Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn -- Introduction / Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn -- Trans-Himalayan Migrations as Processes, Not Events: Towards a Theoretical Framework / Geoff Childs -- Where the Waters Dry Up – The Place of Origin in Rai Myth and Ritual / Martin Gaenszle -- Where did the Question ‘Where did My Tribe Come From?’ Come From? / Robbins Burling -- Coevolving with the Landscape? Migration Narratives and the Environmental History of the Nyishi Tribe in Upland Arunachal Pradesh / Alexander Aisher -- Micro-Migrations of Hill Peoples in Northern Arunachal Pradesh: Rethinking Methodologies and Claims of Origins in Tibet / Toni Huber -- Apatani Ideas and Idioms of Origins / Stuart Blackburn -- Migration Narratives, Official Classifications, and Local Identities: The Memba of the Hidden Land of Pachakshiri / Kerstin Grothmann -- The Language, Culture, Environment and Origins of Proto-Tani Speakers: What is Knowable, and What is Not (Yet) / Mark W. Post -- Glimpses of the Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of Northeastern India / George van Driem -- Origin and Migration Myths in the Rhetoric of Naga Independence and Collective Identity / Marion Wettstein -- Oral Histories and the ‘Origins’ of Current Peoples: Dynamic Ethnogenesis, with Remarks upon the Limitations of Language-Family Subgrouping / F. K. L. Chit Hlaing -- Cords and Connections: Ritual and Spatial Integration in the Jinghpaw Cultural Zone / Mandy Sadan -- Origin and Return: Genesis and the Souls of the Dead in Naxi Myth and Ritual / Charles F. McKhann -- Migrating Brothers and Party-State Discourses on Ethnic Origin in Southwest China / Koen Wellens -- Contributors / Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn -- Index / Toni Huber and Stuart Blackburn.

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Origins and migration are core elements in the histories, identities and stories of Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations in the extended eastern Himalayas, a region stretching from eastern Nepal through Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and the hill tracts surrounding Assam, to upland Southeast Asia and southwest China. This book is the first to bring together contemporary research on Tibeto-Burman-speaking hill peoples in this region and the only multi-disciplinary study of the closely related topics of origins and migration in this part of Asia, presenting current research by anthropologists, folklorists, linguists and historians. Through a series of case studies on local and regional populations, the contributors explore origins and migration in relation to theoretical and methodological approaches, language, identity and narrative.