Karbi

The Karbi, known in older records as the Mikir and calling themselves Arleng, are a Tibeto-Burman people of central Assam whose traditions remember them as plains dwellers along the Kalang and Kopili rivers before pressure from the Dimasa Kachari kings drove them into the neighbouring hills.

Some placed themselves under Jaintia suzerainty; harassment under Jaintia rule then pushed many north into the Ahom kingdom, where from the early seventeenth century they sought the protection of the Barphukan at Raha.

They lived by jhum shifting cultivation organised around the annual Rongker festival, with women weaving cotton and Eri silk, and kept an animist faith handed down through ritual singers. The Burmese invasions of Assam between 1817 and 1825 scattered many Karbi into the deep forests and across the Brahmaputra.