Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s6.21

c48.s6.21

The general results of the Ethnographical Survey of Assam have not yet been published (1909), but several valuable monographs upon particular tribes have been prepared by local officers specially qualified for the task, and some of these have been utilised in the last three Census Reports. The numerical strength of the tribes, however, which it is the main object of the Census to discover, is not altogether satisfactorily represented by the returns, partly because of the variety of language current amongst these communities, which has the result of giving to many of the latter a title unknown within their own body. The influence of Brāhmanism, moreover, upon the numerous less civilised tribes by which it is here surrounded, turns the scale adversely to accurate ethnographic nomenclature. Members of a tribe who decide upon conformity with Brāhmanic observances are apt to signify their breach with the past by adopting the name of an existing caste, with or without a qualifying epithet. Taking an example from one of the larger communities, a Kacāri does not make use of that name, but calls himself Bārā, and when he is dallying with the outworks of Brāhmanism, he is a Sarāniyā, or a Sarāniyā Kōc. Once the plunge taken, the prefix is dropped, and he becomes Kōc. In due course, if he thrives, he dies Rājbansī. As the same course is followed by the Lālung, Mikir and Gāro tribes, the identity of the convert is lost in an all-embracing title, once racial, but now sunk into nothing more than the designation of a loosely knit and heterogeneous Brāhmanic caste. Thus the remarkable variation in the numbers returned for a tribe between one Census and another is attributable to little more than additional care in the discrimination between local terms, and, on the whole, the later enumeration may fairly be taken as more correct than its predecessor. There are other causes of variation, but they are exceptional. One tribe suffered more severely than others from the serious epidemic, called the "black disease", which ravaged the valley a few years back: another, the bulk of which resides beyond the frontier, may have sent more or fewer immigrants into British territory: elsewhere, the Census was extended to tracts in which it was not possible to conduct the operations ten years before, and so on. Even now, there are tribes of considerable importance dwelling in the north-eastern and eastern hills, which have not yet been enumerated.