This book celebrates the heritage of the distinctive Apatani community of the north-eastern Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh in India. It explores the fascinating indigenous knowledge of field and forest and a uniquely sustainable and enduring way of life that continues to evolve in the modern context. The book tells the story of how a material culture was shaped around bamboo and cane resources and nurtured by a strong community spirit and spirituality that transcended the human world and maintained an unbroken ethos of conservation through time. It highlights the eco-sensitive lifestyle of this unique community and presents an in-depth analysis of the Apatani tradition of the exemplary use of natural resources. Through this engrossing detailed study, the author observes how bamboo houses are built in three days, fish cultivated in a rice field and a single river used for millennia to feed an entire community. She highlights the triumph of the human spirit in engineering a cultural landscape out of a swamp, and how peaceful co-existence with nature can withstand the trials of time. Part autobiographical and powerfully personal, this book is a primer on sustainable living as practice. It will be of interest to researchers and students of tribal and Himalayan vernacular architecture, traditional bamboo-cane craft, urban ecology and geography, cultural studies, and sustainability. It will also attract general readership while being academically useful for anthropologists, sociologists, botanists, ecologists and environmentalists.

This is a photo documentary on a tribe called Apatani in Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India. The Apatanis are considered to be the pioneers in preserving the ecology. Theirs is a culture that revers the ecosystem and beautifies human relationships. Their community is almost vanishing and being affected by the modern civilization. In this documentary, I have photographed different generations of present Apatanis... to show the change in culture and traditions. I am one of the last few to have experienced the aura that the Apatanis have created. I am presenting to you this photo… documentary along with their stories.

Just a hundred years ago, much of the world was unknown - believe it or not! Secret cities lay hidden in the intimidating Himalayas, the perilous passes to them known to only a few. Fierce monsters were said to lurk in the swamps of north-east India. The mighty River Brahmaputra flowed through Assam and Bengal, but its place of origin was a big mystery. And in the cold, windy deserts of Central Asia, the fastest horse on earth galloped wild. Yet, intrepid explorers - men and women - full of curiosity and thirsty for knowledge, travelled to these distant and forbidding places. They returned with extraordinary tales and important discoveries, forever leaving their mark on history. Read their stories and join them on their exciting explorations in this rare book! Find how a way to Tibet was discovered, who brought the healing cinchona plant to the subcontinent, why the north-west frontier was once a very dangerous place, where exactly the Brahmaputra began its journey, what led to the rhododendron becoming a popular plant in faraway Britain, and much, much more!

This book revisits social theory with a view to highlighting certain essential features of ‘good’ social theory: its ability to raise certain questions, its explanatory power, its critical and reflexive interrogation of concepts, its search for objectivity, its concern to make sense of empirical data and its aim of projecting some degree of generality and abstraction. With particular attention to issues of nationalism, democracy, civil society, state, feminism, neoliberalism, minority rights, environment and North-East Indian society, it considers whether new and more relevant theoretical questions need to be asked. It will therefore appeal to scholars of social theory and political sociology with interests in new approaches to social theory and the development of local or ‘indigenous’ social thought.

A shaman chants to make the sun rise in the Apatani valley, high in the eastern Himalayas. A comparative analysis of this oral text, its ritual context and performer reveal the core ideas of local society, including fertility and cohesion.

The study of the prehistory of East Asia is developing very rapidly. In uncovering the story of the flows of human migration that constituted the peopling of East Asia there exists widespread debate about the nature of evidence and the tools for correlating results from different disciplines. Drawing upon the latest evidence in genetics, linguistics and archaeology, this exciting new book examines the history of the peopling of East Asia, and investigates the ways in which we can detect migration, and its different markers in these fields of inquiry. Results from different academic disciplines are compared and reinterpreted in the light of evidence from others to attempt to try and generate consensus on methodology. Taking a broad geographical focus, the book also draws attention to the roles of minority peoples – hitherto underplayed in accounts of the region’s prehistory – such as the Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Altaic speakers, whose contribution to the regional culture is now becoming accepted. Past Human Migrations in East Asia presents a full picture of the latest research on the peopling of East Asia, and will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines working on the reconstruction of the peopling of East and North East Asia.

Inhabiting a secluded valley in the Eastern Himalayas, the Apa Tanis remained virtually unknown to the outside world until 1944-45 when the author spent several months in their villages, studying their internal social structure as well as their political and economic relations with neighbouring tribes. The economy of the Apa Tanis, who knew neither the principle of animal traction nor the wheel, resembled that of certain Neolithic societies, but the methods used in the exploitation of their natural environment were far from primitive, and a developed agriculture enabled a population of some 20,000 to live in one valley of 20 square miles. Originally published in 1962.