Thadou

Clans and Kinship

The Thadou are patrilineal and exogamous. In the notes on kinship in Shaw (p. 140), a man's proper marriage is with his mother's brother's daughter, while a girl may not marry her mother's brother's son, and women avoid marrying into their mother's clan for at least two generations. Shakespear (p. 190) describes the clan as divided like the Lushei, into four main families, the Doungel, Sitlhou, Haokip and Kipgen, each split into many branches named after ancestors; Shaw gives the genealogies and names the living head of each branch in his day. Seniority of descent is kept carefully: a portion of every animal killed passed from each family head to the head of his branch, and so on up to the head of all the Thadou (Shaw, pp. 65-66), and when a line died out in the male line (ingam) its rights passed to the next senior line. Villages were ruled by hereditary chiefs, and the right hind leg of all game killed on a chief's land went to him.

After Shaw (1929, pp. 26-39), who gives genealogies of the Sitlhou, Chongloi, Hangshing, Phohhil and Shingshon and names the branches of the Thadou line, and Shakespear (1912, p. 190), who names Doungel, Sitlhou, Haokip and Kipgen as the four main families. The five clans with their own pages are given in the spellings families use; the others are spelt as Shaw has them. Not a full list: each clan has many branches, and other clans live among the Thadou.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Manipur

  An entry of its own in Manipur's list.

Manipur's list also has 'Any Kuki Tribes', added in 2003, as do Meghalaya, Mizoram and the list for Assam's autonomous hill districts; Nagaland and Tripura list 'Kuki'. Some families of Thadou-speaking clans are recorded under 'Any Kuki Tribes' rather than 'Thadou'. The compilation used may not show amendments made between 2022 and 2024.

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

Thadou, Hutton noted in editing Shaw, seems to have been a title meaning courage or ability, and Shakespear recorded the people's own derivation from that, 'to kill', and doh, 'to war'. Shaw (1929, pp. 26-28) traced the genealogy from Chongthu, one of the mythical ancestors who lived below the earth, down to Sehtha, whose sons were Thadou, Chongloi and Hangshing; the persons before Thadou are held to be mythical, and when the genealogy is recited the priest (thempu) begins with Thadou. Counting twenty-three generations to the head of the Sitlhou clan of his day, Shaw put Thadou's birth in about the thirteenth century. Traditions differ on where the Thadou came from: Shaw argued from the songs, in which the Gun (Imphal) river is central, for a home in the north, while Shakespear (1912) recorded a traditional home far to the south called Kochuk.

History

Shakespear (1912, p. 190) concluded that the Thadou came into the Manipur hills about the middle of the eighteenth century; the Manipuri chronicle mentions them, as Khongjais, by 1787. Their villages spread round the Imphal valley and into the Naga Hills and North Cachar, the Sitlhou to the north-west of the valley, the Doungel to the north-east, the Haokip on all sides but mostly to the north-east, the Kipgen to the west and the Shingshon to the south-west (Shaw, p. 11). William Shaw, who served seven years as subdivisional officer in north-west Manipur, wrote Notes on the Thadou Kukis, published in 1929 with an introduction and notes by J. H. Hutton, who warned that Shaw's account follows Sitlhou practice and leans to the Sitlhou point of view.

Faith and Worship

In the older religion Pathen is the Thadou name for the Creator. Shaw records that the mythical ancestors, the Manmasinao, and the spirits, the Thilha, once lived together in peace until a quarrel parted them, and that Pathen gave the ancestor Kimchal the indoi, the bundle of charms kept on the front verandah of every Thadou house in the hope of a large family. The priest, the thempu, conducts sacrifices and recites the genealogy at feasts.

Customs

Feasts of merit raised a man's standing: the highest, the Chon, could be given only by one who had given the Sha-ai three times, and in it everything was done seven times, seven mithun being killed. Shaw wrote that it was first given by Thadou himself and had not been performed for a very long time, and that the special weapon used for it, the chontul, was lost long ago after a quarrel between the Doungel and Thadou families. The song called Langla is sung only at the burial of those who have performed the Chon. Inheritance goes to the eldest male line; a younger branch cannot inherit until all senior branches have died out in the male line.

Stories and Legends