The Purums are a

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...

indigenous

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

Manipur Manipur () is a state in northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the international border with Myanmar, specifically t ...

. They are (or were) notable because their marriage system is the subject of ongoing statistical and ethnographical analysis; Buchler states that "they are perhaps the most over-analyzed society in anthropology". Purums marry only in selected sibs; the allowed sibs are fixed by traditional customs. The Purums are divided into five sibs, namely, Marrim, Makan, Kheyang, Thao and Parpa. There is no indigenous centralized government. They use

Meitei language Meitei (; ) also known as Manipuri ), is a Tibeto-Burman language of northeast India. It is the official language and the lingua franca of Manipur and an additional official language in four districts of Assam. It is one of the scheduled ...

as their

second language A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which ...

(L2) according to the

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

. According to the 1931

Census of India The decennial census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011. While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1872. Post 1949, it has been conducted by the R ...

, the Purums numbered 145 men and 158 women, all practising their ancestral ethnic religion; in 1936 they numbered 303 individuals but in the 1951 census they numbered only 43 individuals.

References

External links

* http://cec.nic.in/wpresources/module/Anthropology/PaperVIII/10/content/downloads/file1.pdf * http://oldror.lbp.world/UploadedData/6938.pdf Ethnic groups in Manipur Kuki tribes Scheduled Tribes of Manipur Ethnic groups in Northeast India Ethnic groups in India Tribes of India {{India-ethno-stub