People of Assam

The people of Assam inhabit a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious society. They speak languages that belong to three main language groups: Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Aryan, and Tai-Kadai. The large number of ethnic and linguistic groups, the population composition, and the peopling process in the state has led to it being called an "India in miniature".[2]

Not to be confused with Assamese people.

People of Assam
Peoples populating Assam
Total population
31,169,272 (2011)[1]
Regions with significant populations
 India31,169,272[1]
Languages
Assamese (majority), Bengali, Bodo, Kamtapuri,Sylheti, other Bengali-Assamese languages, Dimasa, Karbi, Rabha, Koch, Tiwa, Deori, Mising, Bihari languages, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Santali, Marwari, Tai Phake, Sadri, Nepali, Garo, Hajong, Tai Aiton, Tai Khamyang, Khamti, Singpho, Hmar, Meitei etc.
Religion
• Majority Hinduism • Minorities includeTraditional, Panentheistic • Islam • Christianity
Related ethnic groups
• Assamese Brahmins (including Ganak) • Assamese Kayastha • Biate • Boro • Chutia • Deori • Dimasa • Kaibarta • Kalita • Karbi/Mikir • Koch Rajbongshi • Kumar • Mising/Miri • Moran • Matak • Nadiyal • Nath • Rabha • Sarania Kachari • Sonowal Kachari • Thengal-Kachari • Tai-Ahom • Tai Phake(and other Tai groups) • Tiwa (Lalung)
Part of a series on the
History of Assam
Categories
  • Architecture
  • Palaces
  • Forts

The peopling of Assam was understood in terms of racial types based on physical features, types that were drawn by colonial administrator Risley. These racial types are now considered to have little validity, and they yield inconsistent results; the current understanding is based on ethnolinguistic groups[3] and in consonance with genetic studies.

Peopling of Assam

Geographically Assam, in the middle of Northeast India, contains fertile river valleys surrounded and interspersed by mountains and hills. It is accessible from Tibet in the north (via Bum La, Se La, Tunga), across the Patkai in the Southeast (via Diphu, Kumjawng, Hpungan, Chaukam, Pangsau, More-Tamu) and from Burma across the Arakan Yoma (via An, Taungup). These passes have been gateways for migration routes from Tibet, Southeastern China and Myanmar. In the west both the Brahmaputra valley and the Barak valley open widely to the Gangetic plains.[4] Assam has been populated via all these accessible points in the past. It has been estimated that there were eleven major waves and streams[5] of ethnolinguistic migrations across these points over time.

There is no evidence in Assam and Northeast India of early hominid dispersal.[6] Paleolithic materials, mostly surface collections, are considered to be just 'neolithic debitage'.[7] An early report of the presence of Dravidian is also not supported.[8]

Pre-historic
The first three waves/streams immigrated in prehistoric times and are estimates: the Austroasiatic estimate is the expected period from genetic studies;[9] the Tibeto-Burman is the lower limit from linguistic and other estimates;[10] and the Indo-Aryan is the upper limit from paleographic estimates.[11] The rest of the immigration took place in the medieval, and Colonial and post-Colonial times in Assam.

The archaeological sites of Sarutaru in Kamrup and Daojali Hading in Dima Hasao district display neolithic cultures.[12] Some other Neolithic sites in Northeast include those in Arunachal Pradesh, Sadiya, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Naga Hills, Karbi Anglong,‌ Kamrup, Garo and Khasi hills of Meghalaya, etc. The neolithic culture discovered in Assam has East and Southeast Asian affinities of the Hoabinhian tradition.[13]

Austroasiatic

The earliest known inhabitants of Assam were late neolithic Austroasiatic peoples who came from Southeast Asia.[14] Linguistic studies indicate that the Austroasiatic peoples likely moved upstream along the Mekong river to reach the region bringing with it an aquatic culture.[15] Genetic studies on O2a1‐M95 Y-chromosomal haplogroup, associated with Austroasiatic speakers in India,[9] show that they reached northeast India about five thousand years ago.[16]

They are expected to have settled in the foothills bordering the Brahmaputra valley, to be either absorbed or pushed to the hills by subsequent migrants.[17] They are today represented by the Khasi and Pnar peoples in neighbouring Meghalaya; and who are also present in Assam's Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts that adjoin Meghalaya,[18] and who have traditions placing them in the Brahmaputra valley.[19] It is significant that in the context of the discontinuity in mtDNA in south asian and southeast asian populations the Khasi people have an equal admixture (40%–39%) of south/east asian mtDNA as opposed to the Munda people (the Austroasiatic speakers in eastern India) who have predominantly south Asian mtDNA (75%–0%).[20]

The Austroasiatic people in Assam brought with them the technology of dry rice.[21] There is also a growing body of opinion that the Brahmaputra valley may have been a center of dispersal of the Austroasiatic languages.[22]

Present-day Austroasiatic speakers are represented by the Khasi people living in the Cachar, Kamrup, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, and Dima Hasao districts.[23] Jaquesson (2017) suggests that the Garo, Rabha and some Koch peoples carry linguistic and social traces of past Austroasiatic peoples.[24][25]

Tibeto-Burman

The second group of people to reach Assam were speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages, especially those speaking the proto- Boro-Garo, Tani and Kuki-Chin-Naga languages starting some time before three thousand years ago[10] and which continued till present times and who came from the north and the east.[26][27] There is widespread agreement among linguists and ethnographers that the Tibeto-Burmans migrated into an already settled region,[28][29] which is consistent with genetics studies.[30] They are today represented by the Kacharis, the Karbi and the Mising; the Monpas and Sherdukpens; and Naga peoples.[31] Over time, two distinct Tibeto-Burman linguistic regions emerged in northeast India—(1) highlands surrounding the Brahmaputra valley that is predominantly Tibeto-Burman with great diversity,[32] and (2) plains where there are fewer but fairly homogenised Tibeto-Burman languages spread over a much larger area and in contact with Indo-Aryan and other language families.[33]

DeLancey (2012) suggests that the Boro-Garo languages, the most widespread group of Tibeto-Burman languages in the plains, have a comparatively transparent grammar and an innovative morphology[34] which indicates that proto-Boro-Garo must have emerged from a creolised lingua franca (comparable to the case of Nagamese),[35] during a time when it was being used by non-native speakers.[36] A section of these Tibeto-Burman speakers could have originally been native Austroasiatic speakers, as suggested by some genetic studies on present-day Tibeto-Burman peoples of northeast India.[37] It is expected that the Tibeto-Burman immigrants were not as numerous as the indigenous Austroasiatic population, and the replacement was of languages and not peoples.[38] The arrival of the Indo-Aryans and the expansion of the Kamarupa kingdom over the entire Brahmaputra valley created the conditions for the creolisation and development of proto-Boro-Garo lingua franca.[39]

Medieval historical sources suggest that the Kacharis were adept at gravitational irrigation,[40] and though they were immersed in ahu rice culture some of them raised a wet rice called kharma ahu that was irrigated but not necessarily transplanted.[41] These irrigation systems continued to be used by Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman groups in modern times.[42] In this context, it is significant that most river names in Assam such as Dibang, Dihang, Doyang, start with Di-, (water in Boro-Garo languages) and end in -ong (water in Austroasiatic languages).[43]

Indo-Aryan

The Indo-Aryan migration to Assam that began in the first millennium BCE is the third stream that continues till today.[44] Based on paleographic evidence Indo-Aryans spread into Assam early[45] but it cannot be pushed beyond the 6th century BCE.[11] The early Indo-Aryans were cultivators who brought with them the technology of wet rice (sali) cultivation, the plough, and cattle.[46] The earliest direct epigraphic evidence of Indo-Aryans in Assam comes from the 5th-century CE Umachal and Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions, written in the Indo-Aryan Sanskrit language. When Indo-Aryan speakers entered the Brahmaputra valley, Austroasiatic languages had not yet been entirely replaced by the Tibeto-Burman languages, since an Austroasiatic substratum in the later-day Assamese language that emerged from the earlier Indo-Aryan vernacular indicates that Austroasiatic languages were present at least till the 4th- and 5th centuries CE.[47]

The appearance of Indo-Aryan in the Brahmaputra valley triggered its historical period.[48] In the Kamarupa kingdom that emerged the kings were originally non-Indo-Aryan, who were Sanskritized and legitimised,[49] and who encouraged immigration and settlements of Indo-Aryans as landlords of already settled cultivators. The land grants were written in Sanskrit, but the presence of Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman and vernacular Indo-Aryan words and formations in these grants indicated the presence of these languages.[50] In the period when Indo-Aryan settlements were being created, Kamarupa likely constituted urban centers along the Brahmaputra river in which a precursor of the Assamese language was spoken with Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman communities everywhere else.[51] Some of these centers were in Goalpara, Guwahati, Tezpur, Nagaon and Doyang-Dhansiri regions, where sanskritisation of the non-Indo-Aryan communities occurred.[52] Sanskritization was a process that occurred simultaneously with "deshification" (or localisation) of the Indo-Aryan communities in Assam.[53]

Medieval

Muslim soldier-professionals

The fourth stream of new arrivals were Muslim personnel of the army of Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar left back after his disastrous Tibet expeditions.[54] Subsequently called Goria (from Gaur), they married local women, adopted local customs, but maintained their religion. One of Khalji's chroniclers noted that they came across Koch and Mech peoples, who had Turkic countenances; and who were to later become important in subsequent periods. This army was able to convert a Mech chief, called Ali the Mech, which was the beginning of a limited number of local people who converted to the Islamic faith—later converts from the Koch, Mech and other ethnic groups came to be called Desi. In the 16th century yet another army from Bengal had to leave behind their soldiers—they too married local women and came to be called Moria. These populations were joined by religious preceptors, the most famous of who was Azan Faqir, a sufi saint. The descendants of Azan Faqir are known as Sayed in Assam.

Tai farmer-soldiers

The fifth wave of immigrants were Tai Shan People, who entered Assam under the leadership of Sukaphaa from Hukawng Valley in Myanmar[55] via Pangsau Pass in 1228 and settled between Buridihing and Dikhou rivers.[56] Ahoms, as they came to be called, were primarily responsible for surface levelling the extensive undulating plains of eastern Assam, extending the human base of sali wet-rice culture to the peoples they encountered in the region,[57] and for establishing the Ahom kingdom. They assimilated some of the Naga, Moran, Borahi, Chutiya and Dimasa peoples in a process of Ahomisation till they themselves began to be Hinduized from the mid-16th century onwards.[58]

Tai Buddhists and Sikhs

The sixth stream of peoples between the 17th and 19th centuries, were Tai; but unlike the Ahoms who were animists when they arrived, the later-day Tais were Buddhists.[59] Called Khamti, Khamyang, Aiton, Tai Phake and Turung peoples, they came from Upper Burma at different times, and settled is small groups in Upper Assam.[60] This continued well into the colonial times. At the end of the Medieval period, a small contingent of Sikhs soldiers sent by Ranjit Singh arrived in Assam to participate in the Battle of Hadirachokey—the survivors settled in a few villages in Nagaon district, married into local communities and formed a distinct Assamese-Sikh community.[61]

Colonial

Kuki-Chin ethnic groups

The seventh wave of people into Assam occurred soon after the beginning the colonial period in Assam after the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandaboo in 1826—the political instability led to the immigration of Kachin and Kuki people from Upper Burma into Assam across the Patkai and Arakan Yoma. They constitute the Singphos in Upper Assam, and the Kuki-Chin tribes in Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao.[62]

Tea labourers

Following the establishment of the tea industry in Assam, and after the companies failed in harnessing the labour of the local Kachari, people from the Chotanagpur area of Bihar, northern and western Orissa, eastern Madhya Pradesh, and northern Andhra Pradesh belonging to Munda, Ho, Santal, Savara, Oraon, Gond and other ethnic groups were recruited for labour in the newly emerging tea estates.[63] Individual tea planters began bringing in labour starting in 1841, and collectively after 1859 many of them forcibly, in inhuman conditions, to serve as indentured labourers. Even after the practice of recruiting from outside was banned in 1926 recruitment continued till 1960 when labour available in the tea estates became a surplus.[64] This group of immigrants originally spoke Austroasiatic languages, but today speak an Indo-Aryan Sadani and many have adopted Assamese language and ways.[65]

Colonial Indo-Aryan

British colonialism opened the borders of Assam, hitherto controlled tightly by the Ahom and Dimasa kingdoms, and established a new order[66] causing a significant influx from Bengal, Rajasthan, North India and Nepal.[67] Bengali Hindus filled most of the colonial administrative positions open to "natives", besides monopolising modern professional positions in the medical, legal, and teaching areas and middle-class positions in the railways and post-office,[68] that colonialism opened up.

Colonialism also germinated different industries and instituted a market economy in place of the corvee-labour-based non-monetized economy of the kingdoms it replaced. The opportunities for traders were filled mostly by Marwari traders (locally called keya) from Rajasthan, though there were Sindhis, Punjabi Sikhs and others in small numbers with no competition from the local population.[69] In the 19th-century the peasant economy was completely in their grip and Marwari traders also participated as bankers and commercial agents of the nascent Assam Tea industry; and though in numbers they were a small group—by 1906, the entire trade of the Assam valley was the monopoly of this highly visible population.[70]

The British East India Company began recruiting Gorkha soldiers after the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–1816); settlement of Gorkha retirees and their families in the then depopulated areas (following Moamoria rebellion and Burmese occupation) began in 1830s[71]—and from a few thousand in 1879 their population increased to more than twenty one thousand in 1901 in the Brahmaputra valley.[72] In the first two decades of the 20th century the colonial government encouraged Newar and other ethnic non-Bahun Nepali communities to settle in Assam's excluded areas mostly as "professional" cattle grazers for an expanding revenue,[73] feeding into the business of milk supply in the emerging urban markets. This population of Assam was joined by Gorkha security personnel from forces such as the Assam Rifles that stayed back after their retirement. This population became predominant in the lower hills.[74]

Muslim cultivators

To increase land productivity, the British encouraged Bengali Muslims cultivators from Mymensingh in present-day Bangladesh (Wave 10) to settle in Assam that began in 1901. These Muslims are now known as the Miya people and speak the Assamese language.

Post-Colonial

Hindus from East Pakistan

The last major group to immigrate are the Hindu refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan, especially from the Sylhet district of Bangladesh following the Sylhet referendum (Wave 11).

Inputs from these and other smaller groups have gone towards the building of a unique multi-ethnic socio-cultural situation.

Social changes

The process of social formation in Assam has been marked by simultaneous sanskritisation and tribalisation (de-sanskritization) of the different groups of people that have settled in Assam at different times, and this process of social formation is best studied in three periods: (1) Pre-colonial, (2) Colonial and (3) Post-colonial periods.[75]

Ethnic groups

Assam is acknowledged as the settling land for a lot of cultures. A number of tribal grouping have landed in the soils of Assam in the course of diverse directions as the territory was linked to a number of states and many different countries. Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burmans, and Indo-Aryans had been the most important traditional groups that arrived at the site and lived in the very old Assam. They were well thought-out as the first inhabitants of Assam and yet at the moment they are essential elements of the "Assamese Diaspora".

The greater Kachari group forms a major part of Assam encompassing 18 major tribes, both plain and hills, viz., Boro, Dimasa, Chutia, Sonowal, Tiwa, Garo, Rabha, Sarania Kachari, Hajong, Tripuri, Deori, Thengal Kachari, Hojai, Koch, and others. Kacharis were historically the dominant group of Assam, later the Tai Ahoms rise as dominant group, the ethnic group along with which the Upper Assam Bodo-Kachari groups like Chutias, Morans and Borahis were associated with the term "Assamese". Along with Tai Ahoms, they were other prominent groups that ruled Assam valley during the medieval period, those belonging to the Chutia, Koch, and Dimasa communities. The first group ruled from 1187 to 1673 in the eastern part of the state, the second group ruled Lower Assam from 1515 to 1949, while the third group ruled southern part of Assam from the 13th century to 1854. Bodo tribe also known as Boro are the dominant group in BTAD. They speak the Bodo language among themselves along with using Assamese to communicate with other indigenous Assamese communities as the lingua-franca.

Most of the indigenous Assamese communities today have actually been historically tribal and even the now considered non-tribal population of Assam were actually tribes which have slowly been converted into castes through Sanskritisation. Assam has always been a historically tribal state.[76]

Ahoms along with Chutia, Moran, Motok, and Koch are still regarded as semi-tribal groups who have nominally converted to Ekasarana Dharma even though keeping alive their own tribal traditions and customs.

As per latest development indigenous ethnicities like Moran, Chutia, Motok, Tai Ahoms and Koch & also non-indigenous[77] ethnic group like the Tea tribes have realised the above-mentioned points and have applied for ST status .[78] This will make Assam a predominantly tribal state having wider geo-political ramifications.

gollark: Communism is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors.
gollark: But it seems quite obvious that not giving people an incentive to do more things is bad, and that central control also runs into horrible problems.
gollark: I mean, people obviously quite like the idea of central economic planning for various fairly good reasons (not that communism means that now to a lot of people!).
gollark: It does not sound good "on paper" if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.
gollark: I know all information, actually.

See also

References
  1. Government of Assam Census 2011. "onlineassam". Archived from the original on 21 June 2012. Retrieved 6 June 2012.
  2. "Assam is often referred to as 'India in miniature' so far its population composition and the process of peopling are concerned". (Taher 1993:201)
  3. "The racial traits, reflected through the physical features of individuals, are of such a varying degree that it is perhaps safer to divide the State's population into ethnolinguistic groups". (Taher 1993:202)
  4. (Taher 1993:201–202)
  5. "An analysis of peopling of Assam on the above ethnolinguistic basis, coupled with the scanty paleolithic, neolithic and historical evidences, reveals that there are as many as eleven waves and streams of migration into Assam. (The terms ‘wave’ and ‘stream’ are used here with specific meanings: while ‘wave’ is used to mean a migration at a particular point of time, ‘stream’ means continuity of migration for a long period, which may continue even now ever since it started, albeit with varying volume)." (Taher 1993:202)
  6. "Due to lack of evidence for early humans in Northeast India prior to the late Pleistocene..." (Hazarika 2017:73)
  7. (Hazarika 2017:75)
  8. "For some reason some scholars (e.g. Gait 1983 [1926]) suggest an early Dravidian presence in the area as well, but I know of no linguistic evidence for this idea." (DeLancey 2012:14)
  9. "The origins of Indian Austro Asiatic speakers had earlier been correlated to the origin of O2a1-M95 (Kumar et al., 2007)." (Arunkumar 2015:547)
  10. "Most scholars suggest that the first Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples began to enter Assam at least 3,000 years ago." (DeLancey 2012:13–14)
  11. "...Indo-Aryans had not spread out as far as to Assam before 500 BCE, at least not in mentionable number." (Guha 1984, p. 74)
  12. (Hazarika 2017:108-110)
  13. (Hazarika 2017:97)
  14. "The peopling of Assam was first started with a wave of migration of the Australoids or Austro-Asiatic speaking people from south-east Asia..."(Taher 1993:202)
  15. Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench. 2011. "The Austroasiatic Urheimat: the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis." Enfield, NJ (ed.) Dynamics of Human Diversity, 317–345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  16. "A serial decrease in expansion time from east to west: 5.7±0.3 Kya in Laos, 5.2±0.6 in Northeast India, and 4.3±0.2 in EastIndia, suggested a late Neolithic east to west spread of the lineage O2a1-M95 from Laos." (Arunkumar 2015:546)
  17. "They had perhaps earlier lived in the foothills bordering the Brahmaputra valley and were driven to the hills of the Meghalaya subsequently by the later migrants of the Tibeto-Burman stock." (Taher 1993:202)
  18. (Taher 1993:202)
  19. "The tradition indicates that there existed important kingdoms at the time the people had inhabited the Assam valley...(t)he ancient kingdoms known to us were Ka Meikha (Kamakhya), Muksiar, Mahadem, Mangkathiang and Malngiang." (Bareh 1987:269)
  20. "Notably, Khasi (the only Khasi-Aslian group of mainland India) speakers residing in Meghalaya state in India show an admixed package of both Indian and East Asian mtDNA haplogroups (fig. 2 and table 2)." (Chaubey 2011:1015)
  21. "Rice was brought to Assam by neolithic horticultural people who spread out in all directions from their southeast Asian habitats... But they used to grow only the dry variety of it in their jhum plots..." (Guha 1984:74)
  22. "(T)here is a growing body of opinion that the center of dispersal of the Austroasiatic languages may have been in, or at least included, the Brahmaputra Valley (van Driem 2001: 289–94, Diffloth 2005)." (DeLancey 2012:12)
  23. Khasi at Ethnologue (22nd ed., 2019)
  24. "The Garo, the Rabha and at least some of the Koch are, like the Khasi, matrilineal and uxorilocal. These features are not attested elsewhere in populations speaking Tibeto-Burman languages. These cultural features are best explained either by the deep and long influence of Khasi people on those Garo, Rabha, and Koch (all people now living around Meghalaya), or by the event of language shift, if we suppose that at least some of these people had Khasi ancestors. They would have abandoned their earlier Mon-Khmer languages because of the influential new TibetoBurman-speaking neighbours, but would have retained some important features of their social organization." (Jaquesson 2017:99)
  25. "The mix [of Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman] would explain the group of Western Boro-Garo languages, deprived of diphthongs but equipped with specific consonant clusters (which interestingly are common in the Khasi languages) and Mon-Khmer-type social customs." (Jaquesson 2017:117)
  26. "The second group to have come to Assam from the north-east and east are the people speaking Tibeto-Burman languages, especially eastern Himalayan, north Assam, Bodo and Naga groups of languages. These are racially Mongoloid people and unlike the Austro-Asiatic, they set up a stream of migration which has been continuing till today." (Taher 1993:202–203)
  27. "Linguistic evidence linking Boro-Garo to the Konyak and the Jingphaw languages of Nagaland and northern Burma tells us that the Boro-Garo stock must have originally entered Assam from somewhere to the northeast." (DeLancey 2012:13)
  28. "At (the time of proto-Boro-Garo ingress) the Brahmaputra valley was already settled." (DeLancey 2012:14)
  29. "The Y haplogroup 02a is represented at a frequency of 77% in Austroasiatic groups in India and 47% in Tibeto-Burman groups of northeastern India. This patterning could suggest that Tibeto-Burman paternal lineages may have partially replaced indigenous Austroasiatic lineages in the northeast of the Indian Subcontinent and that Austroasiatic populations preceded the Tibeto-Burmans in this area, as linguists and ethnographers have speculated for over a century and a half." (van Driem 2007:237)
  30. "Among TB speakers the share of mtDNAs typical of East Asia increases to nearly two-thirds (64%), inferred from ref. 27. This scenario would be consistent with a more recent migration event or the continued movement of women into India through the maintenance of social links." (Sahoo 2006:847)
  31. "These groups are represented now by Monpas and Sherdukpens living on the Bhutan and Arunachal border of Assam, Mishings and Deuris of upper Assam, the great Bodo group of people scattered all over the state and the Nagas living in Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills." (Taher 1993:203)
  32. "The highlands surrounding the Brahmaputra Valley, in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram, are dominated by languages of only one major family, Tibeto Burman (though there are recently-established populations of Tai, Indo-Aryan, and, across the border, Chinese speakers). But among the Tibeto-Burman languages we find tremendous diversity." (DeLancey 2012:11)
  33. (DeLancey 2012:11)
  34. (DeLancey 2012:4)
  35. "Burling (2007) has suggested that the grammatical transparency and regularity of Garo indicating an origin as a creolized lingua franca, similar in structure and function to Nagamese or Naga pidgin. But what is true of Garo is also equally true of the rest of the branch, and undoubtedly of proto-Bodo-Garo, their common ancestor." (DeLancey 2012:5)
  36. "Proto-Bodo-Garo first emerged as a lingua franca used for communication across the various linguistic communities of the region, and that its striking simplicity and transparency reflect a period when it was widely spoken by communities for whom it was not a native language." (DeLancey 2012:3)
  37. "The Y haplogroup O2a is represented at a frequency of 77% in Austroasiatic groups in India and 47% in Tibeto-Burman groups of northeastern India (Sahoo et al. 2006). This patterning could suggest that Tibeto-Burman paternal lineages may have partially replaced indigenous Austroasiatic lineages in the northeast of the Indian Subcontinent and that Austroasiatic populations preceded the Tibeto-Burmans in this area, as linguists and ethnographers have speculated for over a century and a half." (van Driem 2007:237)
  38. "When Tibeto-Burman-speaking immigrants moved down into the Valley, they can never have been as numerous as the indigenous inhabitants, who had the food resources of the Valley to grow populous on. The Tibeto-Burmification of the Valley must have been more a matter of language replacement than wholesale population replacement." (DeLancey 2012:13)
  39. "it is this situation (the Indo-Aryan surrounded by Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman in Kamarupa) that we should imagine Proto-Boro-Garo forming as a grammatically simplified lingua franca." (DeLancey 2012:16)
  40. "The first was a technique of gravitational irrigation with its applicability limited only to sloping submontane tracts watered by hill streams. It involved the throwing up of dams across the hill streams in their upper reaches and leading the stored-up water to the fields through a network of dug-out channels. The Kacharis were adept in this technique." (Guha 1982:481)
  41. "Some advanced sections of the tribal population, like the Kacharis, also marginally grew wet rice of another variety in the submontane tracts. This variety was kharma ahu, which was irrigated but not always necessarily transplanted. At the same time, all ethnic groups without exception had also a varying interest in the dry ahu culture." (Guha 1982:481–482)
  42. "This region has a traditional irrigation system such as bamboo drip irrigation in Meghalaya, water conservation among the Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh, zabo system of Nagaland and dong irrigation among the Bodos of Assam which are traditionally managed by the farmers." (Devi 2018:69)
  43. (Bareh 1987:269-270)
  44. "Almost at the same time as the Tibeto-Burmans, or perhaps a bit later, there started another stream of migration of the people speaking Indo-Aryan languages from the plains of northern India, perhaps during the first millennium B.C." (Taher 1993:203)
  45. "Revised versions of the Mahabharata and several puranas (c. 2nd century BC - 2nd century AD), the Kalika Purana of c.9th-10th centuries and the Prasastis of Kamarupa kings—all these indicate this early Indo-Aryanization of Assam." (Guha 1984:74)
  46. "It was the Indo-Aryans who brought wet rice (sali), iron, plough and cattle (the latter as a source of power and milk) to the region." (Guha 1984, p. 74)
  47. "(Austroasiatic substrate in Assamese) is consistent with the general assumption that the lower Brahmaputra drainage was originally Austroasiatic speaking. It also implies the existence of a substantial Austroasiatic-speaking population still at the time of the spread of Aryan culture into Assam, i.e. it implies that up until the 4th–5th centuries CE, at least, and probably much later, Tibeto-Burman languages had not completely supplanted Austroasiatic in the region." (DeLancey 2012:13)
  48. " The mixed population absorbed Sanskrit culture, and the latter also, in its turn, absorbed many local cultural traits. Kamarupa moved from protohistory to history in the 4th century AD" (Guha 1984, p. 76)
  49. "Virtually all of Assam’s kings, from the fourth-century Varmans down to the eighteenth-century Ahoms, came from non-Aryan tribes that were only gradually Sanskritised." (Urban 2011, p. 234)
  50. "... (it shows) that in Ancient Assam there were three languages viz. (1) Sanskrit as the official language and the language of the learned few, (2) Non-Aryan tribal languages of the Austric and Tibeto-Burman families, and (3) a local variety of Prakrit (ie a MIA) wherefrom, in course of time, the modern Assamese language as a MIL, emerged." (Sharma 1978, pp. 0.24-0.28)
  51. " Instead, we should imagine a linguistic patchwork, with an eastern Indo-Aryan vernacular (not yet really “Assamese”) in the urban centers and along the river, and Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic communities everywhere." (DeLancey 2012:15–16)
  52. (Boruah 2008)
  53. "Here I will follow the lead of Wendy Doniger, who suggests that the development of Hinduism as a whole in South Asia was not simply a process of Sanskritisation, that is, the absorption of non-Hindu traditions into the brahminic system; rather, it also involved a process of ‘Deshification’, that is, the influence of local (deshi) and indigenous cultures on brahmaic religion and the mutual interaction between Sanskritic and deshi traditions." (Urban 2011, p. 233)
  54. "Khilji was defeated and some of his captive soldiers settled in Assam, especially in the area between Hajo and Sipajhar in the Brahmaputra valley." (Taher 1993:203)
  55. (Terwiel 1996:275)
  56. (Taher 1992:204)
  57. "Ahoms played a significant role in widening the base of the wet-rice culture of the sali variety in the extensive and undulating plains of eastern Assam. Apparently, the iron implements they had for reclamation and surface levelling work were relatively more efficient and abundant than their neighbours'." (Guha 1982:482)
  58. "This is observed not only in Upper Burma, but also in Upper Assarn. There, the Ahoms assimilated some of their Naga, Moran and Barahi neighbours and later, also large sections of the Chutiya and Kachari tribes. This Ahomisation process went on until the expanded Ahom society itself began to be Hinduised from the mid-16th century onward." (Guha 1983:12)
  59. (Taher 1983:204)
  60. "which added a new element to the population mosaic of Assam. These ‘later-day’ Tai people entering Assam during the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century are the Khamtis, Khamyangs, Aitons, Phakes and Tunings. Each group came at different time from different regions across the Patkai. They are all Buddhists and live in small groups in upper Assam." (Taher 1983:204)
  61. "(A)bout 500 Sikh soldiers from Punjab... migrated to Assam on the eve of the Battle of Hadirachaki (1820-22) on the invitation of Ahom King Chandrakanta Singh for protecting Assam against Burmese aggression. Nearly all the Sikh soldiers died on battlefield. Some of the survivors, migrated upstream of River Brahmaputra by boat and reached the Titamora rivulet. They disembarked in the western bank, the Chaparmukh, and settled in the area and finally married locals and raised families." (Sharma 2013:1012)
  62. (Taher 1983:205)
  63. "As the local people were found unwilling to work in the tea gardens as labourers, the planters recruited indentured labourers from the tribes of Chotanagpur area of Bihar, northern and western Orissa, eastern Madhya Pradesh and northern Andhra Pradesh to work in the tea gardens...They belong to such tribes as Munda, Ho, Santal, Savara, Oraon, Gond, etc." (Taher 1983:205)
  64. (Baruah 1999:54)
  65. (Baruah 1999:55)
  66. "Colonialism as a new order based on fundamentally new cultural norms, even new forms of knowledge, required people with new skills–most obviously command of the English language." (Baruah 1999:58)
  67. "Thus started a new wave of Indo-Aryan migration with the coming in of hundreds of Bengali government service holders and professionals, Rajasthani tradesmen and north-Indian labourers to construct roads, railways, public buildings and Nepali security personnel." (Taher 1993:205)
  68. (Baruah 1999:58–59)
  69. (Baruah 1999:61)
  70. (Baruah 1999:61–62)
  71. (Sharma 2011:93)
  72. (Sharma 2011:94)
  73. "Though initially an insignificant source of government revenue, these grazing fees were indeed an expanding source because of the steady rise in the immigration of Nepali and other graziers along with their cattle." (Guha 2016:74)
  74. (Baruah 1999:62–64)
  75. Bhagawati 2002
  76. (Baruah & Sanskritisation and Detribalisation in early Assam 2008:116)
  77. Das, N. K. "Tea Tribes of Assam: Colonial Exploitation and Assertion of Adivasi Rights". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  78. "6 Assam tribes may soon get Scheduled Tribes status". The Times of India. Retrieved 31 August 2017.

Bibliography
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