Online published on 5 July, 2013.
The Misings who were formerly referred to as Miri in the religious scriptures in Assamese, medieval buranjis and colonial administrative records are generally known to have migrated down from the eastern part of the Sub-Himalayan range of mountainous region presently in Arunachal Pradesh as early as 12th century A.D. Ethnically, they belong to Mongoloid stock of human races and the language they speak is a member of the Tani group of languages of Tibeto-Burman family which are widely spoken in central Arunachal Pradesh. The Misings who constitute the second largest tribal group of Assam in terms of population with 587310 souls recorded in the 2001 census are a little studied tribe.
This paper, therefore, attempts to (a) locate possible homeland of the tribe (b) ascertain their migration (space, route, time etc.) (c) identify their co-habitation and acculturation with non-Mising communities in Assam Plain and contribution to the process of nation building and (d) highlight factors contributing to retaining the distinctive language and culture of their own.
The paper reproduces relevant references to the homeland of the Sino-Mongoloid groups made by scholars (Chatterji, 1974, 1955 (reprint 1991), Sun, 1993, Nyori, 1993) and waves of migration therefrom. Similarly, the paper cross-examines the references left by the authors under colonial period and their relevance to spatiotemporal contexts of the tribal society.
However, the paper tries to explore the dichotomy of the tribe's attitudes towards acculturation and retaining their traditional traits with rich cultural heritage. On one hand, they get involved intensively in the process of cross-cultural fertilization and have adopted non-Mising cultural elements with need-filling motive and have been keeping up the language and culture of their own on the other.
