Dimasa

Clans and Kinship

The Dimasa have two sets of exogamous clans. Endle (1911) counted some eighty among the Dimasa of North Cachar and the Hojai of Nowgong, forty of men (sengfong) and forty of women (zulu); Bordoloi (1987, 1988) gives forty sengphong and forty-two julu, and the 1972 district handbook forty-two and forty. A son is counted in his father's sengphong and a daughter in her mother's julu, and no one may marry within the father's or the mother's clan, however distant the tie. Property follows the same lines: a father's land and goods pass to his sons, or failing them to the nearest man of his clan, while a mother's ornaments and household things pass to her daughters, or failing them to the nearest woman of her clan (Bordoloi 1987). Endle names one exception to exogamy, the royal clan Hachumsa, whose members had to marry among themselves. The family is small: married sons set up their own houses. The village (nablai) is led by a headman, the kunang, with an assistant, the dilo, and the elders, who settle disputes; older women join when women are concerned. Above the villages, the old kingdom was divided into twelve daikho, sacred divisions each with a priest, the zonthai, under a head priest, the gisia; priests come only from the Hojaisa clan. Unmarried young men slept in the bachelors' house, the nodrang, which Bordoloi found already in decline.

Only the clans named in the sources opened are given. None of them prints a full list: Endle (1911) counts some eighty clans and Bordoloi (1987, 1988) eighty-two, without naming them. Wikipedia's Dimasa article lists forty sengphong, citing a community website and the Census of India 1961 monograph on the Dimasa Kacharis, which could not be opened; that list is not reproduced here.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam, Meghalaya

  Listed as: Dimasa, Kachari

  In Assam, in the part of the list for the autonomous districts.

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam

  Listed as: Dimasa

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

• Scheduled Tribe

  Mizoram

  Listed as: Dimasa (Kachari)

Assam's list for the plains also has an entry 'Barmans in Cachar', for the Dimasa of the Cachar plains who took the title Barman (Bordoloi and Sharma Thakur 1988); it is counted separately (6,716 in 2011) and not included here. Nagaland's list has an entry 'Kachari' (13,034 in 2011); whether it covers the Dimasa 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

Di-ma-sa is read as 'son of the big river', from di, water, ma, big, and sa, son (Bordoloi 1987; the 1972 district handbook); Endle (1911) translates it 'big-water-folk'. Bordoloi notes that many rivers of Assam begin with the syllable di, and takes the name to point to the Brahmaputra. Other writers he cites derive it from Hidimba, the wife of Bhima in the Mahabharata, or from the Dhansiri river, called Dima, on which Dimapur stands. The name Kachari was given by outsiders: the handbook suggests that it came into use after the kings moved from Maibong to the country the Sylhet Bengalis called Cachar. Endle records that when the Kachari king Krishna Chandra and his brother Govinda Chandra made a public profession of Hinduism about 1790, Bhima was assigned to the royal line as a mythical ancestor.

History

Endle (1911) gives the outline: the Kachari kings, driven from the Brahmaputra valley by the Ahoms, ruled from Dimapur on the Dhansiri until the Ahoms sacked it about the middle of the sixteenth century; the court then moved to Maibong in the North Cachar Hills, and about 1750, under pressure from the Jaintia king, to Khaspur in the plains of Cachar. Bordoloi (1987) dates the Ahom capture of Maibong to 1706, under king Tamradhwaj. The last king, Gobind Chandra, was driven out by Burmese attacks, restored with the East India Company's help in 1826 and killed about four years later, and the kingdom was annexed in 1830. His general Tula Ram kept part of North Cachar until his death in 1854, when it was joined to Nowgong district (Endle). Ruins of gateways, pillars, ramparts and temples remain at Dimapur, Maibong, Khaspur and Kasamari Pathar. The move to Khaspur touched mainly the court; most Dimasa stayed in the hills and kept their language and customs, while those of the Cachar plains took up Hinduism and the title Barman (Bordoloi and Sharma Thakur 1988). The 1971 census counted 39,344 Dimasa in Assam.

Faith and Worship

Bordoloi (1987) describes Dimasa religion as their own tradition joined with Hinduism. Six ancestral gods, the madai, among them Sibrai, Doo Raja, Naikhu Raja and Waa Raja, are still worshipped, and Sibrai, whom Bordoloi equates with Shiva, is named first in every rite. Spirits held to cause sickness and crop failure are appeased, above all before new jhum land is opened. The twelve daikho priests, under the gisia, perform the main rites for all the Dimasa, and in each village the kunang worships every year the clan god of the sengphong that founded the village. The kings Krishna Chandra and Gobind Chandra formally accepted Hinduism at Khaspur in 1790, and the temples at the old capitals show that Hindu ways had come in much earlier; the Dimasa of the hills still keep the old rites alongside them.

Customs

Most marriages are arranged by negotiation, with a bride price called kalti, which the educated now discourage; the wedding takes place at the bride's house, and after a few days there the couple moves to a new house in the groom's village. One wife is the rule, divorce needs the kunang's approval, and widows may remarry. After a birth, mother and child stay apart until the navel cord falls off. Every Dimasa woman is a weaver: girls weave their own wedding clothes, dye yarn with indigo and herbs, and spin and weave eri silk, and fine bamboo mats and cane baskets are made at home. The young men's association, the hangsao, finishes work in the fields of each household for a small fee, paid after the harvest and spent on the Busu festival (Bordoloi 1987).

Festivals

Stories and Legends

Notable Personalities