Santal people
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- Draft — Santal people (v1.2)
- Date:** 2026-05-30
- Destination:** `Santal people` (new page; first ethnic-group page on the wiki)
- Link strategy (corrected):**
- **Internal** — anything the wiki carries or plausibly will: countries (`India`, `Bangladesh`, `Nepal`), states (`Jharkhand`, `Odisha`, `Bihar`, `Tripura`, `Assam`, `West Bengal`), regions and topographic/place features (`Rajmahal Hills`, `Chota Nagpur Plateau`, `Hazaribagh`, `Daman-i-Koh`, `Santal Parganas`, `Medinipur`, `Bhagalpur`, `Terai`), peoples (`Bhil people`, `Gond people`, `Ho people`, `Bhumij people`, `Munda people`, `Adivasi`), `Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes`, `Santali language`, the cannabis concepts (`Cannabis sativa`, `Ganja`) and the cluster pages. Most are redlinks for now; that is fine. - **External (Wikipedia)** — the genuinely peripheral: individuals (Raghunath Murmu, Skrefsrud, Archer, Bodding, Sidwell), non-cannabis events/policies (the Santal Hul, Tebhaga, Naxalbari, Permanent Settlement), general-reference/administrative/legal entries (Census of India, Other Backward Class, Eighth Schedule, East India Company, Indian subcontinent, Bay of Bengal), language families and scripts (Austroasiatic, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Ol Chiki, Devanagari, Odia, Bengali), and the Sarna faith. - **Borderline, defaulted to external — flip if you want them internal:** Sarnaism (the faith), Permanent Settlement, East India Company, Ol Chiki.
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```wikitext
| Santal | |
|---|---|
| ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲ (Santaṛ) · ᱦᱚᱲ (Hor) | |
| Total population | |
| approximately 6.7–7.6 million (2011–2022) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| |
| Languages | |
| Santali | |
| Religion | |
| Sarnaism / Sari Dharam (bonga worship) and Hinduism, with Christian and other minorities (classification contested; see Religion) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Munda, Ho, Bhumij and other Munda-speaking peoples |
The Santal (also Santhal; endonym Hor, "human being", or Hor hopon, "children of humankind") are a Munda-speaking Adivasi people of the eastern Indian subcontinent. They are the third most populous Scheduled Tribe in India after the Bhil and the Gond, and the most numerous of the Munda-speaking peoples. The 2011 Census of India recorded 6,570,807 Santals holding Scheduled Tribe status across five states, the largest concentrations being in Jharkhand and West Bengal; further communities live in Bangladesh and Nepal. They speak Santali, the most widely spoken language of the Munda subfamily, written since the early 20th century in the indigenous Ol Chiki script.
The Santal entered the colonial record in the late 18th century as forest-clearing agriculturalists in the Rajmahal Hills, and are remembered above all for the Santal Hul of 1855, one of the largest armed risings against East India Company rule. Their traditional religion, Sarna, centres on the worship of bonga (spirits) at a sacred grove. The Census of India records a majority of Santals as Hindu, a classification disputed by a movement seeking a separate Sarna religious code. Documented Santal practices include ritual, medicinal and material uses of cannabis, treated separately at Cannabis in Santal culture.
Name and identity
The English name "Santal" is an exonym. The most widely cited derivation, following the missionary-linguist L. O. Skrefsrud, holds that it is a corruption of Saontar, a name the people acquired after living for several generations in the country around Saont, identified with the Silda tract of present-day Medinipur in West Bengal.[4] An older interpretation connects the name to Sanskrit samanta ("bordering", "frontier"), reflecting the people's concentration in marginal hill country.
The Santals call themselves Hor ("human being") or Hor hopon ("children of humankind"), and their language Hor ror ("the speech of people"). Many use Manjhi, the title of the village headman, as a community name in parts of West Bengal and Odisha. In colonial ethnography the Santal were often grouped with cognate communities under the wider term Kherwar.[5]
Population and distribution
The Santal hold Scheduled Tribe status in five Indian states, where the 2011 census enumerated 6,570,807 of them.[1] The state distributions are Jharkhand (2,754,723), West Bengal (2,512,331), Odisha (894,764), Bihar (406,076) and Tripura (2,913); the Jharkhand and West Bengal figures make the Santal the largest Scheduled Tribe in each of those states. A further community of about 213,139 lives in Assam, where the Santals are descendants of 19th-century tea-garden labour migrants and are classified as Other Backward Class rather than Scheduled Tribe, a long-standing grievance.[verification needed]
Population by tribe and population by language are counted separately, and the Santali-speaker total is higher than the Scheduled Tribe total: the 2011 census recorded 7,368,192 speakers in India.[6] In Bangladesh the 2022 census recorded 129,049 Santals, concentrated in the Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions, a figure that indigenous organisations dispute as a substantial undercount.[2] In Nepal the 2021 census records roughly 51,735 Santhal (locally Satar), concentrated in the eastern Terai.[3] Seasonal and long-term labour migration, to tea gardens, brick kilns, construction and agricultural work, is a defining feature of contemporary Santal livelihoods.[citation needed]
Language
Santali is a Kherwarian language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic family, and the most widely spoken Munda language.[7] It is divided into at least a northern and a southern dialect cluster, the northern varieties carrying eight or nine phonemic vowels against six in the south, and it is less restructured by Indo-Aryan and Dravidian contact than most Munda languages.[7] Santali has historically been written in the Bengali, Odia, Devanagari and Roman scripts; in Bangladesh the Bengali script remains usual.
A distinct script, Ol Chiki, of thirty letters and a one-sound-to-one-letter design, was devised in 1925 by Pandit Raghunath Murmu and first promoted in the late 1930s.[citation needed] Santali was added to the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution in 2003, giving it formal recognition for use in education and administration.[citation needed]
History
Origins
Under the Munda Maritime Hypothesis advanced by the linguists Felix Rau and Paul Sidwell, pre-Munda speakers reached the Odisha coast from mainland Southeast Asia by a sea route across the Bay of Bengal roughly 4,000 to 3,500 years ago, and spread inland, mixing with existing populations.[8] Santal oral tradition traces the people to a homeland called Hihiri, which scholars have identified with Ahuri in the Hazaribagh country, and thence by stages across the Chota Nagpur Plateau to Saont.[9]
Daman-i-Koh and colonial settlement
After the Permanent Settlement of 1793, the East India Company encouraged Santal cultivators to clear forest and settle the Daman-i-Koh, the "skirts of the hills" tract demarcated in 1832. The Santal population there rose from about 3,000 people in 40 villages in 1838 to 82,795 in 1,473 villages by 1851.[9] Indebtedness to moneylenders (mahajans), landlords and officials, collectively the diku, produced acute grievance over land and labour.
The Santal Hul
The Santal Hul broke out on 30 June 1855 at Bhognadih, led by the four Murmu brothers, Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav, who declared the territory between Bhagalpur and Rajmahal independent at the command of Thakur Bonga.[9] Tens of thousands of Santals took up arms with bows and axes against Company troops; the rising was suppressed under martial law between November 1855 and January 1856, Sidhu and Kanhu being captured and executed.[10] Estimates of the Santal dead vary widely, from around ten thousand to figures more than twice that, and many died of hunger and disease as much as in fighting.[10] In its aftermath the Company created the protected district of the Santal Parganas and, in 1876, the Santal Parganas Tenancy Act, which barred the transfer of Santal land to outsiders.[citation needed]
After 1947
Santals took part in the Tebhaga movement and the Naxalbari uprising, and the long campaign for a separate tribal state culminated in the creation of Jharkhand in 2000, with the Santal Parganas as one of its divisions.[citation needed]
Society
Santal society is patrilineal and organised into exogamous totemic clans (paris), conventionally numbered at twelve: Hansdak', Murmu, Kisku, Hembrom, Marndi, Soren, Tudu, Baske, Besra, Pauria, Chonre and Bedea.[11] Each clan carries a totem and a set of old functional associations, and marriage within one's own clan is strictly forbidden; the clans are subdivided into many sub-clans (khut).[5]
The village is the primary unit of Santal self-government. It is headed by the manjhi (headman), assisted by officers including the jog manjhi, who oversees the conduct of the young, the paranik and the godet or messenger, with a village council and higher Pargana-level councils administering customary law.[11][4]
Religion
The traditional Santal religion, known as Sarna or Sari Dharam, centres on the worship of bonga (spirits) and on the sacred grove, the jaher than, on the edge of the village, where uncut stones stand for the deities.[12] The supreme being is Thakur Jiu; major spirits include Marang Buru (the Great Mountain) and Jaher Era (the Lady of the Grove). Ritual is conducted by the naeke, the village priest who propitiates the benevolent grove spirits at the great festivals, and the ojha, a diviner and healer who deals with malevolent spirits and disease.[12]
The census classification of Santal religion is contested. The 2011 census recorded about 63 per cent of Santals as Hindu, with most of the remainder following Sarna or Sari Dharam and a Christian minority of roughly 5 per cent.[verification needed] Scholars and Adivasi organisations argue that the Hindu figure obscures a distinct indigenous faith, and a movement for a separate Sarna religious code has gained support, including assembly resolutions in Jharkhand and West Bengal; the central government has not granted the demand.[13] Christianity reached the Santals through the Scandinavian Santal Mission, founded in 1867 by Skrefsrud and H. P. Børresen, whose missionaries also produced the first Santali grammars, dictionary and ethnographic studies.[14]
Culture
The Santal festival calendar follows the agricultural year. The chief festivals are Sohrae, the harvest and cattle festival held around the turn of the year, and Baha, the spring flower festival that marks the blossoming of the sal tree, alongside sowing and first-fruits observances such as Erok and Hariar Sim and the communal hunt.[11] Music and dance are central to communal life, performed on the tamak (a single-headed kettledrum), the tumdak (a two-headed clay drum), the tirio (a bamboo flute) and the banam (a bowed lute, including the carved figurative dhodro banam).[citation needed]
The Santals possess a large body of oral literature, including origin myths, riddles and an extensive love poetry, documented at length by W. G. Archer, who served as a district officer in the Santal Parganas, and by W. J. Culshaw.[15][11]
Economy and livelihood
The Santals are settled plough agriculturalists with a recent history of hunting and gathering, and their readiness to clear forest underpinned the colonial settlement of the Rajmahal tract.[9] Rice is the staple crop, and rice beer (handi), brewed by women, is the dominant traditional drink and is integral to festivals and ritual.[citation needed] Contemporary livelihoods combine cultivation with extensive labour migration to tea gardens, brick kilns and urban centres, against a background of continuing land alienation that has been acute in Bangladesh.[citation needed]
Cannabis
Cannabis appears in the Santal record in three connected registers, all documented in the early-20th-century work of the missionary-scholar P. O. Bodding. In ritual, cannabis (gã̄jã) is demanded as an offering during the ojha's spirit-possession séance.[16] In medicine, Cannabis sativa appears as an ingredient in Santal prescriptions for epilepsy, convulsions, tetanus, tongue paralysis, sores and coughs and colds, recorded by Bodding and cross-confirmed in the ethnobotanical survey of S. K. Jain and C. R. Tarafder.[17][18] In material culture the hookah (huka dak) is documented in Santal use. The fuller treatment of these practices is given in the dedicated article.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, Census of India 2011: A-10 Individual Scheduled Tribe Primary Census Abstract (per-community figures by state), New Delhi: Government of India, NADA central data catalog. Santal Scheduled Tribe population 6,570,807, summed across the five notifying states.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Population and Housing Census 2022: National Report, Dhaka: Government of Bangladesh, 2023. Santal population recorded as 129,049; disputed as an undercount by indigenous organisations (a 1941 survey recorded 829,025 in the same territory). Reported in "Ethnic population in 2022 census: Real picture not reflected", The Daily Star, 2022.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 National Statistics Office, National Population and Housing Census 2021: Caste/Ethnicity Report, Kathmandu: Government of Nepal, 2023, caste/ethnicity tables. Santhal/Satar recorded as a distinct caste/ethnicity category; figure (about 51,735) to be confirmed against the downloadable data file.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Skrefsrud, L. O., Horkoren Mare Hapramko reak' Katha ("Traditions and Institutions of the Santals"), dictated by Kolean Guru in 1871, Benagaria, 1887; English translation by P. O. Bodding, edited by Sten Konow, Oslo: A. W. Brøgger, 1942.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Orans, M., The Santal: A Tribe in Search of a Great Tradition, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965.
- ↑ Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India, Census of India 2011: Language — India, States and Union Territories (Table C-16), NADA catalog entry 10191, New Delhi: Government of India, 2018.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Anderson, G. D. S. (ed.), The Munda Languages, London: Routledge, 2008.
- ↑ Rau, F. and Sidwell, P., "The Munda Maritime Hypothesis", Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 12 (2), 2019, pp. 35–57.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Hunter, W. W., The Annals of Rural Bengal, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1868.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Guha, R., Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Culshaw, W. J., Tribal Heritage: A Study of the Santals, London: Lutterworth Press, 1949.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Troisi, J., Tribal Religion: Religious Beliefs and Practices among the Santals, New Delhi: Manohar, 1978.
- ↑ "Why the Adivasi demand for the Sarna code rattles the RSS", The Caravan.
- ↑ Carrin, M. and Tambs-Lyche, H., An Encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries and their Changing Worlds, 1867–1900, New Delhi: Manohar, 2008.
- ↑ Archer, W. G., The Hill of Flutes: Life, Love and Poetry in Tribal India, London: Allen & Unwin, 1974.
- ↑ Bodding, P. O., Studies in Santal Medicine and Connected Folklore, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 10, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1925–1940. Part 1, The Santals and disease (1925), p. 53.
- ↑ Bodding, P. O., Studies in Santal Medicine and Connected Folklore, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 10, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta, 1925–1940. Part 2, Santal medicine (1927), the gã̄jã (Cannabis sativa) prescriptions at pp. 229, 231, 235–237, 241, 246, 264 and 341.
- ↑ Jain, S.K. and Tarafder, C.R., "Medicinal plant-lore of the Santals (A revival of P.O. Bodding's work)", Economic Botany Vol. 24 (1970), pp. 241–278. doi:10.1007/BF02860661
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