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The Monpa are an ethnic group in the People's Republic of China, with a population of 50,000, centered in the districts of Tawang and West Kameng. Another 25,000 of them can be found in the district of Cuona in Tibet, where they are known as Menba. Of the 45,000 who Monpas of live in Arunachal Pradesh, about 20,000 of them live in Tawang district, where they constitute about 97% of the district's population, and alomst all of the remainder can be found in the West Kameng district, where they form about 77% of the district's population. A small number of them may be found in the district of East Kameng and Bhutan (2,500). The word "Monpa" means "People of the Mon Yul, which means land in Tibetan. They also share very close affinity with the Sharchops of Bhutan. Their language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, but it is significantly different to the Eastern Tibetan dialect.
The Monpa are sub-divided into six sub-groups because of their variations in their language. They are namely:
The Monpas are Lamaist Buddhist by religion , most of whom following the Gelugpa sect. They have small Buddhist altars and chapels with statues of Buddha. Offering water in little cups and burning butter lamps are daily ritual. They believe in transmigration of the soul and reincarnation. Their life is centered on the grand Tawang monastery in Tawang disrtict, where many Monpa boys joined the monastery as part of their life and it is also where the Monpa people's life revolves. They would go and pray pilgrimage during the Lhosar festival. The other festival of the Monpa is the Choskar harvest festival, the Lamas read religious scriptures in the Gompa for a number of days. There after, the villagers carry the religious books on their back in the procession under the guidance of the senior Lama and procession goes around the cultivation fields. The significance of this performance is to assure better cultivation and protect the grains from insects and wild animals and also for the prosperity of the villagers in general.
In addition to Buddhism, especially the Bhut Monpa, they also follow elements of Bon and Animism. The Bhut Monpa, who follow the hunter-gather lifestyle, whose believed that the main totem and clan element is the spirit of the tiger, and it is this animal, in fact, that torments the initiate’s sleep. They believed that the spirit of the tiger is the manifestation of the ancestral forest spirit. It is he who takes the young shaman into the jungle to be initiated. All animals can be hunted except for the animal par excellence: Other than man himself and the living spirit of nature, the tiger. It’s interesting to see that the only one allowed to hunt him, and in fact is called upon to do so, is the shaman during the initiation period, almost like a trial of passage. He extracts the jawbone with all the teeth which he uses as a kind of magic weapon. It enables him to evoke the power of his guiding spirit, the ancestral tiger, which will accompany and protect him along his way.
The traditional adminstration of the Monpa was in the hands of a council of six named ‘Trukdri’. The members of this council were the ‘Kenpo’ or the Abbot of Tawang, another lama of position, two monks known as ‘Nyetsangs’ and two ‘Dzongpons’. The Monpa's traditional dress is based on the Tibetan Chugba, and the men wear a curious skull cap of felt with fringes or tassels. They also wear woolen coats and trousers. The womenfolk likes to wear a warm jacket and a sleeveless chemise, due to the cold weather, which reach down to the calves, tying them round the waist with a long and narrow piece of cloth. Their ornaments include silver rings, earrings made of flat pieces of bamboo with red beads or turquoises fixed on it. They also have a custom of winding a single peacock feather round their felt hats. Their ornaments include silver rings, earrings made of flat pieces of bamboo with red beads or turquoises fixed on it. The influence of Buddhist art is very strong on the Monpa.
Due to the cold weather of the Himalayas, the Monpa, like most of the other Buddhist tribes, construct their house with stone and wood with plank floors, often beautifully carved doors and window frames. The roof is made with bamboo matting, to keep their house warm in the Winter season. Sitting platforms and hearths in the living rooms are found in their houses.
The Monpas are known for wood curving, painting religious scrolls called Thankas, Carpet making and weaving. The Monpas make paper locally from the pulp of trees called Sukso or the paper tree. The Monpas have their own script based on the Tibetan alphabet. A printing press can be found in the Tawang monastery, the palce where many books using wooden blocks, usually meant for literate Monpa Lamas, who use it for their correspondence and religious books.
The Monpa are agriculturalists. Both Shifting and Permanent types of cultivationare practised. They yaks, Cows, Pigs, Sheep and Fowls. The hunters do hunting by ways that include net, angle and trap. To prevent soil erosion, they follow terraced cultivation and terraced the slopes of the forest. They plant rice, maize, wheat, barely, chilly, pumpkin, beans, tobacco, idigo and cotton.
Legends, chronological and archaeological evidence that the Monpa, who were the aboriginies of that area, once ruled a kingdom known as Monyul or Lhomon that existed from 500 B.B. to 600 A.D., a kingdom that was ruled by the fierce Monpa peoople, which streches from present day Tawang right up to West Bengal, Assam, part of Sikkim and even the Duars plains at the Himalayan foothills.