Mushahary Mahari
Bodo
At a glance
- Called a
- Mahari
- Community
- Bodo
- Found in
- Assam
About
Mushahary (also Musahary or Mosahary) is a Bodo mahari, or clan, of Assam: the tiger folk. Endle, writing in 1911, found that its members still kept a tie to the tiger, going into a short mourning when a tiger died near their village, and thought it perhaps the one Kachari group in which reverence for its namesake had not faded. In some parts of Assam the clan uses the Assamese form Baglary. 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 musa, tiger, with the ending for 'folk'. Endle wrote it Mosá-ároi and noted that in Darrang the same group was called Bágh-l-ároi, from bagh, the Assamese word for tiger, the l being added for sound. Hargouri Narzary records that some families in Assam use the surname Baglary instead of Musahary for the same reason, and that Bodo tradition ties the clan to hunting and to guarding animals from tigers.
Historical Journey
Endle described the Mosá-ároi as people who claimed kinship with the tiger: when they heard that a tiger had died nearby, the whole village went into mourning. He wrote that special reverence for the namesake had in most cases become a thing of the past, that the tiger folk were perhaps the one exception, and that the custom was kept by Kacharis of the old-fashioned conservative school. Among the Mech of Goalpara he put the tiger folk (Mesha-ároi) first in his list of the most important of some sixteen septs, and found the same mourning there. Musahary is one of the twelve clans counted as original in the list Hargouri Narzary gives from Bhaben Narzi (2006). In the Bodo myth of the clans as Hargouri Narzary records it, the Musahary were given hunting as their work; they may not kill tigers, and they were entrusted with keeping domestic animals safe from tigers and other wild animals, keeping watch at night. Wikipedia's article on the Bodo, citing Kameswar Brahma (1998), associates the clan with the protection of cattle.
How the Mahari Is Kept
Endle describes the mourning for a tiger as short, seldom more than a day, but real: no solid food was eaten; at the end the women smeared the floors and walls of every house with fresh mud and cow-dung, clothes and brass vessels were washed in running water, used earthen pots were broken, an elder acting as deori gave everyone the 'water of peace' to drink and sprinkled it on the houses, and a fowl or pig was sacrificed and eaten together. Hargouri Narzary records the same rule today in brief: a day without food and a cleaning of the house on news of a tiger's death. How widely it is kept, and where, 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 and noted that the Mech septs were exogamous.
Presence Across Regions
Darrang, Assam
Tribal - Bodo
Endle recorded that the tiger folk were called Bágh-l-ároi here, using the Assamese word for tiger.
Goalpara, Assam
Tribal - Bodo
Endle put the tiger folk (Mesha-ároi) first among the main septs of the Mech, a closely related people, who kept the same mourning.