Vol. 9, Issue 1, Part F (2023)

Abstract
Amongdifferent traditional festivals celebrated by around 30 sub-tribes of the Tangsa community in India, the Moh-Mol festival is the only festival that is celebrated by all the sub-tribes of thecommunity in common today. Moh-Mol festival acts as a cultural nexus connecting all the sub-tribes of Tangsa to come together and celebrateit with grandeur and gaiety. It also marks the beginning of the new year as per the traditional calendar of the Tangsa. The festive season of Mol starts from April and continues till August. The present study focuses on the Moh-Mol festival of the Tangsa tribal community of Arunachal Pradesh. The study discussed the evolution of the Moh-Mol festival in the community, the cultural significance of the Moh-Mol festival, rituals, and customs observed throughout the festival, types of Moh-Mol, and the degree of its importance felt by the Tangsa communityin the contemporary period. Method: The data collection for the present research has been done through interview method and participant observations. Being a member of the studied community of the present research myself, even though I have attended the Moh-Mol festival several times since my childhood, but this time specifically having the researcher’s perspective in mind and purposefully to observe the participants of the community, I have participated and witnessed the Mol festival held on 25^th May 2019 in Kuttom village, Ponthai Mol conducted in Wagun Ponthai village on 06^th October 2019 and also Lenghog ritual conducted at NamchikHavi village on 23rd December 2019 which was also an inseparable part of the study topic. The present article is written based mainly on primary data collected from field visits and participant observation. To procure the data for the present research, I have also interviewed around 25 field respondents during my field visit conducted between 25^th May 2019 to 15^th February 2021 in 11 villages in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The interview was taken from the experts, especially people above 50 years of age, those who know the Runhoon song sung during Mol festival as well as those who know better about the culture and traditions of their respective subtribes. The interviews were recorded with the help of audio-visual tools such as video cameras, as well as mobile too, as a backup. Microphone, flashlight, tripod, portable charger for mobile, laptop and hard disk of the laptop were all other necessary electronic accessories to store and manage the data, as well as for the clarity of the videos and audios of the interviews. The sampling applied in this researchis snowball sampling and the interview questions were semi-structured and open-ended questions because the nature of the data was to acquire data from oral sources and folklore. The data was collected from the Kimsing, Mossang, Ronrang, Muklom, Havi, Ponthai, Longchang, Tikhak, Lungkhi, Ngaimong, Hahcheng, Shangwal, Jugli, and Gahja sub-tribes of Tangsa tribe.