Bilung Gotar
Kharia
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotar
- Community
- Kharia
- Found in
- Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
About
Bilung is a clan of the Kharia of Chota Nagpur and one of the nine original clans of the Dudh Kharia. Its totem is salt. Tradition says its ancestor brought salt from Ghagra to Murgu when the Kharia came to Chota Nagpur. Members may eat salted food but avoid raw salt. Among the Dhelki Kharia, Bilung Mail is counted a branch of the Mail or tiger clan. It is not a Vedic gotra.
What “Gotar” means for the Kharia
Roy and Roy (1937) write the Kharia clan as gotra or gotar: a totemic clan passed from father to children whose members count themselves brothers, so that marriage within it is condemned as gotra badh, 'clan-murder'. A woman joins her husband's clan at marriage. The Hill Kharia of Mayurbhanj use the Munda word khili. It is not a Vedic gotra.
Every gotar of the Kharia, with how the clan system works: the Kharia page.
Name and Origin
The clan is named after salt, bilung in Kharia. Roy and Roy (1937, p. 139) record that the Bilung or Mailwar clan was so called because its ancestor, coming to Chota Nagpur, brought salt (nun, or bilung) from the village of Ghagra to Murgu. In the Dudh Kharia story of the nine sons, the son who found salt near the pool, and salt in place of his share of venison, began the Bilung clan (p. 138).
Historical Journey
Roy and Roy say the clan first settled at Murgu or Mukru in the Ranchi district and also founded Ghaghir or Ghogher (1937, pp. 134, 139-140); in the Kharia migration tradition told by Soma Dungdung, the ancestors of the Bilung clan settled at Bilungbira in Palkot thana (p. 37). The two sections of the tribe count the clan differently. The Dudh Kharia hold Bilung to be one of their nine original clans (p. 131), while among the Dhelki Kharia Roy and Roy found a Bilung Mail sub-division of the Mail clan, and a separate Bilung clan only among the Dhelki of Jashpur (p. 130). Roy and Roy are not consistent themselves: when correcting Risley's list of 1891, which gave Bilung and its Hindi names, Nun or Nona Maila, as separate clans, they call Bilung 'merely a sub-division of the Mail clan' (pp. 133-134).
How the Gotar Is Kept
Members of the Bilung clan take food cooked with salt but abstain from raw salt, and if raw salt must be eaten they use two or more fingers to put it in the mouth (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 142). Russell and Hira Lal (1916, p. 447) record the same rule for the 'Bilum or salt sept' of the Central Provinces: a member must not take salt on one finger and suck it. The clan passes from father to children, and a married woman takes up her husband's clan and its rules (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 143). Marriage within the clan is condemned as gotra badh, 'clan-murder', and members of one sub-clan may not marry members of another sub-clan of the same parent clan (pp. 127, 142). No family deity is tied to the Bilung clan in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Palkot, Gumla district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Kharia
In the migration tradition the ancestors of the Bilung clan settled at Bilungbira in Palkot thana (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 37).
Jashpur, Chhattisgarh
Tribal - Kharia
Among the Dhelki Kharia of the former Jashpur State, Roy and Roy found both a Bilung clan and a Bilung Mail sub-clan (1937, p. 130).
Chhattisgarh (former Central Provinces)
Tribal - Kharia
Russell and Hira Lal (1916, p. 447) record the Bilum or salt sept and its two-finger rule among the Kharia of the Central Provinces.
Stories and Legends
The nine sons at the pool
In a Dudh Kharia legend recorded by Roy and Roy (1937), a flood swept the land and an old Kharia and his nine sons survived in a cave. Later the sons killed a deer, cut it into nine shares and went separate ways to look for water. At a pool each met something different: a kerketa bird, an eel, a tortoise, a topo bird, salt, paddy, a tetetehoin bird, a tiger, a block of rock. When they opened their bundles at home, each son's share of venison had turned into the thing he had seen, and the father ruled that each son's line should take it as its clan name.