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THE CHAKMA PROVERBS: AN ETHNO-STRUCTURAL
INTRODUCTION

Dulal Chaudhuri
Folklore Akademi, Calcutta

A proverb is a saying in more or less fixed form of shortness, sense and "salt". Proverbs are the wisdom of a community: the essence of thoughts and philosophy that a group of people acquire through the ages. Sometimes proverbs serve as impersonal vehicles for personal communication. These neglected fragments of wisdom still offer many interesting insights to a people's past both to the philosopher and the historian. The proverbial phrases survive the ruins of empires and civilizations and are like wildflowers, which outlive ruin, and mark the flora of the regional ecology. Proverbs, in short, reflect the social usages, the time-long experience of an age and people crystallized in pithy aphorism.

The Chakmas are a tribe living in the Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh and in the Tripura area of India. Physiologically, they are short statured, pale-faced and hardy. They belong to a Sino-Tibetan linguistic group, but they speak a corrupt form of Chittagong dialect of Bengali. The Chakmas believe I Theravada Buddhism on one hand and in animism on the other. The rural folk, especially, continue to practice animism, but also attend the temple of the Lord Buddha. Presumably, the Chakmas were originally all animists, but due to the impact of the spread of Buddhism in Chittagong and its hill areas, most have embraced Buddhism at least nominally.

The Hill tracts of Chittagong are surrounded on the west by the maritime coastal area of Chittagong; on the south and east, as far as the Blue Mountain, by the province of Arracan, Burma; and on the north by the Fenny River, which divides thehill tracts from Tippera. In the course of their history, a group of Chakmas migrated to Tripura (India) and settled there. In the State of Tripura, Chakmas form the third major ethnic group now. They form the largest Buddhist community in Bangladesh.

The people of the Chittagong hill tracts are ethnically different from the settled populace who live in the plains of Bangladesh. They have closer ethno-historical links with the hilly peoples of the vast region that extends from Tibet to Indo-China, or Southeast Asia. "Anthropologically" says Bechert, the Chakmasbelong to the peoples of Southeast Asia. There are a number of customs which hint at a form of 'animism' which is very similar to the religion of the peoples of theBurmese and Shan groups before their conversion to Buddhism" (1973). The Chakmas form a majority among the various tribal settlers of Chitagong hill tracts who exhibit physical affinities with the "Monogoloid type of people". The Chakmas are locally known as "Thek" or "Task" by theBurmese and "Tui-Thik" by the Kukis. Captain Lewin, an authority of Chittagong hill tracts and surrounding areas broadly classifies the tribes into two categories: "Toungtha" (children of the hills) and "Khyoungtha" (children of the rivers).

Conflicting traditional stories are told regarding the origin of Chakmas. According to some, they originally came from the Malay Peninsula. On the other hand, in some traditional narratives their ancestors are linked with the Chaus-Bansi Kshatriyas of Champanagar in Hindoosthan, who invaded the Hill Tracts at the end of the 14th century. They are also, according to some legends, believed to be the descendants of the survivors of a Mogul army sent by the Vazir of Chittagong to attack the king of Arakan. However, available literary references suggest that the Chakmas migrated from Thailand border known as Chiang Mai.

The Chakmas, as do the other tribes of equal antiquity, have an ancient cultural tradition. The folklore of these people bear the testimony of their laws, customs, beliefs, food, habits, the art of making dwelling, dress, home-life, education, marriage, taboo, patriotism, social justice, agriculture, weather and everything that connects folklife and ancient wisdom of these people.

Proverbs are echoes of history, religion, and ethos of the people who speak them. Furthermore, proverbs are not only a powerful vehicle for communication in a folk society, they also integrate the group which creates them. Therefore, it becomes imperative for scholars to examine these traditional communicative aspects of proverb lore. Needless to say that such studies are possible only when alongside the proverb lore, the folk who is responsible for the creation of such lore are also studied with equal seriousness.

In this paper, I shall present a few proverbs of the Chakmas which were collected in 1974 from Rangamati, Chittagong hill tracts, Bangladesh. These proverbs, as we shall see, are a great resource for understanding the Chakmas.

1. Autte khand/ara jumat udhe
(which is edible, produced in abundance in the Jhum field).
It means: the jhum cultivators get everything whichthey eat from the jhum.

2. Vadah madye/giring,
Maja madye/chiring
(Girling, a fine rice, is as good as chiring, is a riverline fish).
Girling and chiring are two favorites of the Chakmas. The analogy is
very popular.

3. Bara ganga/chay para.
Ranga kahdiay/dhoy para.
(I shall se the Karnaphuli, and at the same time wash my red breast-cloth)
It means: to achieve two things at the same time.

4. Dhingee swarge galoeo/bara bande
(The indigenous husking apparatus husks in heaven, too)
It means: the working man works everywhere.

5. Chigan bareng gua/lare chare
(A light basket is used for many things, here and there).
It means: the light baskets serve best for carrying.

The Chakmas are traditionally agriculturists and practise jhum and terrace cultivation. Originally, the Chakmas used to live in traditional tong (bamboo-supported wooden house built on hill-slopes); but most of them now-a-days live in modern houses of wooden frames and with tile roofs.

In one above proverbs we find a reference to jhum which is a traditional tribal mode of cultivation of paddy, pulses and green vegetables. A piece of bushy land is selected every year o a hill for jhum cultivation. The lands for this type of cultivation are not personal property of any one of the Chakmas. The leadman of mouza discharges the duties of an arbitrator as a legal agent of the Chakma king in any dispute arising out of lands for necessary jhum cultivation in Chakma locality. Now the Bangladesh government has taken over all the lands for legal distribution among the cultivators.

Similarly there is a reference to a particular kind of rice named giring in another proverb. This kind of rice is grown in Chittagong District which, however, according to folk belief, yields more produce if cultivated by Jhum method. Whatever the truth, giring is a favourite rice for the Chakmas. Chiring is a riverine fish which is very tasty. These are found near their locality. Ranga khadi is a red breast-cloth used by the Chakma maidens. The Karnaphuli river flows down quietly along the valley of the Chittagong hill tracts. Ranga khadi like any other cloth is being woven by the girls and women out of the indigenous fibres and weaving apparatus and coloured with the juice of wild creepers and plants. It is interesting to note that a married or unmarried girl of Chakma tribe can be distinguished from her counter part in other tribes by the patterns of her garments. This semeotics of dress and design is a special characteristics of tribal groups such as Chakmas.

Dhingee is an indigenous husking apparatus made of wood. Therural population, throughout Bengal use this husking apparatus. The Chakmas, it seems, might have adopted this useful tool from the people of Chittagong valley after they came I cultural contact wit them, long after their final settlement in Chittagong hill tracts. Dhingee, because of it's usefulness, has become a cultural methaphor for the essential success of work in both worlds as one notices in the proverb.

Dareng is a basket made of bamboo collected from the forest nearby. Dareng is used for carrying essential goods of daily use. In fact it has no many uses in this culture and therefore has become a symbol of necessity and usefulness. Baskets are an essential items for tribal's life. The fact that a basket (phool bareng) is gifted as an important item in marriages underlines this theme as is clear from the above proverb in which its essentiality is symbolically compared with the human service itself.

Every community is best known, besides other things, by the folklore it creates and transmits. The above proverbs of the Chakmas evidence this fact. One can, of course, use materials from equally important other henres of folklore to make the point. The point is not which genre are more powerful in reflecting the folklife of tribal groups much as Chakmas - all put together might perhaps do it well - but that one might fail to get a true picture of Chakmas life without studying their folklore.

Having presented a general introduction of Chakmas and their proverb samples let us look at their proverb structures. "Structure", writes Marandas, "can be defined as an internal relationship through which constituent elements of a whole are organized. Structural analysis thus consists of the discovery of significant elements and their order" (1971). The key ideas of Structure are:

(a) wholeness
(b) idea of transformation
(c) idea of units
(d) significant elements (units) and
their order or inner relationship

A proverb can be morphologically divided into the following divisions:

i. Topic
ii. Comment

A "topic" may be expressed as "head" (H) and a "comment" as "tail" (T) in a proverb. The prefix and the suffix may be expressed symbolically in this manner: prefix as A1 and suffix as A2.

H : T :: A1 : A2

Every proverb has one or more negative and positive statements. In order to analyse the minimal particles of a proverb, one can design a model as follows :

H:T - Positive/Negative elements - A1 : A2

In other words, "a positive or negative head (± H) in a logical relation to ( ) a positive or negative head (±T) becomes () a proverb (p) consisting of two topics and two comments (t1 + c1 + t2 + c2) which draw from ( ) an analogical resource pool (p) in the environment (/) of a real social situation (the one with which the proverb will be analogous) made up of two aspects inlogical relation to one another. A1 ( ) A2 correlated with (x) two or more people (X + Y)". (Maranda and Maranda, 1971).

An example from the Chakma proverbs is given below:

+ H marade giri na are aaj__ - T
dhayede chaja na are chaj

(A dying man never looses hope for life, as a migrating ploughman never forgets agriculture). It means "one's occupation is one's life".

Here "marade giri" is a positive head (H) and "na are aaj" is a negative tail (T). similarly in all Chakma proverbs we get some positive and negative aspects. Analogous pool: marade giri: dhayade chaja: na are aaj: na are chaj: All proverbs are composed of two opposites and analogies. By abnegating the negative aspects of a statement, the folk society establishes a positive thesis and vice-versa. Human societies are full of contradictions and conflicts. These conflicts of ideas are aptly reflected in the folklore of a community. Proverb is a very small but powerful, explicit artifact for expressing sentiments. Every folk art form is deeply ingrained, even in its deep structure, by the life situations of a culture. In the deep-structure frame out of cultural artifacts one does not fail to notice the structural elements, opposed to each other, but expressing a positive relation or aspect of the culture. This becomes more obvious when one examines the proverb structure.

The Chakmas, as said earlier, were migratory people. While moving, they used to settle in the hills for Jhum cultivation. After a few months they had to abandon the area and search for new land. So they used this proverb to denote this migratory phenomenon: One never forgets one's skill of ploughing as a dying man never looses hope for life.

Dundes (1975) describes a proverb as being made up of a minimal unit called a descriptive element. This I turn is made up of a topic and a comment. "The topic is the apparent referent …. The comment is an assertion about the topic, usually concerning the form, function, or action of the topic" (Dundes and Gorges, 1963). According to Dundes, the simplest form of the proverb would be two words like "money talks" where "money" is the topic and "talks" is the comment. If we look at this in context, however, a slightly different analysis must emerge. Two men go to a restaurant, but they can't get in as they don't have reservations. They tip the head waiter and are taken to a table where one man comments to the others: "Money talks". What he actually is saying is that money persuades people to act. In effect, there are two descriptions here ("money persuades" and "people to act"), the second being understood. Dundes' analysis can thus be related to Milner's if we see each proverb as having two descriptions: a head (H) and a tail (T) each of which has a topic (T) and a comment [C]. Thus, H : T :: T : C. The formula for the entire process would stand like this:

± H ± T P[(t1 + c1) + (t2 + c2)] P[A1A2 X x + y)].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bechert, Heinze 1973	Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal.  New York: E.P. Dutton
Dundes, Alan 1975	“On the Structure of the Proverb” in Analytic Essays in Folklore.  The Hague : Mouton.
Dundes, Alan and Robert A. Goerges 1975	“Towards a Structural Definition of the Riddle” in Analytic Essays in Folklore.  The Hague: Mouton.
Maranda, E. Kongas and P. Maranda 1971	Structural Models in Folklore and Transformational Essays.  The Hague: Mouton.
Milner, J.B. 1959	“What is a Proverb”, New Society. 332 (February 6) pp.199-202.
Risley, H.H. 1891	Tribes and Castes of Bengal. (2 Vols.). Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.