{{Infobox ethnic group | group = Bodo–Kachari Peoples | image = File:Kherai Dance of Assam.jpg | image_caption = Kherai Dance of Boro people | population = 12–14 million | region1 = Assam | pop1 = n/a | region2 = Tripura | pop2 = n/a | region3 = Meghalaya | pop3 = n/a | region4 = Arunachal Pradesh | pop4 = n/a | rels = Majority Native | related = | languages = Boro–Garo languages, Assamese language }}Bodo–Kacharis (also Kacharis or Bodos') is a name used by anthropologist and linguists to define a collection of ethnic groups living predominantly in the Northeast Indian states of Assam, Tripura, and Meghalaya. These peoples are speakers of either Boro–Garo a subbranch of Tibeto-Burman languages or Assamese of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages and some of them possibly share ancestries. Some Tibeto-Burman speakers who live closely in and around the Brahmaputra valley, such as the Mising people and Karbi people, are not considered Bodo–Kachari. Many of these peoples have formed early states in the late Medieval era of Indian history (Chutia Kingdom, Dimasa Kingdom, Koch dynasty, Twipra Kingdom) and came under varying degrees of Sanskritisation. The speakers of Tibeto–Burman are considered to have reached the Brahmaputra valley via Tibet and settled in the foothills of the eastern Himalayan range which includes the whole of Assam, Tripura, North Bengal and parts of Bangladesh. It has been suggested by different linguists that the proto-Boro–Garo language emerged as the lingua franca of the region to which Austroasiatic and other non-Tibeto-Burman speakers had shifted. Among these ethnic groups, Garo, Rabha, Tiwa, and some Koch peoples might have been either influenced by Austroasiatic cultures, or were themselves originally Austroasiatic speakers. Boro language, one of the languages in the Boro–Garo group, has been recognised as an eighth scheduled Indian language in 2004. The belief that Bodo–Kacharis were early settlers of the river valleys is taken from the fact that most of the rivers in the Brahmaputra valley today carry Tibeto–Burman names—Dibang, Dihang, Dikhou, Dihing, Doiyang, Doigrung etc.—where Di/Doi- means water in Boroic languages, and many of these names end in -ong, which is water in Austroasiatic. The Kacharis were also some of the first people to rear silkworms and produce silk material and were considered to be associated with ahu rice culture in Assam before the advent of sali (transplanted rice) was introduced from the Gangetic plains. Some of the groups, such as