Research:Stories and Interviews

The Kom tribe belongs to the Mizo-Kuki group and according to the myth of their origin, their forefathers are believed to have emerged from a Khul (cave). As they came out, a tiger was lying in wait to kill them so Karongpa came out wearing a striped cloth to make friends with the tiger, as his cloth resembled its skin.   From then on his descendents refrained from eating or killing a tiger.

Kom settlements are located in Manipur and several villages in Assam and Tripura.

This is the original version of the Kom story of the creation of Man and his conflict with Tiger, as documented by Guru. S. Achon Kom and Serto Hmunjamchung Kom from Khoirentak and shared with us by Augustine Kom, a student of Anthropology at Manipur University, Imphal.  

The Kom

As related in the oral traditions of the tribe, the Kom believe that their ancestors emerged from a big cave known as KHURPUI

The Kom tribe are fondly referred to as the turbaned people because they adorn their Lukom (traditional turban) symbolising a prestigious head dress for every male of the tribe. It is also said that the Kom people are descendants of Puhring and Pudam, who kept long hair and wore turbans.

When our forefathers tried to come out of KHURPUI, their path was blocked by a ferocious tiger (SAMANG HUMPUI).  

The elders then planned a well organized strategy to kill the tiger: Puvom, who was the tamer, wore a striped clothed called Ponthle and he was able to  establish friendship with the tiger. It is said that Saichepa shot the tiger with his bow and arrow once  the tiger had been bewitched and tamed by Puvom. After killing the tiger they all held a grand feast in a place called KHŌLAMDAR.

The Kom folk dances were developed by observing nature. The common and popular Kom folk dances are visual retellings of our victory over the ferocious tiger in those ancient  mythological times. The victory is celebrated with rejoicings and feasting, and this act of celebration gave birth to our different dance forms.


Since then the rituals and traditional festivals have been performed from generation to generation. We are able to remember the narrative that was told to us by our forefathers from our grandparents time to the present.   In this way our  tribe's customs and traditional way of life is recorded in our oral traditions.



Photograph of Ponthle, curtesy of Augustine Kom















Discussion with Guru S. Achon Kom
recorded by Tara Douglas 04.03.2012

(Guru S. Achon Kom is a farmer and cultural expert from the Kom tribe of Manipur.  He is also the Secretary of the Kom Cultural Dance and Research Centre in Khoirentak, Churachandpur District, Manipur).




In 2005 I was awarded the Guru Shisha Parampara status through a programme by the North East Zone Cultural Centre in Dimapur.  We are working to uplift the Kom community and also the other tribes too.  We have to collect the stories from the old storytellers otherwise in a few decades tribal culture will surely vanish here.  How many people from the tribes are attending your workshop?  None?  This shows that they are neglected.   If Rewben had not phoned us, you would have left and we would not have known anything about your workshop.   How are we going to document our oral traditions?  They are not written down yet.  We were not contacted about this workshop, clearly only the experts knew about it.  We also have a great interest in this, but we don’t know how to go about animating our stories.  For the past two or three years we have been wondering about the possibilities of animating our folktales because times are changing.  Young people are very smart these days and they do not have much interest in sitting around with their elders listening to folktales.  

We are from the backward classes so we know nothing about animation but we are making efforts to document our folktales in written form.  We really don’t know how to promote our culture.  All the tribes here have different stories, cultures and origins. 

In Nagaland the majority is tribal.  They are able to cooperate as they have similar stories, costumes and so on. 

In tribal areas you will not find any experts in animation, and for us it takes much longer to collect stories.  The Meiteis on the other hand have plenty of historians and experts.  We Kom are all Christian now.  That goes for nearly all the tribes here, though the Kabui are reviving their indigenous faith.  We don’t have much material artwork we express ourselves mostly in song and dance.  I would say that the population of our tribe is nearly 20,000. 

The benefits need to go to the right people so this is why we have established our Non Government Organisation.  If we approach the Art and Culture Department here in Manipur, they will surely help us but it is difficult when you are based in the village.  Village life is so different from that of Imphal!  It is very difficult too.  We are busy in our fields from morning to night and it is very hard work so we have little time for documentation.  Another factor is that it is easy to move around in the valley but to do proper documentation of the tribes one has to go to all the hill districts.

Most of our folktales are based on themes of magic.  They would really come to life in animation films.  I only studied up to class 8 because then I had family responsibilities and I still work in the fields from May through to August.  I am encouraging my son to become an anthropologist so that he can document our traditions as most scholars are not able to write about the oral traditions of the Kom.  We have our own traditional hut at the Indira Gandhi Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal.  In fact, the whole North east section of the Museum begins at our house. 

In the village it is a very simple life and there is no idea of competition.  Our village is well known in the popular Khamba Toibi folktale of the Meiteis as it is said to be where the hero Khamba caught a tiger.   So the legend goes.  We made a proposal for a Cultural Interpretation Centre for our village but so far nothing has come of it.   There is a communication gap with the Art and Culture Department here so we need our own research centre, resource people and so on.  The village is the primary source for tribal culture.    Our culture was also much affected when we were converted to Christianity, and it is disappearing.  It would be great to have a workshop in our Kom village as the youth need exposure to understand what we are doing and to support it.  In the city, jeans are the fashion but in the village it is important for the younger generation to know the importance of the cloth that we weave.    If I do not know the customs and traditions of the Kom tribe, how can I be called a Kom?

We need to target the younger generation.  Come to my village and you will get lots of information without even a word because you will see how we really live.

See this link here for a session by Sephin Alexander in 2012, at that time a Post Graduate student of the National Institute of Design, doing a demonstration of animation for the young Kom people in Khoirentak, including Augustine Kom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsskZGnB4QY
Animator’s Weekend in Khoirentak Village, Manipur, 2012 (Extract from Tara's diary)


The Kom are mainly found in Manipur in Northeast India where they are a minority scattered over all districts.   Kom, Kuki and Hmar have cultural and linguistic similarities.  As nomadic people before reaching Manipur approximately 200 AD, their origin remains unclear, though it is believed that they came to Manipur from Tripura.    According to their folklore, their clan names came into existence after the Kom came out of a cave believed to be somewhere in the borders of China.  The majority of Kom are Christian and their stories have been passed down orally through generations. 

To reach Achon’s village, Khoirentak, one must first go to Moirang Lamkai, about 40 km from Imphal.  During Holi, the trip is slow as it is the fashion in Manipur for the youth to stop vehicles on the road and try to extract money during the festive period.  From Moirang it is about five miles on to Khoirentak, along a rough road that leads straight towards the hills.  Khoirentak is nestled in the foothills, and on taking a short walk out of the village onto the hill behind, Lotak Lake is seen shimmering on the hazy horizon. 


The Kom are farmers and rice is their staple crop.  Guru Achon Kom is also a cultural activist, and in 2005 he established a small Ethnological Museum in Khoirentak village.  In the same year he also became active in the Kom Dance and Cultural Research Centre and he has organised many programmes and workshops for promoting Kom culture in his village and in other parts of India too.  His eldest son, Hmungamchung (Jamchung) is studying Anthropology at DM College of Science in Imphal.  “If I study it, it will be very good for my culture and I will be helpful to my community.  My cousin brothers in Delhi advised me in this; without gaining such awareness it is difficult for us to know what to do in the village”, he explains.  “Before studying anthropology, I knew very little about our culture.   We believe that through the folktales we can find out about our ancestors.  We have about 20-30 folktales, and in some, we have a joker character called Bingpu.  He is a really foolish one! 

We had one person here who was very interested in animation.  He was good in sketching, but now he has gone to Shillong to study Theology.”  

At this prompt, Sephin Alexander decides to demonstrate how stop motion animation is done using his camera and laptop, with a single frame capture software.  A ball of dough is made by mixing flour and water, and the basic principles of animation including anticipation and exaggerated movement are explained to the youth that have gathered in curiosity. 











Jamchung also tells us that Kom women are expert weavers. “Kom never studied anything in the past, they just looked and then they created something.  For example,    a man in a respectable position in the community wears a cloth that is woven with the patterns of a python:  Well this cloth was first woven by looking at a real python.   











In our culture we believe in transformation between animals such as tigers and pythons, even the rhinoceros – and man.  There is a story about a python that was only a snake in water but on land he was a man.  Once he fell in love with a very beautiful Kom maiden and he courted her. The girl’s mother began to wonder about this handsome suitor - why soon he would become her son-in-law, so where did he come from? 
On the way back from the girl’s house, the man had to cross a pond, and as soon as he entered the water, he became a snake again.  We also believe that the python is afraid of turmeric, garlic and some other spices.  The girl’s mother ground up some turmeric into powder and kept it wrapped in a packet of leaves on the beam inside the house.  When the man entered the kitchen, she pierced the packet and the turmeric poured down on him and he entered his python body and slithered away, never to be seen again.”

(photographs taken at the 
Ethnological Museum in Khoirentak village, 2012)

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