Deori

Clans and Kinship

The Deori are patrilineal: children take the father's clan, a married woman joins her husband's, and land and goods pass in equal shares to the sons, never to wife or daughters (Sharma Thakur 1987). Families are often joint, several married brothers living under one head in a long house; the Dibongia call the joint family jakarua jupa. Above the family stand the four divisions, called khel or goyan: Dibongia, Tengapania, Borgoya and Patorgoya, each named after a river or place where it lived. Each division is made up of exogamous clans, called bangsha or jaku, fourteen among the Dibongia. Clans carry duties at the village shrine, the than or, among the Dibongia, the midiku: the Bor Deori, the chief priest, comes from the Sundaria clan among the Dibongia, the Machiaitika among the Tengapania and the Ikucharu among the Borgoya. Nine office-holders serve the shrine, led by the Bor Deori, the Saru Deori, the Bor Bharali and the Saru Bharali; the deodhai, who goes into trance to the beat of drums, is believed to speak for the deity. Secular affairs are in the hands of the gaonbura and the village elders.

The clans and their duties as the Assam institute's 2017 study gives them, checked against Sharma Thakur (1987); both end the Tengapania list with 'etc.', and the Dibongia list gives thirteen of the fourteen jaku. The clans of the Patorgoya are not known and may have merged into the Borgoya and Dibongia. Wikipedia lists further sub-clan names. Spellings differ between the two accounts.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam

  In the part of Assam's list for the plains, outside the autonomous districts.

Arunachal Pradesh's list in the compilation checked has no separate Deori entry, but the Census 2011 table for Arunachal Pradesh counts 5,365 people returned as Deori among the state's Scheduled Tribes; how the Order covers them there was not checked. Checked against a compilation of the Order and the Census 2011 tables; amendments of 2022 to 2024 were not checked.

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

The Assam institute's 2017 study explains Deori as the people who know the gods and how to worship them, from de, god, u, offering, and ri, manner. Wikipedia gives their own name as Jimochaya, 'children of the sun'. Their first home was on the Dibang, the Tengapani and at Patorsal, in today's Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh and the Chapakhowa area of Tinsukia district; feuds with the hill peoples pushed them westward, and the 1901 census placed their old home on the Kundil river east of Sadiya. Older writers (Dalton 1872, Brown 1895, Endle 1911) treated the Deori as the priestly section of the Chutiya, who once ruled from Sadiya, and the 'Deori-Chutiya' speech as the old Chutiya language; the 2017 study notes that Deoris today do not accept being called a division of the Chutiya or only their priests, while granting a historical link. A folk account in Wikipedia tells that four men carried the stone of the goddess Tamreswari to her temple when no one else could, and were made its priests; they are remembered as the ancestors of the four divisions.

History

The Ahoms entered Assam in the thirteenth century and in time overcame the Chutiya kingdom of Sadiya (Endle 1911; the 2017 study). The Deori remained priests at the shrines of the region: Wikipedia names the Tamreswari temple near Sadiya and Malinithan as served by the Borgoya, the Bura-Buri Than by the Dibongia and the Boliya-hemata temple by the Tengapania. Pushed westward, they settled along the rivers of Upper Assam, where they live by rice cultivation, fishing and weaving in flood-prone country. The census counted 23,080 Deori in 1981 (Sharma Thakur 1987) and 41,161 in 2001 (Assam institute 2017). In the 1930s and 1940s Bhimbor Deori was among the leaders of the plains tribes of Assam.

Faith and Worship

Each village has its shrine, the than or deosal, which the Dibongia call midiku, 'abode of the deity'; the Dibongia midiku has six houses, the chief of them the house of Kundi Mama, with a kitchen for the deity's food and a common kitchen for the feast. The supreme deity is Kundi Mama, also called Gira-Girachi, the old couple; the Assam institute's writers equate Kundi with Shiva and Mama with Parvati, while Wikipedia, in an unreferenced section, describes the faith as the Deori's own. Their children Pisa Dema, also called Balia Baba, and Pisasi Dema or Kechaikhaiti, the goddess Tamreswari, are also worshipped, the Borgoya honouring Tamreswari and the Tengapania Balia Baba. Wednesday is the favoured day for worship. Household deities are honoured with sacrifices, and rice beer (suze) is essential in the rites. Some Vaishnava influence and Hindu festivals have come in, but the old worship continues (Sharma Thakur 1987; 2017 study).

Deities named in the sources: Kundi Mama, Tamreswari

Customs

Clan exogamy is strict. Sharma Thakur (1987) names four forms of marriage: the bor biya, a three-day wedding arranged by the parents; the maju biya, a smaller two-day one; the bakat rupia, a one-day ceremony; and, commonest, marriage by elopement, after which the couple must once in their lives hold the suje lagua feast for the heads of three major clans. A go-between, the pathoria, versed in lore, settles the bride price; the bride's family in turn gives a dowry of bell-metal and other goods worth much more. Levirate and sororate are both practised. The dead are cremated on a pyre of seven layers of wood, nine for a priest; children, women who die in pregnancy and the victims of epidemics are buried. Houses are long, raised on posts, with a porch, the misso, open on three sides.

Festivals

Stories and Legends

Notable Personalities