The Sharchops (, ; "Easterner") are the populations of mixed Tibetan,

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

n and

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

n descent that mostly live in the eastern districts of

Bhutan Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia, in the Eastern Himalayas between China to the north and northwest and India to the south and southeast. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of , ...

Ethnicity

The Sharchops are an Indo-Mongoloid people who migrated from

Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...

Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and India declared it as a state on 20 February 1987. Itanagar is its capital and la ...

, or possibly

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

, c. 1200 – c. 800 BC. Van Driem (1993) indicates that Sharchops are closely related to the Mönpa and that both are descendants of the indigenous Tibetic peoples (pre- Ngalop) of Bhutan. Due to the societal prominence and political power of Dzongkha-speaking Bhutanese, however, Sharchops are marginalized in Bhutan. The Sharchops are the largest ethnic group in Bhutan.

Population

The Sharchops comprise most of the population of eastern Bhutan, a country whose total population in 2010 was approximately 708,500. Although they have long been the largest single ethnic group in Bhutan, the Sharchop have been largely assimilated into the culturally and politically dominant Tibetic Ngalop culture. Together, the Ngalop, Sharchop, and tribal groups constituted up to 72 percent of the population in the late 1980s, according to official Bhutanese statistics. The 1981 census claimed that Sharchops represented 30% of the population, and Ngalops approximately 17%.

The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a Reference work, reference resource produced by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The off ...

, however, estimates that the "Bhote" Ngalop and Sharchop ethnic groups together comprise approximately 50% of Bhutan's population, at 354,200 people.Bhutan
''

''.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

. Assuming Sharchops still outnumber Ngalops at a 3:2 ratio, the total population of Sharchops in Bhutan is approximately 212,500.

Language

Most Sharchops speak Tshangla, a Tibeto-Burman language; fewer speak the Olekha language. They also learn the national language,

Dzongkha Dzongkha (; ) is a Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script. The word means "the language of the fortress", from ' "fortress" and ' "language ...

. Because of their proximity to Northeastern India, some speak Assamese. Bodo is also known to many of them because of socio cultural and trade relations. Tshangla is also spoken by the Monpa (Menba) national minority across the border in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, distributed in Mêdog, Nyingchi and

Dirang Dirang H.Q. (simply Dirang) is a village in the district of West Kameng in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northeast India. It was formed from the North-Ea ...

. Tshangla is similar to the Kalaktang and Dirang languages spoken by the Monpa of

, India.

Lifestyle

Sharchop peoples practice

slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody p ...

and ''tsheri'' agriculture, planting dry rice crops for three or four years until the soil is exhausted and then moving on, however the practice has been officially banned in Bhutan since 1969. Most of the Sharchops follow

matrilineal Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

lines in the inheritance of land and livestock.

Religion

Most Sharchops follow

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ...

with some elements of Bön, although those who live in the Duars follow Animism.

References