The Monpa () is a major tribe of Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. The Tawang Monpas have a migration history from Changrelung. The Monpa are believed to be the only nomadic tribe in Northeast India – they are totally dependent on animals like sheep, cow, yak, goats and horses. The Monpa have a very close affinity with the Sharchops of Bhutan.
Name
Tibetan Buddhists texts present "Monyul" (literally, "low land") as the territory immediately to the south of Tibet below the Himalayan crest line. Its borders were imprecise, but roughly stretched from eastern Bhutan and western Sikkim to the Tawang area. "Monpa" were the people of Mon and they were distinguished from "Lopa" (also spelt "Lhopa"), who were the wild and intractable tribes of the Assam Himalayan region. In practice, Monpa were people amenable to the proselytising efforts of the Buddhist monks, whereas Lopa wer those inimical to them.
In course of time, the various people of the historical "Monyul" came to be called by other names, such as Lepcha for the tribes of Sikkim and Drukpa for the people of Bhutan, but the people of Tawang continued to own the name "Monpa".
Distribution
Most Monpas live in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, with a population of around 60,000, centered in the districts of Tawang and West Kameng. About 20,000 live in the Tawang district, where they constitute about 97% of the district's population, and almost all of the remainder can be found in West Kameng district, where they form about 77% of the district's population. A small number live in East Kameng district.
Around 9,000 Monpas live in Tibet, in Tsona County, Pêlung in Bayi District, and Mêdog County. These places fall completely outside of the Tibetan plateau and south of the Himalayan crest, and as a result have very low altitude, especially Mêdog County, which has a tropical climate unlike the rest of Tibet.
The Monpa are sub-divided into six sub-groups because of variations in their language. They are namely: Tawang Monpa Dirang Monpa Lish Monpa Bhut Monpa Kalaktang Monpa Panchen Monpa
History
A state of Lhomon or Monyul is believed to have existed from 500 B.C to 600 A.D. centered in the present day Bhutan. In the 11th century, the Northern Monpas in Tawang came under the influence of the Tibetan Buddhism of the Nyingma and Kagyu denominations. At this time the Monpa adopted the Tibetan alphabet for their language mainly for religious purposes. Drukpa missionaries came to the region in the 13th century, and missionaries of the Gelug school came in the 17th century. The Gelug school is the sect to which most Monpas belong today. The Monpa were never regarded as Tibetan, even though they adopted the Tibetan language and script. They were regarded as an "inferior race" to whom the civilising influence of Buddhism had to be brought from Tibet.
Around the 14th century, Monyul came under increasing Tibetan political and cultural influence, which was apparent in the years when Tsangyang Gyatso, an ethnic Monpa, became the 6th Dalai Lama. However, Monyul, also known as the Tawang Tract, remained a remote area and sparsely populated until the middle of the 20th century.
Monyul remained an autonomous entity, with local monks based in Tawang holding great political power within the kingdom, and direct rule over the area from Lhasa was established only in the 17th century. From this time until the early 20th century, Monyul was ruled by authorities in Lhasa. One of the first British-Indian travellers into Monyul, Nain Singh Rawat, who visited the area from 1875 to 1876, noted that the Monpa were a conservative people who shunned contact with the outside world and made efforts to monopolise trade with Tibet. In 1914, as part of the negotiations for the Simla Convention, Britain and Tibet negotiated their mutual border roughly along the crest of the Himalayas, which came to be called the McMahon Line. The line divided the land in which the Monpas inhabited, and became a source of contention in subsequent years because of ambiguities in the specific location of the McMahon Line.