. 03-02-118
118
CHUTIY.
There
are
some eighty-seven thousand persons of the Chutiy
tribe in Assam. They have four sub-tribes: the Hind
,
the Ahom, the Borhi, and the Deori
Chutiys. Of these, the first three
are nearly all Hinduised, and with their tribal customs have abandoned their
tribal language and now only speak Assamese. The Deoris, who are the Levites
of the tribe, are less than four thousand in all. They are a secluded people
in the Lakhimpur and Sibsagar Districts of Upper Assam, whose principal settlements
are on the Majuli Island in Sibsagar, and on the Dikrang river in North Lakhimpur.
They have preserved the language, religion, and customs which, we may presume,
have descended to them with comparative little change from a period anterior
to the Ahom invasion. The Chutiy
language, indeed, may fairly claim to be the original language of Upper Assam.
The original seat of the Deoris was in the region beyond Sadiya. It is only
about a century ago that they removed thence to their present settlements, and
some of them still occasionally visit Sadiya for religious purposes.
Regarding the language, Mr. Brown's remarks may be quoted:-
"Very little appears to be known about the Chutiya language hitherto. Some
time in the forties, Colonel Dalton contributed a few words to the Asiatic Society's
journal; from which his acute genius discerned the connection with Kachari.
It is the main object of this little work [the writer's Grammar] to confirm
and establish that conclusion. A short note is appended of the principal grammatical
resemblances between Chutiya and Kachari; and it is hoped that the materials
provided will be useful to anyone making a system- atic study of the Bodo group
of languages. A somewhat longer Deori Chutiya vocabulary was contributed to
Hodgson's Essays by the Rev. Mr. Brown of Sibsagar; but the usefulness of this
is marred by its being mixed up with the vocabularies of a number of N
ga
dialects. Both these vocabularies are inaccurate, and even misleading, on such
important points as the numerals. Besides them, I am not aware that any- thing
has been published about the Chutiya language. Indeed, it has recently been
officially announced to be extinct by the author of the Assam Census Report
for 1891. This is by no means the case; for, although the Deoris all speak Assamese
fluently, and have incorporated a good many Assamese words in their own vocabulary,
still they all speak their own language; and are rather proud of it, and of
the difficulty of learning it."
According to the above there should be about four thousand speakers of Deori. The returns furnished for this survey show a much smaller number and are as follows. I am not in a position to offer any special remarks as to their correctness or otherwise:-
| Sibsagar (returned as Deori)... |
300
|
| Lakhimpur (returned as Chutiy)... |
4
|
|
TOTAL.
|
304
|
Under any circumstances the number of speakers of Chutiy is small, but
the lan- guage deserves study on account of its philological and historical
interest. I do not think that there can be any doubt of its representing the
most archaic stage of the various languages grouped together under the name
of Bodo. It is most nearly con- nected with D
m-s or Hills Kachr,
but is certainly more primitive in its grammatical system. The conjugation of
the verb is specially worthy of notice.
We here see in full play that system of modifying infixes, of which there are only sporadic remains in the other languages of the Bodo group. Even in the full study
Most of what follows is condensed from the Introduction to Mr. Brown's
Deori Chutiy Grammar.
The people are generally called Deoris simply; the language is properly
known as Chuti or Chutiy.