About six kilometres from the upper Assam town of Naharkatiya and 37 kilometres from Dibrugarh town, is the Namphake village in the riverine area of Buridihing, home to a small population of Tai Phakes. About 150 Phakial families of this village are keeping alive their unique identity, customs and traditions.

Tai Phake is the branch of the great Tai race that entered Assam in the latter half of the 18th century. The word Phake has been derived from the Tai words ‘Pha’ meaning wall and ‘Ke’ meaning ancient or old. People living near and around the stoned walls in due course came to be known as Kunphake, i.e., people residing near Phake part of the country. In The Tai and the Tai Kingdom, Padmeswar Gogoi writes, “The Tai is a generic name denoting a great branch of the Mongoloid population of Asia. The Tai people are now mainly concentrated in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. The present habitat of the Tai people extends from Assam in the west to Kwangsi and Hainan in the east and from the interior of Yunnan in the north to the southern-most extremity of Thailand (Siam) in the south.