Saturday, October 16, 2010

The Mro

Introduction: The Mro in1869 their population was 1,500. They had no chief of their own and owed their allegiance to the Marma Bohmang chief of Banderban. Each village had a chief who collected tributes from each head of the family for the Bohmang chief. The village chief's position was hereditary (Lewin 1869:86-88).

Description: The Mros are animists. Their creator is "Turai," they have two other gods: "Oreng and "Sungtiang." They do not have any priesthood or religious books. They believe that a bull which was sent by God Turai to carry the religious book for them had eaten up the book on the way. They therefore hold a special ceremony called "Nasyat pa" or "Kumlong" in which a bull is ceremoniously killed. They have an oral dialect which belongs to the Tibeto- Burmese linguistic family (Bernot 1964:159) (Shafer 1995:103) however considers it to be a category by itself.