Singing for Monyul in Arunachal

…monyul chokley gyal lo
monyul chokley gyal lo

[…long live the Monpa land
long live Monyul]

It is the last song at the school assembly that leaves me with questions. Not just because it is unfamiliar or because it’s in a tongue I don’t know, but also because it sounds quite different even from the language I have heard local people speak in this Himalayan valley. I have been in Chug village of the West Kameng district documenting Monpa life for a while now.

It is an early Thursday morning in late July and I am, in what many believe is Arunachal Pradesh’s most scenic village. Riding pillion on Nawang Tsering’s bike – he is a government school teacher – I have reached the PM SHRI Government Secondary School in Rama Camp, about six kilometers away from Chug. Many children from nearby villages walk to the school every morning.

It is 9 a.m. assembly time and I am trying to stay as close to the wall as possible, right behind a few students who are leading the programme from the stage. Facing me are lush green mountains, a sky, wearing aqua blue and untainted clouds of white, matching the colours of the students' uniform. Lined up in neat rows are 260 students of the school.

They begin by chanting the name of Manjushri (or Bodhisattva, a being personifying supreme wisdom and enlightenment) followed by a shloka in Sanskrit, then the national anthem and finally a Monpa (Monyul in their native language) song fills the valley. I am intrigued by the line-up. It is this last one that specially catches my interest.

Later, two friends who share an identical name 'Tenzin Drema', one in Class 3 and the other in Class 4, sing the same song for me. All Monpa children from the Maliama hamlet of the village are familiar with the song, regardless of which out of the three schools they attend in the valley. The song in Dirang Monpa language, written in Bhoti script, is considered to be an important connection to their cultural heritage.

In Tibetan literature mon means low altitudinal land compared to the Tibetan plateau and pa means people. Monpa, therefore, literally means people who live in the southern direction of Tibet on the Himalayan slope. They are often divided into subgroups based on their geographical locations, livelihood practices and spoken languages. All Monpas practice Mahayana Buddhism. The history of that religion goes back to 8th Century A.D. when it arrived via Tibet. Being Monpa here, is often equated as having a Buddhist identity.

It was in 2011 that the government of Arunachal Pradesh made the teaching of the Bhoti script mandatory in all the schools across four Buddhist inhabited districts including West Kameng. “Now that many from the young generations are shifting to towns and cities for higher education and jobs, we want them to understand the importance of our language and culture,” says Nawang.

According to the 2011 census data there are about 13,703 people who speak in one or the other variant of the larger Monpa language family, with almost all (12,398) in Arunachal. Dirang Monpa, a specific linguistic subgroup, is included in the Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages by the State and has only 896 speakers in West Kameng’s Dirang subdistrict.

Tashi Tsering, a Hindi teacher in the school says, “the Monpa language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, uses the Bhoti script, and has many dialects. The script is now mandatory for us to teach till Class 8.”

The assembly in the school takes place every day, and each day the children sing the same four songs in the same order. That is how the two Tenzin Drema have learnt it by heart. “This is a song we learnt in school. It’s a Monpa song. It is a traditional song. That is all I know. The meaning and all we don’t know,” she says with a giggle.

This Monpa (also known as Monyul) song has been documented as spoken in the Chug village of West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. The reporter would like to thank Nawang Tsering (Dirang) and Genden Sangey (Tawang) for their help in interpreting the song

PARI's Endangered Languages Project (ELP), is part of an initiative supported by Azim Premji University. It aims to document the vulnerable languages of India through the voices and lived experiences of people who speak them.