Karbi

Clans and Kinship

Stack and Lyall describe the hill Karbi as divided into three sections, Chintong, Ronghang and Amri, which are place names rather than lines of descent, and a fourth group, the Dumrali, who settled in the Nowgong plains and took to the plough. Running through all of them are the kur (a word borrowed from Khasi; the Assamese is phoid), the exogamous clans. A child belongs to the father's kur and may not marry within it, but marriage with a first cousin on the mother's side was the usual match. Each kur is divided into sub-kurs, also exogamous, and the books do not agree on how many main kurs there are or where each sub-kur belongs. All kurs were socially equal in Stack's day, though tradition remembered Ingti as the priestly kur. Sons inherit, the eldest a little more; failing sons, brothers and then the nearest man of the kur; a widow could keep the property only by marrying into her husband's kur. Each village had a headman and a council of householders, the me, and villages were grouped into mauzas with a great council, the me-pi.

The five main kurs are in the order of the Assam census of 1891, as printed by Stack and Lyall (1908, Appendix), with the spellings used today in brackets in the notes; Wikipedia gives the same five as Engti, Terang, Enghee, Teron and Timung. The sub-kurs are Stack's, with three for Teron from the census list, in Stack's spelling with its accents. Stack and Lyall print four lists (Stack, the census, Mr. Dundas and the Rev. Mr. Moore) that group the sub-kurs differently, so a family's own reckoning may differ from this one.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam

  Listed as: Karbi

  In the part of Assam's list for the autonomous districts, not in the list for the plains.

• Scheduled Tribe

  Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland

  Listed under the older name Mikir, which Wikipedia, citing the Karbi Anglong district administration, says the community now regards as derogatory.

Assam's list for the plains has no Karbi or Mikir entry in the compilation checked. Checked against a compilation of the Order; amendments of 2022 to 2024 were not checked.

Checked on 2026-11-06 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 name Mikir was given by the Assamese, and Stack and Lyall (1908) did not know its origin; the people called themselves Arleng, 'man'. The origin of the name Karbi is not settled (Wikipedia). Karbi tradition, as Stack and Lyall recorded it, places the old home in the hills by the Kopili river, which they call Nihang, as against Nilip, the Nowgong country where they later lived. Harassed by wars between Khasi chiefs, they sought the protection of the Ahom kings; their first envoys, unable to make themselves understood, were buried alive in a tank embankment, but after fighting an embassy to the king at Sibsagar won them land, and they have lived at peace since. They also remember a king of their own, Sot Recho, whose seat was at Ronghang, and whose return some expected.

History

Stack, an Assam civil servant, gathered most of the material on the Karbi in the 1880s, and Sir Charles Lyall edited and published it in 1908. The census of 1891 counted 94,829 Mikirs and that of 1901 87,046, a fall Lyall put down to kala-azar in Nowgong and Kamrup; the largest numbers lived in Nowgong, Sibsagar, the Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Kamrup. During the Burmese wars early in the nineteenth century the Karbi left the foothills for the higher hills, and many Assamese who took refuge with them became Karbi. Under British rule their hills were called the Mikir Hills, and in 1935 they were made a Partially Excluded Area; today the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts are governed under the Sixth Schedule through the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (Wikipedia).

Faith and Worship

Stack and Lyall found no idols, temples or shrines. The gods (arnàm) are many: Hèmphu, 'head of the house', who owns all the Karbi people and is invoked first in every sacrifice, and Mukràng, close to him; the household gods Arnàm Kethe and Pèng; Rèk-ànglòng, the god of the hill the village stands on; and Arnàm-paro, 'the hundred god', who is honoured at the Rongker. Diviners (uche) find out which god needs an offering. The dead go to Jòm-aròng, the town of Jòm Recho, if the funeral rites are duly done. Wikipedia's account says those who keep the old religion call themselves the sons of Hemphu and Mukrang, and that some Karbi are Hindu or Christian.

Customs

The funeral, chomangkan, is the most elaborate and costly Karbi ceremony: the dead are cremated, and the rites, with the chomàng-kàn dance to the drum, are held when the family can afford them, so that the spirit can enter Jòm-aròng. Stack and Lyall describe two forms of marriage: in the more common one the bride goes to her husband's home after the wedding; in the other, usual when she is an heiress or only daughter, the husband stays and works for his father-in-law for a year or more. No money is paid for the bride. Young men formerly lived in the teràng, the bachelors' house. The Rongker, the annual village festival, is held in June at the start of cultivation, or in some villages in the cold season.

Festivals

Stories and Legends