CHAKMA, a tribe in India, of mixed origin, probably the descendants of prisoners taken by the Arakanese from the Mogul armies who were provided with Magh, Mon or Arakanese wives. It migrated from the southern portion of the Chittagong coastal plain towards the end of the 18th century and is now settled on the middle reaches of the Karnaphuli and its tributaries in the Chittagong Hills tracts. The language is a dialect of Bengali, but the old script, now falling into disuse, is closely allied to the an cient Khmer script. The men dress in Bengali style, but the women wear a distinctive long blue skirt with a red border, and after puberty a strip of silk over the breasts. The religion is Ani mism, with a thin veneer of Buddhism. The dead are burned on the banks of streams. The tribe is divided into patrilineal endog amous clans, but the power of the heads of the separate clans has in course of time been absorbed by one family, the head of whom is known as the Chakma chief. Despite strong and prolonged Ben gali influence the underlying culture is Burmese or Mon. Only of recent years is shifting cultivation being gradually abandoned for plough cultivation. The houses are flimsily built on piles and the villages are invariably on the banks of streams.
See T. H. Lewin, Hill Tracts of Chittagong and Dwellers Therein (Calcutta, 1869) ; G. A. Grierson, Linguistic Survey of India, vol. v., part 9. (J. P. M.)