Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: Lotha Khunbao and an aesthetic!
Person Highlight: Lotha Khunbao
Lotha Khunbao was a leader of the Nocte or Nocte Naga, a tribe/ethnicity speaking a Tibeto-Burman language in Arunachal Pradesh. They are one of the tribes with a substantial Hindu presence, in a state where the population is split between Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and practicioners of various tribal religions. He was a leader of that tribe and one of the first converts to Hinduism among the Nocte.
We’ve covered in various issues the Hinduization of Assam (Week 137) and the Hinduization of Manipur (Week 16, Week 26) in India. The conversion of Lotha Khunbao is an extension of sorts of the Hinduization of Assam. Disciples of Srimanta Sankardeva, a prominent Hindu guru, brought him into the broader Sanatana fold.
Ironically enough, the Ahom Kingdom (of Assam) and various Naga Kingdoms were often at war. 1692 CE saw the Ahoms make bloody raids into Nocte territory, with the Nocte (under Lotha Khanbao) retaliating ferociously in 1701. However soon afterwards the Ahoms and Nocte came to a tenuous peace.
In 1717, Lotha Khunbao dreamt of meeting a guru with spiritual powers. In the ensuing weeks, he informed his leadership council about this dream, and set out to find this guru. His men filled a pair of bamboo tubes with gold and silver coins and floated it down the river, following in boats behind the tubes to make landfall wherever the tubes stopped.
After 11 days of meandering down the river, the tubes made landfall near Dibrugarh in modern-day Assam, at a place called Merbil Ghat. There, the crew disembarked at the Bali Satra (satra is a religious center in Ekarasana Dharma, the Assamese sect of Vaishnavite Hinduism) of a guru named Sree Ram Dev. One of his disciplines spotted the tubes but was unable to move it; he informed his guru, who arrived on the scene and procured the tubes.
Upon witnessing this, Lotha Khunbao and his folks told Sree Rama Dev about the dream and about how he would be his guru. However, it was not a simple ask; Sree Rama Dev was a Hindu guru in an Ahom Kingdom, being asked to minister to a Nocte mleccha. Sree Rama Dev was understandably suspicious, likely thinking this was a spy mission. Lotha Khunbao essentially begged numerous times to take him on as a disciple, so Sree Rama Dev decided to test him. Sree Rama Dev asked Lotha Khunbao to pull up to a festival where the guru was dressed in the same manner as the festival drummers, going as far as to be in disguise. Khunbao was told that he needed to identify Sree Rama Dev to pass the test; Khunbao immediately did.
Soon after, Lotha Khunbao and his men were converted to Vaishnavite Hinduism, and Khunbao was given the name Narottam (meaning “best among men”) by his new guru. Khunbao actually gave the reins of his kingdom to his son after returning back to his kingdom and became an asetic, who engaged in preaching, ministry, and religious discussions alongside his guru. His embrace of Vaishnavism led to many of the Nocte embracing Vaishnavism, a tradition that still endures aong a large swathe of the Nocte population even in the face of Christian missionary activity and Chinese incursions into Arunachal Pradesh!
Aesthetic: King Parikshit
