User:Ms Sarah Welch/ArbCom K3

Kautilya3 added the following content in wikipedia,

"Taranatha (1575–1634) wrote a description of the Kuki (Ko-ki) country, including in it almost the entire northeastern India"

Question: Is this misrepresentation of the source and disinformation?

To answer, let us read the cited source and evaluate it:

1. Kautilya3 cites Michael Lunminthang, Indian Historical Review 43(1) paper. For those who do not have access to this paper, I quote Lunminthang below per Fair Use guidelines (emphasis mine):

“ The Buddhist Accounts

The great Lama Taranatha (1575-1634) also gives a comprehensive description about the eastern India and the Kuki (Ko-ki) country. Taranatha's description of the Kuki is very elaborate, perhaps much beyond the linguistic group of Kuki-Chin.

He seems to include all the mongoloid stock of the northeast Indian belt. According to him:

Eastern India consists of three parts. Of these, Bhamgala and Odivisa belong to Aparantaka and are hence called the eastern Aparantaka. In the north-east, Kamaru (-pa), Tripura, Hasama are called Girivarta, i.e., surrounded by mountains. Proceeding further east from this region, (one reaches) Namga-ta on the slopes of the northern mountains. Bordering on the sea are Pukan, Balaku, etc.,— the country of Munans. Further, Cakma, Kam-bo-ja etc. All these are collectively called Kuki (Ko-ki).

Elaborating more about Taranatha's book, we can imagine Kuki country as a centre of Buddhist revivalism and propagation. His record is unique in many ways. One dimension is probably the religious dimension which historians seldom employ. Elaborating further, Taranatha writes that since the time of Asoka, Kuki were receptive and played a major role in propagating Buddhism. Many temples were built and many monks were from the Kuki country, often visited by Buddhist scholars and it was a centre of Buddhist missionaries for spreading the doctrine. This may sound preposterous for Kuki of this generation having been under the umbrella of Christianity for a century now, but it can be asserted that major religions of the world like Buddhism and Hinduism had dichotomised the society earlier only to be manipulated further by different denominations of Christianity in the later years, leaving the Kuki society more vulnerable to segregation and division.

”

Thus, Lunminthang is merely saying that the 17th century Taranatha seemingly suggested Kuki to include all of mongoloid stock" (one of numerous groups of people who now inhabit northeast India). There is no support for "Taranatha (1575–1634) wrote a description of the Kuki (Ko-ki) country, including in it almost the entire northeastern India."

2. Lunminthang cites Taranatha. The Taranatha source can be read here:

There Taranatha says eastern India consists of the following:

• First includes Bhamgala and Odivisa (now called Bengal, Odisha) which belong to Aparantaka.
• Second includes Kamarupa, Tripura, Hasama – these are called the Girivarta (Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, these form vast majority of modern northeast India by land area and population).
• Third includes the Namga-ta (Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan).
• Fourth, are coastal regions of Pukhan, Balaku, etc which form the country of the Rakhan (now Rakhine region of Myanmar and Chittagong-Bangladesh).
• Fifth, Hamsavati and Marko form the country of Munans (now part of lower and central Myanmar).
• Finally, are the Cakma (now western Myanmar, India-Myanmar border), Kam-bo-ja (Khmer, Kampuchea), etc which are collectively called the Ko-ki countries (now southeastern Asian countries named Cambodia, Laos, part of north Thailand and southwestern China/Tibet).

Thus, not only the Lunminthang source, the Taranatha source does not describe a Ko-ki country that included the "entire northeastern India".

Additional comments:

1. The term "northeastern India" means all of "Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura". Please see any peer-reviewed scholarly source, or this Indian govt version as a quick reference.
2. The phrase "all the mongoloid stock of the northeast Indian belt" is not equivalent to "entire northeastern India".
3. The mongoloid stock is neither the majority of northeast India nor in any major region of southeast Asia. This region has a diverse genome, ethnic composition and origins – as it served as a trading, students and migration travel route between South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia history (https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/21/8/1525/1060622). FWIW, the mongoloid stock is found in regions such as east-central Asia (Mongolia), parts of southeast Asia etc (see).
4. Kautilya3's added ""Taranatha (1575–1634) wrote a description of the Kuki (Ko-ki) country, including in it almost the entire northeastern India". This fabricated disinformation creates and spreads the lie that Kuki-people had a country in past that included "almost the entire northeastern India". This lie implies that non-Kuki tribes, religious and ethnic groups are invaders of Kuki ancestral lands or migrants into Kuki lands. Kautilya3 disinformation is not accidental, it seems deliberate as he has posted about "conquest of New Kuki lands" and "new arrivals" in his social media posts (e.g. Link1, Link2).