MIKIRS, a hill tribe of India, occupying two or three detached tracts in Nowgong and Sibsagar districts of Eastern Bengal and Assam, known as the Mikir hills. In 1901 their total number was returned as 87,056. Mikir is the name given to them by the Assamese; they call themselves Arleeng, which means “man” in general. They have long settled down to agriculture, and are distinguished from the tribes around them by the absence of savagery. Their language, which has been studied by missionaries, seems to connect them with the Kuki-Chin stock on the Burmese frontier.
See Sir C. Lyall, The Mikirs (1908).