Magh people

The Magh ( Mog ) is the term used in history of Bengali and others people of South Asia for the Marma and Arakanese/Rakhine of Arakan. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Mrauk U Kingdom of Arakan expanded its territories to the Chittagong area of Bengal. The navy of the kingdom of Arakan or rather Magh sailors along with the Portuguese had plundered along the coast of Chittagong; as well as in the rivers of Bengal; and captured many Bengalis and sold them in the slave markets that were run by the Dutch East India Company, VOC in Batavia. For those notorious activities in the past, the Arakanese were called Magh pirates by the people of Bengal. Another alternative suggestion for the term Mog suggests that the word is derived from Mongol. That country is mentioned in the Arakanese Chronicles as the original residing place of the ancestors of the Arakanese kings who were the relatives of the Buddha.

In his memoirs, the Mughal emperor Jahangir described a group of Maghs who visited him, accompanying Hushang, son of Islam Khan. He gives the date of the visit as the 1st of April, 1613 (14th of Farvardin on the Iranian calendar, 1022). He describes the group as hailing from a Magh controlled territory near Pegu (capital of the Mon kingdom) and Arakan. Jahangir considered the Maghs unrestrained in their diet ("They eat everything there is either on land or in the sea, and nothing is forbidden by their religion") and their marital habits ("They marry their sisters by another mother"). He described their language as "that of Tibet," and their religion as neither Muslim nor Hindu.[1]

During the hey days of the Arakanese kingdom, many Arakanese people who were called as Mogs lived in Chittagong region of Bengal. As Chittagong, what is now in Bangladesh, was part of Arakan in the past, the Arakanese Magh governors ruled part of Bengal by residing in that city as the capital of the colonial region of Arakan. The Arakanese king also appointed Bohmong Chiefs to rule in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bohmong Htaung. The Chakma (Thaik people) region of CHT and the kingdom of Tripura were also part of Arakan at that time. Those people living in CHT, especially in Bandarban were still ruled by Bohmong Chief until now since Arakan's rule of Bengal. The Arakanese who have been living in CHT, Bengal, since the ascent of Arakanese kingdom in the 16th century were also known as the Marma people. Those Marmas are known as Mog to the people of Bengal as they are the Arakanese descendants. Arakanese people living in Hill Tripura state of India since that ancient time, are also called as Mog or Magh by the local people of Tripura State.

References
  1. "The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir", Translated by Alexander Rogers (Low Price Publications, reprinted 2017)

Needs to be incorporated into article
  • Oxford English Dictionary (s.v. Magh, updated March 2000)
  • Amiram Gonen (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Peoples of the World (Henry Holt, 1993)
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