East meets West: The Assam Corridor
Résumé
Assam is the far northeastern corner of India. It is actually bordered by the Eastern Himalaya, beyond which is Tibet, by Burma and Bangladesh. Its central part is the mid valley of the Brahmaputra river, that comes from Tibet and flows into Bangladesh and West Bengal. A number of explorers, missionaries, botanists, spies and linguists have gone there because this is the place where the Chinese world stops and the Indian one begins. But on that very wide borderstrip, languages and ethnic groups are plenty. For a long time, languages have been taken as the best way to define ethnic groups. Is it true ?
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