Mech tribe
Encyclopedia
Mech tribe is one of the scheduled tribes of India and belong to Bodo-Kachari
group of tribes. They belong to Mongoloid race and speak mainly Bodo language
, which is a Tibeto-Burman dialect but have got influenced by the Assamese language
. The Mech people live in the Dooars region of West Bengal
and parts of western Assam
. The name Mech is supposed to be arrived from the Mechi River
in the Terai
region. According to a belief, some ancestors of these people had resided in the region adjoining the Mechi river and subsequently they were named as Mech. Others say, the word Mech has come from the Sanskrit word Mleccha
, meaning unclean. Today, a section of Mech people in West Bengal prefer to refer themselves as Bodo instead of Mech.
, North Bengal
and parts of East Bengal
. It is said that, during their migration to India, they marched towards three directions. A group of people from there went up to Cachar district
in Assam. In Cachar, they are called Kachari
. Another group went along the river Brahmaputra and established themselves in the whole of Assam up to Goalpara district
and parts of Jalpaiguri district
and Cooch Behar district
under the name of Bodo or Bara. The third group went towards the West along the foot of the Himalayas
up to the river Mechi, bordering India
and Nepal
and settled on the North bank of the river known as Mech or Mechia. Later they spread to Darjeeling Terai
, Baikanthpur in Jalpaiguri district
again marched further East and settled in the Dooars. It is said that, a group of Mech people, again moved further East, crossed the Sankosh River, and went towards Goalpara in Assam. Due to repeated floods in Dooars and eastern bank of Teesta river
, a large number of families migrated towards Assam
.
According to N. Vasu (1922) Meches and Kiratas belong to the Asura
dynasty. They were Mlecchas and so abbreviated into Mech. They ruled Pragjyotisha Kingdom
for four thousand years and later began to decline with the elevation of the Aryans. Many of them sought refuge in the remote forest areas to be regarded as wild and uncivilized tribes in later years. George Abraham Grierson
's Linguistic Survey of India
also maintains that Mech is a corruption of Mlecchas.
Sanyal (1973) narrates a mythical story about the origin of Mech people. It says Mech and Limbu
used to live together. They were driven out from the north-eastern corner of India, Burma and Tibet
. They fled along the foot of the Himalayas
and came to the low lands of the present Darjeeling district
in the midst of thick forests. They lived there temporarily. The Limbus did not want to stay back there. They started towards the hills making the way by cutting trees. The Meches started a few days later. They tried to follow the track but lost the way and came upon the river Mechi between Darjeeling and Nepal. Some of them preferred to live on the banks of river Mechi. They called themselves Meches or Mechias. Thus, it is believed that the Limbus of Nepal
and the Meches of India belong to the same tribal group.
Risley (1891) tells a story about the origin of Mech, which is close to the above one. God sent Mech people on the earth from the heaven. They descended to Varanasi
in the beginning. However, Varanasi was not the ascertained place for them. They started moving towards north and reached Kachar in Kamrup. The youngest brother decided to stay back there. He was the forefather of Mech, Koch
and Dhimal
. The elder brothers went towards the hills. The descendants of those two brothers are Limbu
and Khambu of Nepa
l.
From the third to the tenth century, Aryan kings of Gaur
namely Samudragupta, Prabhakar Vardhana, Jayapala, Vikramaditya and many other Kshatriya
kings advanced as far as the Louhitya with their army and subjugated Kamarupa from time to time. Some of the military personnel must been retained there and miscegenation between the invading army the indigenous people must had taken place. Thus, the Hinduized Bodos and Meches gradually assimilated much of Kshatriya blood, adopted Aryan Hindu gods and started worshiping them along with their own gods.
The Meches were one of those early inhabitants of the Dooars and adjacent tracts and had exercised control over large areas in earlier centuries. Several accounts state that the Koch Behar royal family
descended from a Mech leader Haria alias Haridas Mandal. Since the thirteen century, the Meches experienced a process of both Hinduization and Islamization.
Mech women rear silkworm. They spin Endi thread from the cocoons. Mech women also weave cloths with the thread produced at home, on a primitive loom called ‘kanti’, which is made from bamboo. They also make baskets, fish traps and other items out of bamboo. Their traditional houses are still constructed with bamboo.
Today, most of Mechs are mainly dependent on agriculture for their livilng. They follow subsistence level agriculture, though in recent times they are progressively using modern methods of agriculture. Both male and female member of the community work together.
) cultivation to settled agriculture with the bullocks and the plough. The Meches call ‘jhum’ as ‘Hadang’ and the settled cultivation as ‘Hal-wai-nai’.
The Meches have still retained their distinctive Septs or Gotras. They have five or seven principal Gotras. They are associated with the objects other than human that might be the remnants of some form of totemism as probably practised earlier. The most common Gotras, found among the Meches in the Dooars today, are following, Sampram-ari or Campram-ari (the priestly class), Narzin-ari, (the warrior class), Basumat-ari (landlords and cultivators), Bargaon-ari, Iswari-ari, Moch-ari and Hajo-ari. The suffix ‘ari’ means Sept or Gotra. In some early literature, more numbers of septs are mentioned among the Meches and Bodos.
The Meches prefer negotiated marriages. They marry within their tribe and within any of their septs. However, there is no restriction in marrying outside one’s sept. Rarely do they marry outside their own tribe. If it happens, the couple is not made out caste but absorbed in the society, reports Sanyal in his book.
The Mech families are mostly joint or extended. The boys usually do not take a separate house after marriage. Separation is done by the head of the family according to necessity. Girls after marriage go to their husband’s house. In a Mech family, only sons inherit father’s property. Daughters, both married and unmarried, do not have any right to the property. However, they may get maintenance.
For the Meches, any object possessing super-human power is regarded as an object of worship. Meches worship rivers like Tista and Torsha. The Meches worship celestial bodies, the god of the forest (Hagra Modoi) for protection against carnivorous animals. They worship Manasha (the snake goddess), Mahakal (Shiva), and Bathou, which is represented by a Euphorbia plant or sij plant. Bathou is the most important god of the Meches. Bathou is worshipped in every Mech household. Later on, they started worshiping several Vedic
and Hindu gods too. Lately, some of them have started making idols of gods, probably under the influence of Hindu culture.
The Meches in West Bengal also follow other religions like Islam
and Christianity
. There is also a small number of followers of Brahmoism
, use Brahmo or Brahma as their surname. At the beginning of the present century, the Brahmo reformative movement, under the leadership of Guru Kalicharan Brahma
, became popular among the Bodo Kachari people and led to an overhauling of the social system.
Bodo-Kachari
Bodo-Kachari is a generic term applied to a number of ethnic groups predominantly in Assam speaking Tibeto-Burman languages or claiming a common ancestry.-Origins:...
group of tribes. They belong to Mongoloid race and speak mainly Bodo language
Bodo language
Bodo is a language that belongs to the branch of Barish section under Baric division of the Tibeto-Burman languages and spoken by the Bodo people of north-eastern India and Nepal...
, which is a Tibeto-Burman dialect but have got influenced by the Assamese language
Assamese language
Assamese is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language. It is used mainly in the state of Assam in North-East India. It is also the official language of Assam. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states. Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in...
. The Mech people live in the Dooars region of West Bengal
West Bengal
West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...
and parts of western Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
. The name Mech is supposed to be arrived from the Mechi River
Mechi River
The Mechi River is a trans-boundary river flowing through Nepal and India. It is a tributary of the Mahananda River.-Course:The Mechi originates in the Mahabharat Range in Nepal...
in the Terai
Terai
The Terai is a belt of marshy grasslands, savannas, and forests located south of the outer foothills of the Himalaya, the Siwalik Hills, and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and their tributaries. The Terai belongs to the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion...
region. According to a belief, some ancestors of these people had resided in the region adjoining the Mechi river and subsequently they were named as Mech. Others say, the word Mech has come from the Sanskrit word Mleccha
Mleccha
Mleccha , also spelt as Mlechchha, people of foreign extraction in ancient India. Mleccha was used by the Aryans much as the ancient Greeks used barbaros, originally to indicate the uncouth and incomprehensible speech of foreigners and then extended to their unfamiliar behaviour...
, meaning unclean. Today, a section of Mech people in West Bengal prefer to refer themselves as Bodo instead of Mech.
Origin: Myth and history
Meches migrated into India through Patkoi Hills between India and Burma and gradually spread themselves into the whole of AssamAssam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
, North Bengal
North Bengal
North Bengal is a term used for the northern parts of Bangladesh and West Bengal. The Bangladesh part denotes the Rajshahi Division. Generally it is the area lying west of Jamuna River and north of Padma River, and includes the Barind Tract. The West Bengal part denotes Cooch Behar, Darjeeling,...
and parts of East Bengal
East Bengal
East Bengal was the name used during two periods in the 20th century for a territory that roughly corresponded to the modern state of Bangladesh. Both instances involved a violent partition of Bengal....
. It is said that, during their migration to India, they marched towards three directions. A group of people from there went up to Cachar district
Cachar District
Cachar is an administrative district in the state of Assam in India.-Etymology:The name "Cachar" has derived from the words 'kacha' & 'har'.The district headquarters are located at Silchar...
in Assam. In Cachar, they are called Kachari
Kachari
Kachari or Cachari may refer to:*Kachari people*Kachari Kingdom*Kachari language*The Kachari Ruins in Dimapur...
. Another group went along the river Brahmaputra and established themselves in the whole of Assam up to Goalpara district
Goalpara District
Goalpara district is an administrative district in the state of Assam in India. The district headquarters are located in Goalpara town.-History:...
and parts of Jalpaiguri district
Jalpaiguri District
Jalpaiguri district is the largest district of North Bengal, covering an area 6,245 km2. It is situated between 26° 16' and 27° 0' North latitudes and 88° 4' and 89° 53' East longitudes...
and Cooch Behar district
Cooch Behar District
Cooch Behar district is a district of the state of West Bengal, India, as well as the district's namesake town. During the British Raj, the town of Cooch Behar was the seat of a princely state of Koch Bihar, ruled by the Koch dynasty....
under the name of Bodo or Bara. The third group went towards the West along the foot of the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
up to the river Mechi, bordering India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
and settled on the North bank of the river known as Mech or Mechia. Later they spread to Darjeeling Terai
Terai
The Terai is a belt of marshy grasslands, savannas, and forests located south of the outer foothills of the Himalaya, the Siwalik Hills, and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and their tributaries. The Terai belongs to the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion...
, Baikanthpur in Jalpaiguri district
Jalpaiguri District
Jalpaiguri district is the largest district of North Bengal, covering an area 6,245 km2. It is situated between 26° 16' and 27° 0' North latitudes and 88° 4' and 89° 53' East longitudes...
again marched further East and settled in the Dooars. It is said that, a group of Mech people, again moved further East, crossed the Sankosh River, and went towards Goalpara in Assam. Due to repeated floods in Dooars and eastern bank of Teesta river
Teesta River
River Teesta or Tista is said to be the lifeline of the Indian state of Sikkim, flowing for almost the entire length of the state and carving out verdant Himalayan temperate and tropical river valleys. The emerald-coloured river then forms the border between Sikkim and West Bengal before joining...
, a large number of families migrated towards Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
.
According to N. Vasu (1922) Meches and Kiratas belong to the Asura
Asura
-In Hinduism:In Hinduism, the Asuras constitute a group of power-seeking deities, sometimes considered sinful and materialistic. The Daityas and Danavas were combinedly known as Asuras. The Asura were opposed to the Devas. Both groups are children of Kasyapa...
dynasty. They were Mlecchas and so abbreviated into Mech. They ruled Pragjyotisha Kingdom
Pragjyotisha Kingdom
Pragjyotisha was a mythological kingdom first mentioned in the Hindu epics and later Hindu literature. According to later versions of the epic, King Bhagadatta ruled the kingdom during the time of the Kurukshetra War where he met his death. In historical times, it came to be named as the Kamarupa...
for four thousand years and later began to decline with the elevation of the Aryans. Many of them sought refuge in the remote forest areas to be regarded as wild and uncivilized tribes in later years. George Abraham Grierson
George Abraham Grierson
Sir George Abraham Grierson OM KCIE was born to a prominent Dublin family in 1851. His father and grandfather, both also named George, were well-known printers and publishers.-Biography:Educated at St...
's Linguistic Survey of India
Linguistic Survey of India
The Linguistic Survey of India, often referred to as the LSI, is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. It was a project of the British Raj conducted between 1894 and 1928, under the direction of George A...
also maintains that Mech is a corruption of Mlecchas.
Sanyal (1973) narrates a mythical story about the origin of Mech people. It says Mech and Limbu
Limbu people
The Yakthung or Limbu tribes and clans belong to the Kirati nation or to the Kirat confederation.They are indigenous to the hill and mountainous regions of east Nepal between the Arun and Mechi rivers to as far as Southern Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim....
used to live together. They were driven out from the north-eastern corner of India, Burma and Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
. They fled along the foot of the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
and came to the low lands of the present Darjeeling district
Darjeeling district
Darjeeling District is the northernmost district of the state of West Bengal in eastern India in the foothills of the Himalayas. The district is famous for its beautiful hill stations and Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling is the district headquarters...
in the midst of thick forests. They lived there temporarily. The Limbus did not want to stay back there. They started towards the hills making the way by cutting trees. The Meches started a few days later. They tried to follow the track but lost the way and came upon the river Mechi between Darjeeling and Nepal. Some of them preferred to live on the banks of river Mechi. They called themselves Meches or Mechias. Thus, it is believed that the Limbus of Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
and the Meches of India belong to the same tribal group.
Risley (1891) tells a story about the origin of Mech, which is close to the above one. God sent Mech people on the earth from the heaven. They descended to Varanasi
Varanasi
-Etymology:The name Varanasi has its origin possibly from the names of the two rivers Varuna and Assi, for the old city lies in the north shores of the Ganga bounded by its two tributaries, the Varuna and the Asi, with the Ganges being to its south...
in the beginning. However, Varanasi was not the ascertained place for them. They started moving towards north and reached Kachar in Kamrup. The youngest brother decided to stay back there. He was the forefather of Mech, Koch
Koch
Koch may refer to:* Koch , a type of Arctic boat* Koch people , an ethnic group originally from the ancient Koch kingdom in north east India* Koch , people with this surname* Koch, Łódź Voivodeship, a village in central Poland...
and Dhimal
Dhimal
Dhimal or Dhemal is a little known indigenous community of the Terai. They mainly reside in Morang and Jhapa districts of Nepal and Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India...
. The elder brothers went towards the hills. The descendants of those two brothers are Limbu
Limbu people
The Yakthung or Limbu tribes and clans belong to the Kirati nation or to the Kirat confederation.They are indigenous to the hill and mountainous regions of east Nepal between the Arun and Mechi rivers to as far as Southern Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim....
and Khambu of Nepa
Nepa
Nepa is a village development committee in Dailekh District in the Bheri Zone of western-central Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census it had a population of 3621 people living in 739 individual households.-External links:*...
l.
From the third to the tenth century, Aryan kings of Gaur
Gaur, West Bengal
Gour, or Gaur , as it is spelt mostly in modern times, or Lakhnauti is a ruined city, in the Malda district of West Bengal, India, on the west bank of the Ganges river, 40 kilometers downstream from Rajmahal.-History:...
namely Samudragupta, Prabhakar Vardhana, Jayapala, Vikramaditya and many other Kshatriya
Kshatriya
*For the Bollywood film of the same name see Kshatriya Kshatriya or Kashtriya, meaning warrior, is one of the four varnas in Hinduism...
kings advanced as far as the Louhitya with their army and subjugated Kamarupa from time to time. Some of the military personnel must been retained there and miscegenation between the invading army the indigenous people must had taken place. Thus, the Hinduized Bodos and Meches gradually assimilated much of Kshatriya blood, adopted Aryan Hindu gods and started worshiping them along with their own gods.
The Meches were one of those early inhabitants of the Dooars and adjacent tracts and had exercised control over large areas in earlier centuries. Several accounts state that the Koch Behar royal family
Koch dynasty
The Koch dynasty of Assam and Bengal, named after the Koch tribe, emerged as the dominant ruling house in the Kamata kingdom in 1515 after the fall of the Khen dynasty in 1498...
descended from a Mech leader Haria alias Haridas Mandal. Since the thirteen century, the Meches experienced a process of both Hinduization and Islamization.
Occupation
More than a century ago the Meches used to practice ‘jhum’ cultivation, that is cutting and burning the jungles and then sowing different seeds in each hole made by dibblers and sowers. Short-staple cotton was their cash crop. They had no idea of cultivation with bullocks and the plough. In the later years, they found themselves displaced from their lands by the strict forest rules of the British foresters and extension of tea plantation. Meches were compelled to adopt settled cultivation. D.H.E. Sunder (1895) a British surveyor reports that the Mech people showed a rapid progress from the nomadic to settled state They had taken to the permanent cultivation in all seriousness with bullocks and the plough. They raise many crops of which rice is the principal one. They are experts in areca nut (betel palm or betel) cultivation Betel vines climb ups the areca trees. These are their cash crops.Mech women rear silkworm. They spin Endi thread from the cocoons. Mech women also weave cloths with the thread produced at home, on a primitive loom called ‘kanti’, which is made from bamboo. They also make baskets, fish traps and other items out of bamboo. Their traditional houses are still constructed with bamboo.
Today, most of Mechs are mainly dependent on agriculture for their livilng. They follow subsistence level agriculture, though in recent times they are progressively using modern methods of agriculture. Both male and female member of the community work together.
Culture and society
Meches view the 'mother earth' as human mother. Even today, they follow the same idea and customs of agriculture even after they have shifted from ‘jhum’ (slash and burnSlash and burn
Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique which involves cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields. It is subsistence agriculture that typically uses little technology or other tools. It is typically part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock...
) cultivation to settled agriculture with the bullocks and the plough. The Meches call ‘jhum’ as ‘Hadang’ and the settled cultivation as ‘Hal-wai-nai’.
The Meches have still retained their distinctive Septs or Gotras. They have five or seven principal Gotras. They are associated with the objects other than human that might be the remnants of some form of totemism as probably practised earlier. The most common Gotras, found among the Meches in the Dooars today, are following, Sampram-ari or Campram-ari (the priestly class), Narzin-ari, (the warrior class), Basumat-ari (landlords and cultivators), Bargaon-ari, Iswari-ari, Moch-ari and Hajo-ari. The suffix ‘ari’ means Sept or Gotra. In some early literature, more numbers of septs are mentioned among the Meches and Bodos.
The Meches prefer negotiated marriages. They marry within their tribe and within any of their septs. However, there is no restriction in marrying outside one’s sept. Rarely do they marry outside their own tribe. If it happens, the couple is not made out caste but absorbed in the society, reports Sanyal in his book.
The Mech families are mostly joint or extended. The boys usually do not take a separate house after marriage. Separation is done by the head of the family according to necessity. Girls after marriage go to their husband’s house. In a Mech family, only sons inherit father’s property. Daughters, both married and unmarried, do not have any right to the property. However, they may get maintenance.
For the Meches, any object possessing super-human power is regarded as an object of worship. Meches worship rivers like Tista and Torsha. The Meches worship celestial bodies, the god of the forest (Hagra Modoi) for protection against carnivorous animals. They worship Manasha (the snake goddess), Mahakal (Shiva), and Bathou, which is represented by a Euphorbia plant or sij plant. Bathou is the most important god of the Meches. Bathou is worshipped in every Mech household. Later on, they started worshiping several Vedic
Vedic
Vedic may refer to:* the Vedas, the oldest preserved Indic texts** Vedic Sanskrit, the language of these texts** Vedic period, during which these texts were produced** Vedic pantheon of gods mentioned in Vedas/vedic period...
and Hindu gods too. Lately, some of them have started making idols of gods, probably under the influence of Hindu culture.
The Meches in West Bengal also follow other religions like Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. There is also a small number of followers of Brahmoism
Brahmoism
Brahmoism is a religious movement from the late 18th century Bengal originating the Bengali Renaissance, the nascent Indian independence movement and the wider Hindu reform movements of the period...
, use Brahmo or Brahma as their surname. At the beginning of the present century, the Brahmo reformative movement, under the leadership of Guru Kalicharan Brahma
Kalicharan Brahma
Kalicharan Brahma , originally Kalicharan Mech, was a 20th century social and religious reformer of Bodo society. He joined a new religion called Brahmo Dharma / Brahmoism Adi Brahmo Samaj faction in Calcutta around 1906, and he is reverentially called Gurudev or Guru Brahma by Bodo people of...
, became popular among the Bodo Kachari people and led to an overhauling of the social system.