Mao people (India)

[File:Okhe-ora-omei-tu.jpg|frame|Three menhirs, two standing upright on the cairn and one lying in the middle, lie south of Makhel or Makhrai Rabu (a Mao village), representing Tiger (animal), God (spirits and all of the supernatural included) and Man (mankind) who, in the Mao mythology, are said to have descended from a common mother. Makhrai Rabu is also believed to be the ancestral village of the Nagas who first settled there after years of migration and before further migrating to their present areas of habitation.]] The Maos are one of the major tribes constituting the Nagas, a group of tribes spread over the eastern most part of India and the western border region of Myanmar. The Maos inhabit the northern part of Manipur State of India, bounded by similar Naga tribes such as the Angami and Chakhesang tribes in the north, the Maram and Zeme Naga tribes in the west and south, and the Tangkhul and Poumai tribes in the east. The Maos are also known as Memei or Ememei, in their own language. The term 'Mao' also refers to the area where most of the old and original villages are situated, as distinguished from the newer settlements in an expanded area of their habitation.

Origin and uses of the term

Etymology

The people who are today known as the Maos (Mao, as the proper name of the tribe) do not refer to themselves in their language as such; rather they still call themselves "Memei" or "Ememei". Indeed, the term "Mao" is of outside origin and does not figure in their language. The term “Mao” became popular with the advent of the British in the 19th Century in the Naga areas. The term was used extensively to refer to a group of people inhabiting the hilly ranges immediately south of the border of the then Naga Hills district of Assam. It is probably a derivation from "Momei" or "Maomei", a combination of two words "Mao", the proper name and "Mei" meaning people, by which their southerly neighbours, the Marams, called them. Since the Meiteis of the Manipur valley had interactions with the Maos through the Marams by way of trade relationships, the term of reference used by the Marams might have been shortened to "Mao" when the Meiteis began to use the name, dropping the suffix “mei”.

Reference

The term "Mao" is used for the people who belong to the particular tribal group known by this name. Till the early part of the 21st century, the name was applied to a larger group of people including the Memeis, who are now called the Maos, and the Poumais, together constituting a more heterogenous amalgam of four major dialect groups, namely the Memei, Paomata, Lepaona and the Chiilevei sub-groups. In earlier times, they were collectively known as 'Shiipfomei' in the Memei dialect and 'Shepoumai' in the Poumai dialect. Later on, differences over the use of particular dialects for literary and other common uses as well as other extraneous factors led to their division into two groups, the Memeis retaining the name 'Mao' and the other three sub-groups forming the Poumai tribe.

Today, the name 'Mao' is also used to refer to the area where most of the old and original Memei villages are situated, as distinguished from the newer settlements in an expanded area of their habitation. While the larger area is called Mao, the small township that has developed along the National Highway 39 is referred to as 'Mao Gate', probably deriving its usage from the inter-State border post/gate between Nagaland and Manipur located at the town area.

Language

George van Driem put the Mao language as one of the Angami Pochuri, classified as an independent branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages. van Driem, George (2001), Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region (Brill). It displays a lot of variations in tonality, spelling and pronunciation among the Mao villages, suggesting a lack of interaction in the past. Many of the physical and metaphysical objects are referred to by different names by different villages. The degree of variation gets considerably widened with the neighbouring dialect groups such as the Poumai and the Angami, although the Maos can inter-communicate fully with many of the villages in the Poumai group and to a certain extent in the Angami group.

In popular Mao folklore, there is a story transmitted through an old folksong which says that each of the three brothers descended from the first man was given a language and a script scrolled on three different materials by their father. The eldest son was given the script scrolled on a bark, the middle one on a bamboo culm sheath and the youngest on a hide. As the youngest of the brothers, the forefather of the Nagas did not understand the significance of having a script and casually tucked away the scroll at the side of his bed. Over time, the scroll was lost and the Nagas lost a major tool in the advancement of knowledge. Since the script was scrolled on a hide, it was thought that the scroll was nibbled away by mice. Later, suspicion arose that the two older brothers might have conspired to deprive their brother of the script as later interactions among the brothers showed the reluctance of the two older siblings to accept their youngest brother as an equal.

Mao in Naga Tradition

The sacred Wild Pear Tree, standing at Shajouba (Charangho) in the Mao area, believed to have been planted at the time of migration of the Nagas to different areas.

External links

• Mao Naga
• Mao Naga