Folklore of Tribal Communities

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CONTENTS

   Acknowledgements
   Preface
  1.  Introduction
      Orissa: Land, People and its Tribal Culture
      Folklore
     Components of Folklore
  2. The Santals
     Ethonographic Account
     Stories
     Santal Legends
     Myths
     Songs
     Santal Dance
     Riddles
     Proverbs
     Santal Metaphors
     Conclusion
     Santali Peotry
   3.  The Hill Kharias
      Ethnographic Account
      Folklore of Hill Kharias
      Stories
      Songs
    4. The Oraons
      Ethnographic Account
      Myth
      Legends
      Stories
      Songs
      Dance
    5. The Mundas
      The Munda Songs
      Conclusion
      Glossary
      Bibliography
      Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The study on Folklore of nonliterate people is one of the important aspects of Anthropology. It consists of their myths, tales, proverbs, riddles and such other unwritten literary aspects of culture. This book presents a brief account of Oral literature of four tribal communities, namely the Santals, the Oraons, the Kharias, and the Mundas of Orissa. Most gratefully I acknowledge their depth of knowledge and experience in regard to their unwritten literary world.
I am also very much grateful to the Department of Culture under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India for providing financial assistance for documentation of this folk literature.
I wish to thankfully acknowledge the help extended to me by the investigating team of the institute for the fieldwork which they had undertaken to collect data about Oral Literature from the tribal communities.
I also thankfully express my gratitude to Mrs. Pratiti Mohanty for assembling the information collected by our investigators and drafting the preliminary report.
The Steno/Typists of the Social Science Development Research Institute (SSADRI) Mr. F. Samal and Mr. S. Patra sat down hours together typing out the report and bringing it to the final shape.
The computerization of the report and formatting for publication was done by Mr. Pradeep Satapathy of the Institute. It is his sincerity which brought the work to final shape.
I also thankfully express my gratitude to Mr. Durgacharan Panda, Artist who took pains in going through the work and made sketches accordingly.
Last but not the least I am very grateful to Mr. Amit Garg and Mr. B.P. Garg, Managing Director of the Gyan Publishing House for bringing out this book in time.
I sincerely hope that this modest attempt will help the folklorists and encourage them for further study of the folklore of the Tribes of Orissa which are vanishing with the passage of time.
Nityananda Patnaik

PREFACE

The present study is based upon the field work conducted on the Folklore of four different tribes of Orissa namely Santal, Kharia, Oraon and Munda in the two different districts.
Folklore is a medium through which the soul of the human being expresses itself colourfully and in such creation it finds an artistic fulfilment and entertainment. This is no less true in the case of these tribes of Orissa. Myths, legend and folklore all being parts of the same oral tradition, intertwine and influence each other. Themes from mythology sometimes occur in legends, while in simple cultures myths are hard to separate from folktales. Nevertheless, each of the three types does have a particular character of its own. Mythology is closely bound-up with religion. Its concern is with matters that shape the lives of men, the creation of the world, the origin of life and the meaning of death, etc. Myths are set in a distant and unrecognisable past. Legends on the other hand, have a known historical past. In legends facts are moulded in an imaginative or even fantastic way, their heroes often possessing magical or super natural powers. But they are rooted in reality. Folklore the third category of Oral tradition, includes songs and ballads, dances and music, impromptu drama and traditional customs and beliefs. All these are important in maintaining a culture.
In the present work within the limited space and obviously with a view to securing the appeal to a wider public, it has been possible for me just to present some of the collections of the folklores of the four different tribes, such as Santal, Kharia, Oraon and Munda from the two different districts of Orissa. The study concerns the Hill Kharias and the Santals of Mayurbhanj district and the Oraon and Munda of Sundergarh district. We have taken some of the folklores of these four tribes and described them with comparative fullness. We have also given in short an account regarding their general features, customs and institutions and observed certain important variations. These four different communities represent four different types and stages of primitive culture and thus furnish fruitful materials in the study of Social Anthropology for a comparative study and clear comprehension of the earlier stages in the evolution of human culture.
Nityananda Patnaik
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