The book is about the Tai Phakes, also called Phakials, who inhabit the riverine areas of Dibrugarh district of upper Assam in India. Outside India they are found in areas extending up to the Chinese province of Kwansi and from Bangkok to the interior of Yunnan province. They entered Assam in the later half of the 18th Century. While studying the Tai Phakes- their manners and custom, material culture, social and religious institutions, their folklores and ethnological affinities, the author noticed that the small but homogenous Tai Phakes have been maintaining their traditional distinctiveness even though they are surrounded, on all sides, by cultures and peoples with whom the pacific Tai Phakes have imperfect sympathies.
The Tai Phakes of Assam is the first full length anthropological study of the Tai Phakes living in India. As such to the anthropologists the book unfolds new knowledge of people about whom we Know precious little.
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