The Tai of Assam and Ancient Tai Ritual Vol. II: Sacrifces and Time-reckoning (1981) (original) (raw)
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Documenta Praehistorica, 2023
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Eastern book house, 2020
Tiwa is an indigenous ethnic community of Assam. Tiwa people lives in both low land and hills of Assam and adjoining Meghalaya state of India. Though plains dwelling Tiwas at present highly assimilated in the caste Hindu Assamese society,those living in the highland and the foot hills practices their traditional rites and rituals. This paper briefly attempts to understand the ritualistic world view of the traditional Tiwa society and through lights on different dimensions related to beliefs and practices of their traditional cultural activities.
Ethnomedical Practices among the Tai-Khamyangs of Assam, India
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Ethnobotany is the study of uses of plants since ancient times. This work is comprised of study of ethnobotany among the Tai-Khamtis of Lakhimpur District Assam India. Although various research works had been done related to the botanical resources of Lakhimpur district, Assam;the ethnobotanical study related to the ethnic tribe "Tai-khamti" is yet unexplored. So,a field work and previous literature study had done to know the ethnobotany among them
Antrocom, 2023
One of the most fertile areas of modern cultural research is the study of Rituals performed by indigenous communities. Rituals maintain and preserve the cultural identity of a society, especially, in preliterate oral tribal societies of the world. In such communities, Agriculture and Religion are intrinsically linked to the socio-religious sphere of their life. Their survival is solely based on human-nature dynamics. Such communities practice nature-worshipping and believe in the interconnectivity of the physical and supernatural worlds. Hence, they perform many rituals to appease the malevolent and to express gratitude to benevolent supernatural beings, deities, and spirits. Tangams are one such animist community that is the least populated and lesser-known ethnolinguistic group of Arunachal Pradesh. Their everyday life is based on the performance of several rites and rituals. These ritual performances are part of their cultural heritage. However, such practices are slowly in decline due to various internal and external factors. Therefore, this paper is a descriptive attempt to document, elucidate, preserve, and disseminate the dying Maye ritual practice and its associated belief systems
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The Tai Ahom culture and language has ample impact on the formation of dominant Assamese culture and language. Many Tai words now become the recognised words of Assamese language and are popularly used in day to day Assamese conversation and writing. There are scarce of substitute words for many Assamese terminologies other than the Tai version of words are used spoken Assamese on different occasions. Such many Tai words have been recognised as substantive Assamese words by modern Assamese dictionaries too. The Tai Ahoms demand that they are the harbinger of Assamese Bihu festivals that accompany with typical Bihu dances, songs and other related activities performed by the Assamese people today. The base of their demands lie on the fact that all the dances, songs, musical instruments and other customs associated with Bihu show greater similarities with the traditional dances, songs and other co-activities of different festivities of the Tai people living in the central part of China from where the present Tai Ahoms migrated to Assam centuries
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The Highlander Institute The Highlander Journal, Volume 2, 2022, 1–18, 2022
This photo essay on the ritualistic world of the Tiwa highland community is a product of long-term fi eld research carried out since 2015 in West Karbi Anglong district in Assam, and Ri-Bhoi district in Meghalaya, India. Unlike their lowland counterparts, Tiwa highlanders embrace the older traditions as evidenced in their ritual and cultural practices. The images in this essay are drawn from ongoing fi eldwork, and are supported by preliminary textual descriptions, though seeking in an ethnographic way to present a general picture of the socio-cultural and ritualistic life of Tiwa highlanders which is largely unfamiliar to scholars in an otherwise rich Northeast Indian ethnographic record.
Religions, 2017
In this paper, we shall examine how possession is understood in Assam, India. We are aware that the larger northeastern frontier of India retained indigenous practices, religious festivals, and beliefs in a plethora of exotic goddesses, rituals, which have continued unabated through modern times. This has resulted in cross-pollination between the Vedic or traditional Brahmanical or orthodox Hindu practices and the indigenous practices, which in turn has yielded a hybrid world of Śākta Tantra rituals and practices. In this paper, I examine how possession is understood in Assam, India. We are aware that the larger northeastern frontier of India retained indigenous practices, religious festivals, beliefs in a plethora of exotic goddesses, and rituals, which have continued into the present. This has resulted in cross-pollination between traditional Brahmanical or orthodox Hindu practices and indigenous practices, which in turn has yielded a hybrid world of Śākta Tantra rituals and practices. This article is based predominantly on fieldwork conducted over four years and secondary texts. During these years, I documented many sessions of " speaking to the dead " in the Tiwa Tribe. The Tiwa are a culturally rich tribal community in Assam, India. The Tiwa's intersection with mainstream Hindu religion, Śākta Tantra, is rather complex. I first will present a case study of a Mother Tantric who frequently co-creates communication between the living and the departed. Further, I will discuss how Mother Tantrics are seen as community leaders, akin to the religious authority of Brahmins in the Hindu funerary space. Then, I will draw similarities between the rituals performed by the Tiwas to the Deodhani festival in Kāmākhyā, an important ŚāktaTantra pīṭha, to highlight the fusion of mainstream Śākta Tantra with the indigenous practices and to show how aboriginal practices also borrow from conventional Hindu rituals. The interviews were conducted in Assamese and a dialect the Tiwas speak from the Tibeto-Burman language family. I used a translator for the interviews in the Tiwa language.