A newly constructed house of Sherdukpen tribe of Arunachal Pradesh has been included today as permanent exhibition at Himalayan Village Open Air Exhibition in Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya. The ethnic habitat has been inaugurated by Shri Hari Ranjan Rao, IAS (MD, MP Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation), Prof Sarit Kumar Chaudhuri (Director, IGRMS) and in presence of artisans from Sherdukpen tribe. The house has been constructed in leadership of Dr. Rinchin Megejee by traditional artisans from Thongre village of West Kemeng distt.
The Pangthing yam constructed in Manav Sangrahalaya, the material was procured from Thongre village which is around 9 km from circle head quarter Rupa of West Kameng District. The house earlier belonged to Shri Juno Thongdok of Thongre village was lying vacant from some time later IGRMS procured it. Nine people from the village came to IGRMS and reconstructed the dwelling house in the museum for an open air exhibition. It took nearly 30 days to completely finish its construction.
The house measuring 26 feet in length and 16 feet in breadth was constructed having basement (longkheng), main room (yamdok) and zoh (store room). In the main room brop (hearth) is constructed above which bakhi (rack for smoke drying purpose) is present as can be found in most of the tribal society.
Sherdukpen is one of the major tribe of Arunachal Pradesh. They are concentrated in the Southern part of West Kameng Disrtict of Arunachal Pradesh. Their population is around 5000 in numbers. Their main economic activity is agriculture. By religion they are Buddhist however they keep alive their indigenous practice also which is celebrated in the month of December as “Khiksaba” for a week. The Sherdukpen house (yam) is constructed randomly in a village. The Sherdukpen house is compose of three different platforms. These are the (i) longkheng (basement/lower part)  (ii) Yamdok (main room) and Rapse (prayer room)  the middle part and (iii) Zoh (store room) upper part. Three different type of house is available in the Sherdukpen society: (i) Dcha Yam (ii) Pangthing Yam (iii) Tampla Yam.
Dcha Yam: this kind of house is fully made of stone from basement to top floor. Pangthing Yam : in this kind of house the basement is made of stone and the second layer is made of wood and the third layer is made of bamboo. Tampla Yam : this kind of house is fully made of bamboo.

Date: April 18, 2016