Language & Literature
Social Organisation
Marriage System
The Adivasis of Orissa
Offspring of Immortals: this is the title of a major novel by the eminent Jnanpith award winning novelist from Orissa, Gopinath Mohanty, on the life of the Kondhs, a major Adivasi tribe of Orissa. The felicitous epithet, which harks back to a well-known verse in the Svetasvataropanishad must have naturally occurred to the author as he observed these innocent people from close quarters year after year. The Kondhs are only one of the 62 tribes identified in Orissa as Adivasis who are believed to be the original inhabitants of the land. According to their origin and habitat they are variously designated as Adimajati (primitive castes), Janajati (folk communities), Girijana (hill folk), Vanajati (forest dwellers), etc. However, these names do not bring out their essential characteristic of primal innocence and spontaneous living; their are the inheritors of immortality. Time seems to have stopped in their sylvan hamlets. Their ways of living with are meagre needs of food, shelter and clothing and the vivre through music and dance seem to have remained unaltered through the ages of social evolution. The sacred God-nature-man relationship that works among them is an amazing experience to the fragmented and alienated mind of modern man.
Orissa has one of the largest concentrations of tribal population in the whole country (22.13 per cent according to the 1991 census). In concrete figure they number around 7 million. Tribal communities differ from all others in many respects, their distinctive features being clan organization and territorial exogamy, classes social structure, youth dormitory, colourful rituals and folk art, music and dance. The 62 tribes in Orissa wary in their size, degree of acculturation and economic patterns. While the Kondhs numbering around nine lakh are numerically the largest in the state, the Santals are among the three largest and advanced tribes in the country. The major tribes living in Orissa are the Santab, Oraons, Gonds and Kondhs. Although many of the Adivasi tribes are found in other parts of the country, the Juangs, Gbhuyans, Saoras, Bondas and Bathudis are exclusive to Orissa. The tribal Communities are in various stages of economic and social development starting with the least developed Bondas and ending with the comparatively advanced Santals, the spectrum covering seminomadic to semiurban conditions. While a few tribes like the Lanjia Saoras and Kutia Kodhs are entirely primitive, the Santals have a high degree of acculturation.
Most tribal people ate basically working people, working to gather food and fuel or engaged in agriculture which is often at a primitive level or maybe in some primitive craft: Their work is usually of subsistence type. The Adivasis may not be the so-called gentlemen, for they have to dig and delve, slash and sow or ,pin and weave, but their uncomplicated Adamic approach to life and the basic human virtues, which constitute the hallmark of their integrated culture is fit for emulation, if feasible, by our acquisitive society.