The Tai Ahom National Council Memo Scheduling

All these go to prove that the Ahom did not loose their tribal identity due to their supposedmarriage
with other local communities. Although it cannot be denied that some Ahoms had taken
wives from non-Ahom communities, bit in general such theory is applicable to all societies
throughout ages. Therefore to find a people of “pure blood 100 p.c.” is to chase a chimera only.
Even among the hill people who live in isolation there is sufficient admixture of blood. As J. P.
Mills, the very well known author of The Ao Nagas says, “At the same time the Aos have
probably received more admixture of actual Assamese blood than most Naga tribes” (p. 4 f.n.2).
Similarly other tribes of North East India too received foreign blood. Yet for this reason nobody
has questioned the distinct identity of these tribes. But in the case of the Ahom, the negative
aspect of blood-mixture has always been highlighted and blown out of proportion by some non-
Ahoms only to deprive the Ahom community, which is long striving to maintain its own identity,
of its legitimate constitutional rights.
The moot question is –Did the Ahom get mixed up with non-Ahoms by marriage? This
question must have its answer in the light of two basic considerations –(1) the social system of
the Ahom and (2) other historical and circumstantial evidences.
In their social system the Ahom are an endogamous community but follow clan (phoid)
exogamy so that they married from other Ahom clans and would not normally marry non-Ahom
brides. “The Ahoms are an endogamous community, but clan and lineage exogamy is strictly
followed. Marriage within the sub-phoid and phoid is strictly prohibited.” ( Anthropological
Survey of India Series, Assam Vol. XV, General Editor K .S. Singh, 2003, p.51) This is
continuing even today.
About the other, for the first 300 hundred years of their settlement in the Brahmaputra valley,
they had no close contact with tribes other than the Mongoloid Barahi and Moran; while the
Chutiya and the Kachari (also Mongoloid) who lived on either side of their state then were their
political enemies. It is absurd to suppose that Ahom young men of marriageable age went to
distant lands in search of their wives. It was after 1530 A.D. there appeared the opportunity for
Ahom marriage with Kacharis, Chutiyas, Miris (all having tribal culture and characteristics),
when these people became subjects of the Ahom kingdom. But Ahom history and family
tradition do not speak of the Ahom marriage with Brahmins, Kalitas, Kayasthas or Scheduled
Caste population, which was but a rarity. This is not an imagined theory but a fact of history.