A BUDDHIST TRIBE OF ASSAM: TAI KHAMTI

FOREWORD

A BUDDHIST TRIBE OF ASSAM: TAI KHAMTI

DR MAHESWAR NEOG,

Jawaharlal Nehru Professor,

Gauhati Universit.

    The Khamti are a Buddhist tribe living in some sixteen villages in the Lohit district of the North-East Fronter Agency (Chaukham, Kherem, Impang, Ningro, Nanam, Inten, Nathaw, Mamaung and Mahang etc….) and the North Lakhimpur sub-division of Lakhimpur in Assam (Bar-Khamti. Barigaon, Deotola, Tunijan, Sribhuyan, Barpathar and Tipling). But as T.T. Cooper (The Mishmee Hills, London 1873, p. 145) warns us: “To speak of the Khamtees as a tribe is to do them little justice, for there is that about the word tribe which conveys the idea of wildness and want of culture, very far from forming a characteristic of the khamtees, far from some of their social laws even civilized nations might take a lesson.”