Daimary Mahari
Bodo
At a glance
- Called a
- Mahari
- Community
- Bodo
- Found in
- Assam
About
Daimary (also Daimari) is a Bodo mahari, or clan, of Assam: the river folk, from the Bodo word for a big river. Endle (1911) wrote that the river folk had once been the fishermen among the Bodo, though by his time they had merged with the other cultivators, and later Bodo writers also describe them as the people of the river banks who lived by fishing. 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
The name joins the Bodo daima (Endle: doimá), a big river, with the ending for 'folk'. Endle compared it with Dimasa, the name of the Bodo-speaking people of the North Cachar Hills, which he read as 'children of the big river'. Hargouri Narzary explains Daimary as the people who lived on the banks of the big rivers.
Historical Journey
Endle listed the Doimá-ároi eighth among the Kachari sub-tribes in 1911: the river folk, who in olden time were the fisherman class, though the surviving members had merged with the mass of ordinary cultivators. Among the Mech of Goalpara he named the water folk (Doim-ároi) among the most important of some sixteen exogamous septs, and he noted that the Mech names matched his own list, the water folk corresponding to his river folk. Daimary is one of the twelve clans counted as original in the list Hargouri Narzary gives from Bhaben Narzi (2006), and in the Bodo myth of the clans the Daimary were given fishing as their work; the study notes that Narzi and Endle both describe them as the suppliers of fish. Wikipedia's article on the Bodo, citing Kameswar Brahma (1998), calls it the clan associated with the river.
How the Mahari Is Kept
Beyond its old tie to rivers and fishing, the sources read record little that is particular to the Daimary clan, and they do not say whether any rite still falls to it. 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 and noted that the Mech septs were exogamous. 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.
Presence Across Regions
Goalpara, Assam
Tribal - Bodo
Endle named the water folk (Doim-ároi) among the main septs of the Mech, a closely related people, and matched them with the river folk of Darrang and Kamrup.