Basumatary Mahari
Bodo
At a glance
- Called a
- Mahari
- Community
- Bodo
- Found in
- Assam
About
Basumatary is a Bodo mahari, or clan, of Assam: the earth folk. Bodo tradition ties it to the land. Endle wrote in 1911 that its members alone could bury or cremate their dead without paying for the ground, and Bodo writers still describe the Basumatary as the landholding clan, to whom a token payment is made for a cremation ground. The name is carried as a surname. The Bodo are a Scheduled Tribe with their own traditional religion, Bathou; the clan is not a gotra or a Hindu caste.
What “Mahari” means for the Bodo
Mahari (also written mahary) is the Bodo word for a clan in Hargouri Narzary's study of Bodo myths (2018). A family's clan name is its surname, and most end in -ary or -ari, 'folk'; Endle (1911) wrote the ending ároi and called these groups sub-tribes. It is a Bodo clan in its own system, not a gotra.
Every mahari of the Bodo, with how the clan system works: the Bodo page.
Name and Origin
Endle wrote the name Basumati-ároi, from basumati, earth, and noted that it is the Sanskrit word Vasumati with the Bodo ending for 'folk' added. Hargouri Narzary derives it from the Bodo Baisamuti, Mother Earth: Baisamuti-hary, the earthly folk.
Historical Journey
Endle, a missionary among the Bodo of Darrang, listed the Basumati-ároi second among the Kachari sub-tribes in 1911, after the heaven folk, and recorded one privilege that no other clan had: its members could bury their dead without buying ground for the grave or for the funeral pyre. Basumatary is one of the twelve clans that Bodo tradition counts as the original ones, in the list Hargouri Narzary gives from Bhaben Narzi (2006): Swargiary, Ramchiary, Narzary, Yaophramnarary, Basumatary, Musahary, Laoary, Daimary, Kerkataray, Owary, Lahary and Khaklary. In the Bodo myth of the clans as Hargouri Narzary records it, the Basumatary are the landholders of Bodo society, tied to cultivation, who looked after land disputes and the distribution of land. Wikipedia's article on the Bodo, citing Kameswar Brahma (1998), also calls it the land-holding clan.
How the Mahari Is Kept
Hargouri Narzary records a custom kept by traditional Bodo families at a cremation: a few coins are offered to an elderly Basumatary as a tax for the plot of land where the cremation takes place, and they must be left at the cremation ground, not taken home. How widely it is kept today the sources read do not say. Sources differ on the old marriage rule: Endle believed the sub-tribes had once married only within themselves, while Gurdon, editing his book, doubted it. Wikipedia's account of Kalicharan Brahma (1860 to 1938) says that followers of his Brahma reform movement came to be known as Brahmas, a surname now common among Bodo families.
Notable Personalities
Satish Chandra Basumatary
1901 to 1974
Bodo poet and dramatist, second president of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha, and editor of Bibar (1924), the first Bodo magazine; Wikipedia names his parents as Thandaram and Khowlou Basumatary.