Essay On Tribal Culture

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Literary narratives create a new form of appreciating the indigenous tribal community and their culture. It enhances the understanding of tribal culture through human psyche and sentiments unlike anthropological studies. Tribal literature mostly is expressed through folktales, songs, myths and legends bringing out their customs and values. Orissa is one of the states with many tribes in India. They live in an organized and well knit community. Each tribe has their unique values system which traditionally they closely adhere to. The varied culture and traditions performed in each tribe are portrayed as distinctive and beautiful through literature.

The word ‘tribal’ is used by the modern society to refer to the native people of a place. Tribal people are the indigenous population of the land and are referred with different names in each continent. To have the basic idea of what is a tribe, it could be understood through Seth Godin’s definition in his book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead us, where he says, “A tribe is a group of

Their major occupations are agriculture, food gathering and hunting. They practise shift cultivation, clearing patches of forest and burning them to cultivate their crops like paddy, mazia, corn, mandia etc.; though they cook their food and eat, as they are not accustomed to use species or oil in their cooking. Their diet also contains forest fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers.

The Bonda men and women have dark complexion, flat cheeks and flat and blunt nose. They are usually half naked or dress themselves with forest materials. The men as well as women wear a small piece of cloth to cover their lower body and they call that ringa. Though women don’t cover their upper body; they wear multi-coloured bead strings. They are also fond of wearing heavy metallic ornaments made of silver and