabet , an abugida system, from left to right, with many typographic ligatures . Assamese was designated as a classical Indian language by the Government of India on 3 October 2024 on account of its antiquity and literary traditions. Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though the exact nature of its origin and growth is not clear yet. It is generally believed that Assamese and
3410-1110: The Arabic script by Assamese Muslims . One example is Tariqul Haq Fi Bayane Nurul Haq by Zulqad Ali (1796–1891) of Sivasagar , which is one of the oldest works in modern Assamese prose. In the early 1970s, it was agreed upon that the Roman script was to be the standard writing system for Nagamese Creole . The following is a sample text in Assamese of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights : Assamese in Assamese alphabet Assamese in WRA Romanisation Assamese in SRA Romanisation Assamese in Common Romanisation Assamese in IAST Romanisation Assamese in
Bodo–Kachari people - Misplaced Pages Continue
3520-463: The Caribbean and South Asia . Max Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct ) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolize power and status. This
3630-737: The Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts of India is linguistically closer to Assamese, though the speakers identify with the Bengali culture and the literary language. In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages , Assamese evolved at least before the 7th century CE from the middle Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit . Its sister languages include Angika , Bengali , Bishnupriya Manipuri , Chakma , Chittagonian , Hajong , Rajbangsi , Maithili , Rohingya and Sylheti . It
3740-532: The International Phonetic Alphabet Gloss Translation The Assamese language has the following characteristic morphological features: Verbs in Assamese are negated by adding /n/ before the verb, with /n/ picking up the initial vowel of the verb. For example: Assamese has a large collection of classifiers , which are used extensively for different kinds of objects, acquired from
3850-593: The Kamatapuri lects derive from the Kamarupi dialect of Eastern Magadhi Prakrit though some authors contest a close connection of Assamese with Magadhi Prakrit. The Indo-Aryan, which appeared in the 4th–5th century in Assam, was probably spoken in the new settlements of Kamarupa —in urban centers and along the Brahmaputra river—surrounded by Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic communities. Kakati's (1941) assertion that Assamese has an Austroasiatic substrate
3960-456: The Mising people and Karbi people , are not considered Bodo–Kachari. Many of these peoples have formed early states in the late Medieval era of Indian history ( Chutia Kingdom , Dimasa Kingdom , Koch dynasty , Twipra Kingdom ) and came under varying degrees of Sanskritisation . The speakers of Tibeto–Burman are considered to have reached the Brahmaputra valley via Tibet and settled in
4070-455: The New World were multi-ethnic from the onset, as they were formed as colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations. In recent decades, feminist scholars (most notably Nira Yuval-Davis) have drawn attention to the fundamental ways in which women participate in the creation and reproduction of ethnic and national categories. Though these categories are usually discussed as belonging to
4180-478: The velar nasal (the English ng in sing ) extensively. While in many languages, the velar nasal is commonly restricted to preceding velar sounds, in Assamese it can occur intervocalically. This is another feature it shares with other languages of Northeast India , though in Assamese the velar nasal never occurs word-initially. Eastern Indic languages like Assamese, Bengali, Sylheti , and Odia do not have
4290-645: The 15th and subsequent centuries. In these writings the 13th/14th-century archaic forms are no longer found. Sankardev pioneered a prose-style of writing in the Ankia Naat . This was further developed by Bhattadeva who translated the Bhagavata Purana and Bhagavad Gita into Assamese prose. Bhattadev's prose was classical and restrained, with a high usage of Sanskrit forms and expressions in an Assamese syntax; and though subsequent authors tried to follow this style, it soon fell into disuse. In this writing
4400-569: The 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of "peculiar to a tribe, race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The sense of "different cultural groups", and in American English "tribal, racial, cultural or national minority group " arises in the 1930s to 1940s, serving as a replacement of the term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to its association with ideological racism . The abstract ethnicity had been used as
4510-694: The Assamese language developed as a creole and pidgin language known as Nefamese and Nagamese creole which has become a lingua franca in Nagaland. It has over 15 million native speakers according to Ethnologue . Nefamese , an Assamese-based pidgin in Arunachal Pradesh , was used as the lingua franca till it was replaced by Hindi ; and Nagamese , an Assamese-based Creole language , continues to be widely used in Nagaland . The Kamtapuri language of Rangpur division of Bangladesh and
Bodo–Kachari people - Misplaced Pages Continue
4620-509: The Bara (the great one). The Mech are found in both Assam and Bengal. Hodgson (1847) wrote as "Mech is name imposed by strangers. This people call themselves as Bodo. Thus, Bodo is their proper designation" They speak mainly the Boro language J.D Anderson wrote, "In Assam proper Hindus call them Kacharis, In Bengal they are known as Meches. Their own name for the race is Boro or Bodo." Dimasas have
4730-460: The Buranjis is nearly modern with some minor differences in grammar and with a pre-modern orthography. The Assamese plural suffixes ( -bor , -hat ) and the conjunctive participles ( -gai : dharile-gai ; -hi : pale-hi , baril-hi ) become well established. The Buranjis, dealing with statecraft, was also the vehicle by which Arabic and Persian elements crept into the language in abundance. Due to
4840-545: The Burok Chutia clan. Surnames like Bora, Borha, Borua have their origins in the Chutia kingdom and are related to Bara/Bodo/Buruk. There is mention of Manik Chandra Barua, Dhela Bora, Borhuloi Barua as commanders of Chutia army. The Morans had their own kingdom before the arrival of Tai people and called their leader/chief as Bodousa (great son) where 'sa' means child or son in Moran language . The present day Moran language
4950-473: The EIC officials in an intense debate in the 1850s to reinstate Assamese. Among the local personalities Anandaram Dhekial Phukan drew up an extensive catalogue of medieval Assamese literature (among other works) and pioneered the effort among the natives to reinstate Assamese in Assam. Though this effort was not immediately successful the administration eventually declared Assamese the official vernacular in 1873 on
5060-585: The Gauda-Kamarupa stage is generally accepted and partially supported by recent linguistic research, it has not been fully reconstructed. A distinctly Assamese literary form appeared first in the 13th-century in the courts of the Kamata kingdom when Hema Sarasvati composed the poem Prahlāda Carita . In the 14th-century, Madhava Kandali translated the Ramayana into Assamese ( Saptakanda Ramayana ) in
5170-610: The Greeks. Herodotus (8.144.2) gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen ,
5280-651: The Kokborok people in Tripura and Bangladesh. This is in contrast to popular and socio-political usage, where Bodo denotes the politically dominant sub-group—the Boros —in the Bodoland Territorial Region . The term Bodo generally stands for man in some of the cognate languages (Boro: Boro ; Tripuri: Borok ) but not in others (Garo: Mande ; Karbi: Arlen ). According to historians, the word "Bodo"
5390-480: The Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic populations of pre-Kamarupa, Kamarupa and post-Kamarupa kingdoms and polities of Assam, a proposition that other linguists find compelling, The Proto-Boro–Garo first as a lingua franca used for communication across the various linguistic communicates of the region and its striking simplicity and transparency reflect a period when it was widely spoken by communities for whom it
5500-578: The Tibeto-Burman communities of Northeast India harbour significant population that were originally Austroasiatic speaking—for example, genetic studies show presence of O2a-M95, a haplogroup associated with AA populations, among the Garos . The Boro people, also called Bodo, are found concentrated in the duars regions, north of Goalpara and Kamrup . The origin of Kachari term was unknown to Boro themselves, but known to others. They call themselves as Boro, Bada, Bodo, Barafisa. Barafisa translated as Children of
5610-676: The Tiwa is their division into two sub-groups, Hill Tiwa and Plains Tiwas, displaying contrasting cultural features. The hill Tiwas speak Tiwa and follows matrilineality while the plain Tiwa who are more numerous in number speak Assamese and adhere to a patrilineal form of society. The Tripuris are the inhabitants of the Tripura Kingdom. The Tripuri people through Manikya dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Tripura . The Tripuri , Chutia , Koch , and Dimasa had established powerful kingdoms in
SECTION 50
#17327764801665720-525: The United States that the ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of the white population and did take into account the unique experiences of non-whites in the United States. While Park's theory identified different stages in the immigration process – contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilation – it did so only for white communities. The ethnicity paradigm neglected
5830-994: The added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states. According to Paul James , formations of identity were often changed and distorted by colonization, but identities are not made out of nothing: Categorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies by processes of colonization, state formation or general modernizing processes, are always full of tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these contradictions are destructive, but they can also be creative and positive. Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have
5940-415: The bark of the saanchi tree in which religious texts and chronicles were written, as opposed to the pan-Indian system of Palm leaf manuscript writing. The present-day spellings in Assamese are not necessarily phonetic. Hemkosh ( হেমকোষ [ɦɛmkʊx] ), the second Assamese dictionary, introduced spellings based on Sanskrit , which are now the standard. Assamese has also historically been written using
6050-449: The belief of common descent. Jóhanna Birnir similarly defines ethnicity as "group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or even impossible to change, such as language, race, or location." Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. As Jonathan M. Hall observes, World War II
6160-493: The boundaries of the nation-state. Assamese language Assamese ( / ˌ æ s ə ˈ m iː z / ) or Asamiya ( অসমীয়া [ɔxɔmija] ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam , where it is an official language. It serves as a lingua franca in parts of the Northeast India from a long time, in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland of India
6270-573: The context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the 19th century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations". Nation-states , however, invariably include populations who have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion based on equality or seek autonomy, sometimes even to
6380-422: The course of individual life histories." In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities: ... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed. In this way, he pointed to
6490-629: The court of Mahamanikya , a Kachari king from central Assam. Though the Assamese idiom in these works is fully individualised, some archaic forms and conjunctive particles too are found. This period corresponds to the common stage of proto-Kamta and early Assamese. The emergence of Sankardev 's Ekasarana Dharma in the 15th century triggered a revival in language and literature . Sankardev produced many translated works and created new literary forms— Borgeets (songs), Ankia Naat (one-act plays)—infusing them with Brajavali idioms; and these were sustained by his followers Madhavdev and others in
6600-526: The cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of "ethnic groups". In 1982, anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways people from different parts of
6710-416: The development as lingua francas , a cycle which leads to mixed and creolised languages, language shifts , linguistic discontinuities and ethnic mixing. It is estimated that Austroasiatic languages were present even as late as 4th-5th centuries CE, which is also supported by paleographic evidence from the Kamarupa inscriptions . The heavy creolisation occurred when Boro–Garo emerged as the lingua franca of
SECTION 60
#17327764801666820-669: The development of Bengali to replace Persian, the language of administration in Mughal India, and maintained that Assamese was a dialect of Bengali. Amidst this loss of status the American Baptist Mission (ABM) established a press in Sibsagar in 1846 leading to publications of an Assamese periodical ( Orunodoi ), the first Assamese grammar by Nathan Brown (1846), and the first Assamese-English dictionary by Miles Bronson (1863). The ABM argued strongly with
6930-451: The distant past. Perspectives that developed after the 1960s increasingly viewed ethnic groups as social constructs , with identity assigned by societal rules. The term ethnic is ultimately derived from the Greek ethnos , through its adjectival form ethnikos , loaned into Latin as ethnicus . The inherited English language term for this concept is folk , used alongside
7040-452: The distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values. According to Wolf, racial categories were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion , and ethnic groupings during the period of capitalist expansion . Writing in 1977 about
7150-472: The districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Dhemaji, Sivasagar, Lakhimpur, Golaghat and Jorhat. Ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language , culture , common sets of ancestry , traditions , society, religion , history, or social treatment. The term ethnicity
7260-456: The emergence of different styles of secular prose in medicine, astrology, arithmetic, dance, music, besides religious biographies and the archaic prose of magical charms. Most importantly this was also when Assamese developed a standardised prose in the Buranjis —documents related to the Ahom state dealing with diplomatic writings, administrative records and general history. The language of
7370-492: The end of those negotiations was a standard close to the language of the Buranjis with the Sanskritised orthography of Hemchandra Barua. As the political and commercial center moved to Guwahati in the mid-twentieth century, of which Dispur the capital of Assam is a suburb and which is situated at the border between the western and central dialect speaking regions, standard Assamese used in media and communications today
7480-404: The eve of Assam becoming a Chief Commissioner's Province in 1874. In the extant medieval Assamese manuscripts the orthography was not uniform. The ABM had evolved a phonemic orthography based on a contracted set of characters. Working independently Hemchandra Barua provided an etymological orthography and his etymological dictionary, Hemkosh , was published posthumously. He also provided
7590-530: The extent of complete political separation in their nation-state. Under these conditions when people moved from one state to another, or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries – ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation but lived in another state. In the 1920s, Estonia introduced a flexible system of ethnicity/nationality self-choice for its citizens, which included Estonians Russians, Baltic Germans and Jews. Multi-ethnic states can be
7700-414: The fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had
7810-528: The fallen monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the United States. Current topics are in particular social and cultural differentiation, multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation of Salad bowl and melting pot . Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such as subcultures , interest groups or social classes , because they emerge and change over historical periods (centuries) in
7920-549: The first Tibeto-Burman speakers entered the Brahmaputra valley , it was already populated by people speaking Austroasiatic and probably other language. Bodo-Kachari community traditions as well as scholars agree that they came from the north or the east; and current phylogenetic studies suggest that the Boro–Garo language descended from Proto-Tibeto-Burman in Northern China near the Yellow River. Linguists suggest that
8030-425: The first person future tense ending -m ( korim : "will do"; kham : "will eat") is seen for the first time. The language moved to the court of the Ahom kingdom in the seventeenth century, where it became the state language. In parallel, the proselytising Ekasarana dharma converted many Bodo-Kachari peoples and there emerged many new Assamese speakers who were speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages. This period saw
8140-596: The following types of (often mutually overlapping) groups can be identified: In many cases, more than one aspect determines membership: for instance, Armenian ethnicity can be defined by Armenian citizenship, having Armenian heritage, native use of the Armenian language , or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church . Ethnography begins in classical antiquity ; after early authors like Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus , Herodotus laid
8250-643: The foothills of the eastern Himalayan range which includes the whole of Assam, Tripura, North Bengal of West Bengal and parts of Bangladesh. The belief that Bodo–Kacharis were early settlers of the river valleys is taken from the fact that most of the rivers in the Brahmaputra valley in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh today carry Tibeto–Burman names of Kachari origin— Dibang , Dihang, Dikhou , Dihing , Doiyang , Doigrung etc.—where Di/Doi- means water in Boro-Garo languages , and many of these names end in -ong , which
8360-672: The foundation of both historiography and ethnography of the ancient world c. 480 BC . The Greeks had developed a concept of their own ethnicity, which they grouped under the name of Hellenes . Although there were exceptions, such as Macedonia, which was ruled by nobility in a way that was not typically Greek, and Sparta, which had an unusual ruling class, the ancient Greeks generally enslaved only non-Greeks due to their strong belief in ethnonationalism. The Greeks sometimes believed that even their lowest citizens were superior to any barbarian. In his Politics 1.2–7; 3.14, Aristotle even described barbarians as natural slaves in contrast to
8470-558: The genes. Examples of various approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism. Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. The process that results in emergence of such identification
8580-990: The groups, such as Moran and Saraniya consider themselves as Hindus under Ekasarana Dharma . The term Bodo finds its first mention in the book by Hodgson in 1847, to refer to the Mech and Kachari peoples. Grierson took this term Bodo to denote a section of the Assam-Burma group of the Tibeto-Burman languages of the Sino-Tibetan family, which included the languages of (1) Mech; (2) Rabha ; (3) Lalung (Tiwa) ; (4) Dimasa (Hills Kachari) ; (5) Garo (6) Tiprasa (7) Deuri (8) Moran and Boro . Subsequently Bodo emerged as an umbrella term both in anthropological and linguistic usage. This umbrella-group includes such sub-groups as Mech in Bengal and Nepal; Boros, Dimasa, Chutia, Sonowal, Moran, Rabha, Tiwa in Assam, and
8690-958: The influence of the Ahom state the speech in eastern Assam took a homogeneous and standard form. The general schwa deletion that occurs in the final position of words came into use in this period. The modern period of Assamese begins with printing—the publication of the Assamese Bible in 1813 from the Serampore Mission Press . But after the British East India Company (EIC) removed the Burmese in 1826 and took complete administrative control of Assam in 1836, it filled administrative positions with people from Bengal, and introduced Bengali language in its offices, schools and courts. The EIC had earlier promoted
8800-466: The initial ingress took place 3000 years before present or earlier, and that the immigrant proto-Boro–Garo speakers were not as numerous as the natives. Linguists find the Boro–Garo languages remarkable in two aspects—they have a highly creolised grammar, and they extend over a vast region that radiates out into Nepal and Tripura from the Brahmaputra valley. Burling (2007) has suggested that Nagamese , Jingpho , and Garo today are in different stages in
8910-576: The joidaam and patkai foothills and upper valley of Brahmaputra. There are four main geographical clans and 16-25 approx sub-clans( bojai) in deori community. Tiwa (Lalung) is an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the states of Assam and Meghalaya in northeastern India. They were known as Lalungs in the Assamese Buranjis, though members of the group prefer to call themselves Tiwa (meaning "the people who were lifted from below"). Some of their neighbors still call them Lalung. A striking peculiarity of
9020-433: The kernel of a nation which must be defended in times of conflict, or in iconic figures such as Britannia or Marianne . Ethnicity is used as a matter of cultural identity of a group, often based on shared ancestry, language, and cultural traditions, while race is applied as a taxonomic grouping, based on physical similarities among groups. Race is a more controversial subject than ethnicity, due to common political use of
9130-601: The language family. But in lower Assam, ও is pronounced the same as অ' (ó): compare কোলা kwla [kóla] and মোৰ mwr [mór] . Assamese has vowel harmony . The vowels [i] and [u] cause the preceding mid vowels and the high back vowels to change to [e] and [o] and [u] respectively. Assamese is one of the few languages spoken in India which exhibit a systematic process of vowel harmony. The inherent vowel in standard Assamese, / ɔ /, follows deletion rules analogous to " schwa deletion " in other Indian languages. Assamese follows
9240-536: The language. The newly differentiated vernacular, from which Assamese eventually emerged, is evident in the Prakritisms present in the Sanskrit of the Kamarupa inscriptions . The earliest forms of Assamese in literature are found in the 9th-century Buddhist verses called Charyapada the language of which bear affinities with Assamese (as well as Bengali, Bhojpuri, Maithili and Odia) and which belongs to
9350-654: The latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan (in the sense of disparate "nations" which did not yet participate in the Christian ecumene ), as the Septuagint used ta ethne 'the nations' to translate the Hebrew goyim "the foreign nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". The Greek term in early antiquity ( Homeric Greek ) could refer to any large group,
9460-485: The marginalized status of people of color in the United States to their inherent biological inferiority, he attributed it to their failure to assimilate into American culture. They could become equal if they abandoned their inferior cultures. Michael Omi and Howard Winant 's theory of racial formation directly confronts both the premises and the practices of ethnicity theory. They argue in Racial Formation in
9570-483: The modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the 17th century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation , developed in
9680-493: The name is most likely a self-designation korosa aris that is found in a very old Boro song: Pra Ari, Korasa Ari Jong pari lari lari (We are Korosa Aris, first-born sea race Our line is continuous) Today the peoples included in the Bodo-Kacharis speak either one of the languages from the Boro–Garo branch of Tibeto-Burman or an Indo-Aryan language such as Assamese or Bengali. It is generally believed that when
9790-551: The parent group. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a panethnicity and may eventually merge into one single ethnicity . Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis . Although both organic and performative criteria characterise ethnic groups, debate in the past has dichotomised between primordialism and constructivism. Earlier 20th-century "Primordialists" viewed ethnic groups as real phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since
9900-695: The past even the Ahom kingdom was founded in the kingdom gifted by Moran king Bodousa to his son in law Sukapha. The Tripuri kings had even defeated the Mughals and the Burmese kingdoms in the past. Today, the Boros, the Tripuris, and the Garos have established a strong political and ethnic identity and are developing their language and literature. The Sonowal Kachari is also a branch of greater Kachari. They live in
10010-479: The past. There is a significant Assamese-speaking diaspora worldwide. Assamese is the official language of Assam, and one of the 22 official languages recognised by the Republic of India . The Assam Secretariat functions in Assamese. The Assamese phonemic inventory consists of eight vowels , ten diphthongs , and twenty-three consonants (including two semivowels ). The Assamese phoneme inventory
10120-450: The problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities. It was assumed that if a Black or Latino community was not "making it" by the standards that had been set by whites, it was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs, or were stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant's critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking to cultural defect as
10230-433: The public, political sphere, they are upheld within the private, family sphere to a great extent. It is here that women act not just as biological reproducers but also as "cultural carriers", transmitting knowledge and enforcing behaviors that belong to a specific collectivity. Women also often play a significant symbolic role in conceptions of nation or ethnicity, for example in the notion that "women and children" constitute
10340-571: The result of inherited traits and tendencies. With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other. In 1950, the UNESCO statement " The Race Question ", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu , Claude Lévi-Strauss , Gunnar Myrdal , Julian Huxley , etc.), said: National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and
10450-488: The result of two opposite events, either the recent creation of state borders at variance with traditional tribal territories, or the recent immigration of ethnic minorities into a former nation-state. Examples for the first case are found throughout Africa , where countries created during decolonization inherited arbitrary colonial borders, but also in European countries such as Belgium or United Kingdom . Examples for
10560-484: The same people who came to be termed as Bodo. One of the earliest usage can be found in the 16th century Assamese language Bhagavata , where the word Kachari is used synonymously with Kirata in a list that mentions Koch and Mech separately. In Buranjis and colonial documents Boro–Garo speakers who were from the plains were collectively called Kachari . Endle's 1911 ethnographic work, The Kacharis , explain that there were plains Kacharis and hills Kacharis and
10670-588: The second case are countries such as Netherlands , which were relatively ethnically homogeneous when they attained statehood but have received significant immigration in the 17th century and even more so in the second half of the 20th century. States such as the United Kingdom , France and Switzerland comprised distinct ethnic groups from their formation and have likewise experienced substantial immigration, resulting in what has been termed " multicultural " societies, especially in large cities. The states of
10780-420: The source of inequality ignores the "concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial phenomena operate in the U.S." It prevents critical examination of the structural components of racism and encourages a "benign neglect" of social inequality. In some cases, especially those involving transnational migration or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following
10890-407: The state or its constituents. In the 20th century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view,
11000-441: The state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka , argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within
11110-512: The study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently. According to Eriksen , these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology , by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicized forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in
11220-524: The term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates or logical a priori to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with
11330-446: The term. Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that "racial/ethnic identity" is one concept and concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and autonomous categories. Before Weber (1864–1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as being
11440-468: The usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States , Wallman noted The term "ethnic" popularly connotes "[race]" in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, "[race]" most commonly means color, and "ethnics" are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. "[Ethnic]"
11550-411: The voiceless velar fricative is heavy in the eastern Assamese dialects and decreases progressively to the west—from Kamrupi to eastern Goalparia , and disappears completely in western Goalpariya. The change of /s/ to /h/ and then to /x/ has been attributed to Tibeto-Burman influence by Suniti Kumar Chatterjee . Assamese, Odia , and Bengali , in contrast to other Indo-Aryan languages , use
11660-448: The ways in which race can complicate a community's interactions with social and political structures, especially upon contact. Assimilation – shedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups as a response to racism and discrimination, though it did for others. Once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled,
11770-442: The world have been incorporated into a global economy: The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all
11880-483: Was a turning point in ethnic studies. The consequences of Nazi racism discouraged essentialist interpretations of ethnic groups and race. Ethnic groups came to be defined as social rather than biological entities. Their coherence was attributed to shared myths, descent, kinship , a common place of origin, language, religion, customs, and national character. So, ethnic groups are conceived as mutable rather than stable, constructed in discursive practices rather than written in
11990-407: Was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race". Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth , whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of
12100-638: Was not a native language. Among these ethnic groups some of the Rabha, and Koch may have Khasi ancestors. The Tibeto-Burmification of the Valley must have been more a matter of language replacement than the wholesale population replacement. Some of the Boro–Garo speaking communities such as the matrilineal and uxorilocal Garo, Rabha, and to some extent Koch still retain cultural features that are found among Austroasiatic speakers and which are not found among other Tibeto-Burman speakers. Genetic studies too have shown that
#165834