Grandeur of a Mortuary Rite: The Chomangkan of the Karbis of Assam

Crisis rites are invariably associated with some stages of life of an individual all over the world, principally related to birth, marriage and death, among which the human populations are careful to perform the mortuary rituals, because from the day of our nomad hunter forefathers till to the present day people fear and revere dead than the living. All the crisis rites observed by a community have integral relation to the supernatural world; however, death has very close and direct relation to it, and therefore, through the mortuary rite people generally propitiate the supernatural along with the souls of the deceased persons. The Karbis also observe different mortuary rites to refrain the soul of the deceased persons from harming the family and clan members, and also for the peace and prosperity of the fellow members. The Karbi is a scheduled tribe of Assam, distributed both in the hills and plains of Assam and Meghalaya. Pristine religion of this tribe is animism; however, many of them have adopted non-traditional religion and all the sections of the Karbi, the animists Hindu, Hinduised and the Christian Karbis, inclination towards the performance of Chomangkan, the most elaborate and expensive mortuary rite of the tribe. It deserves mention that they observe some mortuary rites in different time and levels integral to a death, among which Chomangkan knits a good number of kith and kins, co-villagers, people from neighbouring villages and well-wishers through its extensive matrix.