Bru

Clans and Kinship

Gan Chaudhuri (1983) describes three levels. The tribe marries within itself and is divided into groups called panji or dapha, twelve in his list. A panji, as the Bru understand it, joins people who once lived in the same hamlet; members once lived together and resisted outsiders settling among them. Within each panji are lineages, sandai, which are patrilineal, and within these the family, noukhung. None of the panji is totemic, and they are no longer exogamous: marriage within the panji is allowed, the sandai too has ceased to be exogamous as it has grown, and the only bar now is between brother and sister; cousins may marry. Mukherjee (1970) described the Bru as divided into two halves, Molsoi and Meska, but Gan Chaudhuri found no such division. The family is headed by the father, who owns its property; married sons usually stay with the father while he lives, and married daughters with their husbands often live in the parents' house for some years, for marriage by service is common.

The twelve panji in Gan Chaudhuri's list (1983), with the meanings Bru elders gave him; he writes that their explanations were vague and that none of the groups is totemic. Mukherjee (1970) added Dalbang and Saggarai, which the Bru of Kanthali Chhara did not accept.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Tripura

  Listed as: Riang

That the 'Riang' named under 'Any Kuki tribes' in the lists for Assam's hill districts, Meghalaya and Mizoram are the Bru is taken from the name; no source opened says so, and there is no separate count for them. Checked against the Census 2011 tables for Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Mizoram, whose notes give the names under 'Any Kuki tribes', and a compilation of the Order; amendments of 2022 to 2024 were not checked. Outside Tripura, the 'Any Kuki tribes' entries of Assam's hill districts, Meghalaya and Mizoram include a 'Riang' in census notes, but no source opened for this page says that entry covers the Bru, so those states are not listed here.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Bru, their own name, means 'man' (Gan Chaudhuri 1983). The meaning of Reang is not known to most Bru. Elders at Kanthali Chhara told Gan Chaudhuri that they descend from a boy and a girl hatched from a stone by the divine bird Garuda, Biangma in their speech, from which came the name Reang; the Uchai told him instead that in the migration from Burma and Arakan the Reang went first and the Uchai, the rear party, followed. Gan Chaudhuri traces their route from Burma through Arakan and the Chittagong Hill Tracts into Tripura, where they first settled around Amarpur and southern Kailashahar. Lewin (1869) counted the Reang among four clans of the Tipperah people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts; Gan Chaudhuri argues that they have all the marks of a separate tribe.

History

In the 1931 census most Bru lived in South Tripura. After unrest in the south in the 1940s, many moved from Amarpur, Udaipur and Belonia north to Dharmanagar, and later censuses found most Bru in North Tripura; after 1947 some came in from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and some moved to the Mizo hills in search of jhum land (Gan Chaudhuri 1983). The Bru had a three-tier self-government: in each village a chief, the kamifang or chaudhuri, with a store-keeper (kerpang or karbari), a priest (akcai), a guard and a messenger; three zonal chiefs, the huklai chaudhuri, for the country of the Muhuri, Gomati and Khowai rivers, who held a yearly river rite; and at the top the council of the kami kachkao, the Bru raja, with a chapia khan as chief minister, a chapia, priests, a physician, musicians and many other officers, chosen by discussion among the people.

Faith and Worship

The Bru worship many gods and goddesses, some kindly and some dangerous, and believe firmly in dreams and divination (Gan Chaudhuri 1983). For rain the goddess of water and her attendants are worshipped; Mainokma for rice, Khonaukma for cotton, and Songrongma, worshipped above all by village chiefs, for wealth and standing; Buraha, lord of the forest, and his wife Haicukma for the health of domestic animals. Rites are led by priests, akcai or ojhai, who also divine by the entrails of a sacrificed fowl or pig, or in trance. The Bru also keep Hindu observances, among them Kali puja and the worship of Shani and Mangal Chandi, and some elders call themselves descendants of the sage Kashyapa.

Customs

Gan Chaudhuri (1983) lists the ways of taking a wife: by service, by mutual consent, by bride price, by love, by elopement, by exchange and by capture. The commonest is chamarai, in which the groom lives and works in the bride's house for some years; a man who will not serve may pay a fixed sum, dafa, instead (Akhanda 1995). A field hut, the kaireng, is built on a mound in the jhum to watch the crop. The traditional family is large, the father heading a house that may hold his married sons and their children, though such families are now breaking up.

Festivals

Stories and Legends

Notable Personalities