Khumi, The a small tribe of chittagong hill tracts. The Khumis are also called Khami, which means the best race. Kha in the Khumi dialect means man and mi means the best. The Arakanese call Khumis Khemi, which implies a race of very low social hierarchy. Khe in the Arakanese language means dog and mi denotes race. Khumis have Mongoloid features. They migrated from arakan towards the end of the 17th century. In Bangladesh they live in ruma, rowangchhari and thanchi upazilas of bandarban district. The Statistical Pocketbook of Bangladesh (1999) reports their population in Bangladesh as 1,241.

Social System:

Khumis believe that their ancestors lived in the area where rivers originated. This is one of the reasons why they like to dwell on riverbanks and on high mountains. This ethnic tribe is independent, predatory and ferocious, and war loving. Their villages are well fortified with only one gate each and are guarded day and night by a watch. Their weapons are guns, daos, javelins and similar types of arms.

Family Structure:  Khumis are patriarchal. They have two clans. One is known as Awa Khumi and the other is Aphya Khumi. Both the clans once lived on the bank of the Koladain River. Khumis do not marry within the same clan. Premarital sex among the young people is not reprehensible. The community, however, requires the couple to marry each other if their premarital intercourse results in pregnancy.

Lifestyle: Khumi males wear lengti (long narrow buttocks clothes). They leave a part of the lengti hanging in the front and back sides below the waist. They bear long hair and wear white turbans. Khumi women wear wanglai, a 9 - 14 inches wide piece of cloth. Women do not cover the upper part of their body, but hang ornaments of silver and puti from the neck.

Khumis own slaves or a go-for boy. If a Khumi household head does not have a son he may donate all of his property to such a boy before his death. Most Khumis are farmers by profession. They practise jhum cultivation. They weave their own dresses, the lengti and wanglai. They prefer building house on top of trees in the deep forest. They have an oral dialect of the Kuki-Chin language family, but no written script. They do not want any non-khumi person to learn their dialect. Neither do they wish to learn the language of any other people.

Their staple food is rice and main drink is wine. Wine is an indispensable part of their culture. They use wine for worship, household affairs, and as drinks for any occasion. They eat the meat of any domestic or wild animals such as tigers, deer, cows, boars, dogs, jackals, roosters, bears, buffaloes, and snakes.

Rituals: Khumis are generally Buddhists. However, their beliefs and practices reveal animistic and polytheistic views. They pay homage to Pathian, the Creator. The other two gods they honor are Nadag, the household deity, and Bogley, the god of water. Khumis have similarity with the murongs in the observance of cow slaughter puja. They use plung flute of Murongs, although they do not dance in a group as the Murongs do. A Khumi man dances with a woman by his side during this ceremony. Nadag puja is observed before jhum cultivation and also before the harvest. A dog, a boar and an odd number of cocks and hens are offered as sacrifice on the riverbank during this festival. People ceremonially dance and sing. Sacrificial flesh is cooked and a morsel of stewed flesh is placed on the riverbank before consuming the sacrificial meat.

Khumis cremate their dead and then gather the bones and ashes, wrap them with a piece of cloth and keep the pack for a certain period before burying them in the jungle with festive rituals. They preserve the weapons of the dead man in a house built in the place where the corpse is burnt. [Selmon H Dio]