A brief History of Mising Language and Literary Practice

Mising Community is the second largest Community in Assam. They are belonging in general to the Tibeto-Burman family of the great Mongoloid race. They live in the eastern region of Brahmaputra Valley in Assam, India. The Mising community people are living in different districts of Assam like Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Tinisukia, Sonitpur, Darang, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sivasagar and Majuli. There is no written history of Mising about their migration from Northern China to the plains of Assam, but history was passed down orally in the form of folk songs and stories by ancestors from generation to generation. The Mising language is a very old and rich, originally had a script of its own said to be written on a deer’s skin. But it was eaten away as food. In this way they lost their scripts, but not they language. The Mising language emerged in written forms only recently first in wake of the movement led by the ‘Mising Agom Kebang’ the biggest literary organization of Misings. It is the result of consistent and dedicated efforts of some yong educationists who started such of works in the late sixties at Guwahati. With an object in view to give the Mising language in written forms, they formed ‘Gauhati Mising Kebang’ in 1968. The ‘Agom Kebang’ should endeavour to its level best to uplift the the Mising language and literature by carrying out investigative and research works, pubishing books and periodicals, thereby promoting a revolutionary thought amongst the people and thereby contributing to develop the Mising language and literature in the recent years to come.