Society-SANTAL

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.

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



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.


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