Rengma

Clans and Kinship

A man must marry a woman who is neither of his own clan nor of a clan linked with his in the same exogamous group (Mills, 1937, p. 125), and descent is in the male line, though a mother's brother has special privileges: he may never be called by name, a quarrel with him is the gravest of wrongs, and he may ask for small things such as spears and cloths, which must be given (p. 137). Mills sorted the clans of the Western Rengma into six exogamous groups, built up by the splitting of clans and the adoption of migrants who returned from the Lhota and Sema country (pp. 11-14). Every Western Rengma village had a chief, kokhügü in the southern speech and kekho'ong in the northern, with advisers from the other leading clans; the office was hereditary in a clan but not in one family, and went to the most suitable man of the leading families (p. 138). Boys slept in the morung from a young age, and there the old men told of the deeds of the past (pp. 49-50).

The clans of the Western Rengma of Nagaland, in Mills's six exogamous groups and in his order (1937, pp. 11-14). The clans of the Eastern Rengma villages Mills visited, Meluri, Sahunyu and Lephori, are left out: he notes that the two parts had separated so long ago that no tie between their clan groups could be traced. Clans of the Rengma of Assam were not found in the sources used.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Nagaland

  Within the single entry 'Naga' in Nagaland's list. Census 2011 counted the Rengma by name under that entry.

• Scheduled Tribe

  Assam

  Listed as: Any Naga tribes

  In the list for Assam's autonomous hill districts, which include Karbi Anglong, the Rengma come within 'Any Naga tribes'; no separate count was found.

The Assam listing is read from the general entry 'Any Naga tribes', not from an entry naming the Rengma. The compilation used may not show amendments made between 2022 and 2024.

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 Rengma and the Lhota agree that until fairly recently they were one tribe (Mills, 1937, p. 4). With the Angami, Sema and Lhota, the Rengma place their dispersal at Khezha-Kenoma, which they call Khinzonyu: two sons of the ancestress of the Khinzonyu clan quarrelled over the stone that doubled the rice dried on it, and when their mother wrongly gave the right to the younger, the elder left with his men and the migration began. Rengma tradition holds that the migrants dropped the ancestors of the Angami on the way and founded a village on Therügu Hill, south of Tseminyu, where three brothers, Khasa, Thongsü and Senteng, were born and later led the people off in three bodies (pp. 4-5). The northern section call themselves Ntenyi and the southern Nzong (p. 2).

History

Mills (1937, pp. 1-4) gives the outline. About a hundred years or more before his time a body of Western Rengma moved north-west into the Mikir Hills, now Karbi Anglong in Assam; in 1848 the Rengma there numbered 689 households in thirty-two villages. The first European to meet Rengma was Lieutenant Grange in 1839, at Mohung Dehooa in the plains, and by 1848 the Mikir Hills villages paid revenue. Captain Butler paid a friendly visit to the Western Rengma about 1870, and from 1878, when Kohima and Wokha were occupied, they were administered. Mills, Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, published The Rengma Nagas in 1937. Tseminyu, the chief village of the southern section, is now the headquarters of a district of its own.

Faith and Worship

Mills (1937, pp. 164-165) found Rengma religion to be almost without priests or prayer: for many rites a man was his own priest, and for others he called an old man of the right clan who knew the proper words. Spirits, songinyu in the southern speech, were held to be everywhere, and offerings were made to them and to the souls of the ancestors, who were believed to influence the crops. The strongest religious act was the genna, a rest day of a person or a whole village. Mission influence was already spreading among the Western Rengma in the 1930s; most Rengma are now Christian.

Customs

Ngada, the harvest home that closes the farming year, is held at the end of November in the southern villages (Mills, 1937, p. 173). On its second day descendants repair the graves of their ancestors and set fallen stones back; on the third the women put leaf-cups of rice-beer on the graves of their parents and their husbands' ancestors in thanks for the harvest; then come days of dancing in full dress and singing, when the great men of the past are celebrated in song. Until the next Ngada a newly married person might not eat venison, dog's flesh, black oil-seed or fungus (p. 212, note).

Festivals

Stories and Legends