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Book No. 74


To first story in the book press: 3495

To last story in the book press: 3517

Santal Folk Tales

Campbell A. (translator)

Santal Folk Tales, Campbell A. (translator), 1891

SANTAL FOLK TALES

TRANSLATED FROM THE SANTALl

BY

A. CAMPBELL,

PRINTED AT THE SANTAL MISSION PKESS,

POKHURIA.

1891.

 

PREFACE.

Of late years the Folk tales of India have been the subject of much study and research, and several interesting collections of them have been published. But I am not aware that as yet the folk lore of the Santals, has received the attention which it deserves.

The Santals as a people, have, to a remarkable degree, succeeded in resisting the subtle Hinduising influences to which they have long been exposed, and to which such a large number of aboriginal tribes have succumbed. They have retained their language, institutions, tribal organization, and religion almost intact. Their traditions show the jealousy with which these have been guarded, and the suspicion and distrust with which contact with their Aryan neighbours was regarded. The point at which they have been most accessible to outward influence and example, is in their relations with the aboriginal tribes, who in a more or less degree have merged themselves in Hinduism. Hindu ideas, custoras and beliefs, filtering through these tribes, became considerably modified before they reached the Santals, and were therefore less potent in their effects than if they had been drawn from the fountain head of Hinduism itself.

Still, in respect to their aboriginal neighbours they are always on their guard, ready to repel any innovation on their customs or religion with which they may be threatened. In the folk tales of such a people we may well expect to find something, if not altogether new, still interesting and instructive from an ethnological point of view, and this expectation, I believe, would be abundantly gratified if they were only made accessible to those who, by training and study, are competent to deal with them.

Santal folk-tales may be divided into two classes – those apparently purely Santal in their origin, and those obtained from other sources. Those of the first class are by far the more numerous, and besides showing the superstitious awe with which the Santals regard the creations of their own fancy, they throw a flood of light upon the social customs and usages of this most interesting people. The second class embraces a large number of the more popular tales current among the Hindus and serai-Hinduised aborigines. These, although adapted and modified by the Santals to suit their language, modes of thought, and social usages, may generally be detected by the presence of proper names, or untranslatable phrases which unmistakably indicate the source form which they have been derived.

These tales were taken down in Santali at first hand, and are therefore genuine and redolent of the soil. In translating them I have allowed myself considerable latitude without in any way diverging so far from the original as to in any degree impair their value to the student of Indian Folk-lore.

It was to be expected that in the popular tales of a simple, unpolished people like the Santals, expressions and allusions unfitted for ears polite would be found. In all such cases the changes which have been made are in accord with Santal thought and usage, so that the tales are, notwithstanding these alterations thoroughly Santali.

I have aimed at making these Santal Folk-tales, in their English dress, true to the forests and hills of their nativity. I am not without hope, that in this I have succeeded in some small degree.

A number of the tales included in this volume have already appeared in the Indian Evangelical Review, but in this collected form they are more likely to prove of service to those who take an interest in the subject.

This volume of Santal Folk-Tales is offered as a humble contribution to the Folk-lore of India.

The Santals

Culture summary by Robert O. Lagace and John M. Beierle

The Santals are one of the largest ethnic groups in India. They had a population of about 2,500,000 according to the census of 1931, and their estimated population around 1960 was placed at over 3,000,000 (cf. Culshaw 1949: 1; Orans 1965: xi). They occupy primarily the Chotanagpur Plateau, with their settlements distributed over an area of 350 miles, from the Ganges to the Baitarani, between long. 86 degrees-88 degrees E and lat. 22 degrees-26 degrees N. Politically, this region extends through the states of Bihar, West Bengal, and northern Orissa. Within each of these states, the Santal population is concentrated as follows:

Bihar – districts of Santal Parganas, Manbhum, Singhbhum, Bhagalpur, Hazaribagh, and Monghyr;

West Bengal – districts of Bankura, Birbhum, and Midnapore;

Orissa – districts of Mayurbhanj and Balasore.

The Santal Parganas district is considered to be the heart of the Santal area. Beyond this region, the Santals have spread widely in India as agricultural and industrial laborers.

The Santals are a non-Hingu people – in fact, they make a clear distinction based on race between themselves and Hindus and are classified as a "Pre-Dravidian" tribe. Their language, Santali, belongs to the Munda (or Mundari) branch of the Austro-Asiatic language family. There are dialectical variations in Santali, but Orans (1965: 6) claims that there is almost complete mutual intelligibility throughout the population. Moreover, this mutual intelligibility is said to be a basis of their social cohesion, which has been maintained despite the fact that the Santals as a whole have never been politically unified.

The main dialectical distinction is between Northern Santali, which is spoken by the great majority of Santals, and Southern Santali. The latter is spoken in the southern part of Bihar and in Orissa, while Northern Santali is spoken in most of Bihar and in West Benhal.

Prior to the nineteenth century, the basic Santal subsistence pattern was hunting, but with an ever-increasing population and the rapidly decreasing game supply, the Santals have since turned to agriculture. Today, the Santals are predominantly cereal agriculturists, growing rice as their chief crop, and further supplementing this with millet, sorghum, maize, and some vegetable crops. Cotton is grown for textile use. Santal agricultural methods are primarily of the slash-and-burn variety, with little knowledge or application of crop rotation, irrigation, or fertilizers. Hunting, fishing, and gathering are of little economic importance today, although the annual "dehiri" hunt is an event enjoyed by most of the male population. Cattle are raised to some extent, as well as sheep, goats, pigs, oxen, buffaloes, cows, cats, and dogs. These animals are used as supplementary sources of protein in the diet, as well as for other purposes (e.g., rodent control). The Santals trade extensively with neighboring Hindu peoples for the bulk of their everyday goods except for food stuffs and a few forest products.

Santal social organization is characterized by a lack of the caste cleavages so prominent in Hindu society, a patrilineal kinship system, and a relatively low level of political integration. The entire society seems to be divided into 9 exogamous but noncorporate patrilineal sibs. (By tradition there should be 12 sibs, but Orans says that actually there appear to be only 9). These sibs are divided into subsibs, which in turn are subdivided into local patrilineal lineages – the largest corporate kin groups. The basic family unit is the extended patrilocal family. Each village is usually composed of a number of lineages. The village is evidently the key political unit, but the largest formally organized territorial unit is the pargana, a loose confederation of approximately a dozen villages bound together to settle certain judicial questions and headed by an official called a parganath. Culshaw (1949) discusses the pargana, and this seems to be the same unit which Biswas calls a bungalow, describing it as an administrative grouping of villages headed by a parganait (1956).

Traditionally, Santal religion was characterized by a belief in a pantheon of supernatural beings represented at the top by the supreme god Thakur (Chando, Chando Bonga, Sing Bongo, or Kando) and including six other major gods and a host of nature and ancestral spirits. Although the Santals had no idols or temples, the Sacred Grove or Spring represented to them the place of residence of the supernatural powers, and it was there that prayers and sacrifices were made, usually by a priest, to avert the ill will of the gods and to bring upon themselves, their crops, and their animals the blessings of the supernaturals. In addition, each family had two gods of its own, the orakbonga (household god) and the abgebonga (secret god), whose name was never divulged to anyone except the eldest son in the family. The bongas or spirits were generally friendly toward man, but at times could inflict misery and trouble. Hinduism has had only nominal influence on Santal religious practices as has Christianity, despite the fact that Christian missionaries have been functioning among the Santals since 1862. Biswas indicates that in addition to being a minority group, the Christian converts were also faced with the problem of loss of ethnic identity (Biswas, 1956: 217-218).

Although magic and witchcraft have also figured prominently in Santal religious practices, Mukherjea believes that these concepts were probably borrowed from the Hindus (Mukherjea 1962: 308-309). The Santals strongly believed in the existence of witches in the society, who, motivated by envy and operating through the medium of the "evil eye" or other magical practices, visited sickness, death, and other calamities upon members of the village community. By means of divinatory practices exercised through the offices of the witch-finder and the Ojha (a kind of exorcist), the causative agents of the disease were determined and ritually removed, and the identity of the witch revealed. Once the name of the witch was known, that person was often beaten, fined, driven from the community, and not infrequently killed. Witches in Santal society were inevitably female, while the Ojha and the witch-finders were male.

 

Summaries of Santal culture may be found in any of the sources cited below.

Biswas, P. C. Santals of the Santal Parganas. Delhi, Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh, 1956. 12, 230, p. illus., map.

Culshaw, W. J. Tribal heritage: a study of the Santals. London, Lutterworth Press, 1949. 12, 222 p. illus., map.

Orans, Martin. The Santal; a tribe in search of a great tradition. Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1965. 14, 154 p. tables.

Mukherjea, Charulal. The Santals. Rev. 2d ed. Calcutta, A. Mukherjee, 1962. 16, 459 p. illus., tables.

 

Taken from the Ethnographic Atlas – SCCS

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/

Page about the Santal society

http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7866

https://archive.org/stream/cu31924024159489/cu31924024159489_djvu.txt

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