Horo Killi

What “Killi” means for the Munda

A killi is a Munda clan. Roy (1912) records that its members count themselves descendants of one forefather, that it passes from father to children, and that no Munda may marry within his own killi. Many killis are named after an animal, plant or thing, their totem, which members will not eat or harm. A killi is not a gotra and names no rishi.

Name and Origin

The killi is named after the tortoise. Roy took down the Munda story of its beginning: the ancestor of the killi, on a journey, came to a river in flood. His kinsmen crossed safely, but he would not try it alone and called out that whoever carried him across would be his kith and kin for ever. In those days, the story says, animals and men understood each other's speech. A tortoise heard him and carried him, his family and his baggage across on its back. True to his word, he took the name Horo or Kachua, and his descendants formed the Horo killi (Roy 1912, p. 233). Roy calls such killi stories mostly fabulous, though he thought they might hold traces of real events (p. 231).

Historical Journey

No written history of the Horo killi is known beyond the traditions Roy collected. In his list of the twenty-one killis that, by Munda tradition, came onto the Ranchi plateau with the patriarch Risa Munda, Kachua stands first (Roy 1912, p. 71 n.). A longer legend, which Roy had from a Munda Christian and which he says shows the influence of Bible history, tells how Sutia Pahan, chief of the seven garhs, could find no bride for his son outside his own line, and so asked the heads of the twenty-one parhas each to choose an animal or plant for a totem; Duka Munda became the founder of the Horo killi (Appendix I, p. 335). Roy also notes that the first killis later split into many more as the Munda multiplied, and that the stories of most killis of his day tell of such divisions (p. 231).

How the Killi Is Kept

A Munda may not marry within his own killi; the Munda marry within the tribe and outside the killi (Roy 1912, p. 228), and the killi passes from father to children. Roy records that no Munda of the Horo killi will kill a tortoise or eat its flesh, and that a Munda would not, if he could help it, let even people of other castes eat his totem in his presence (pp. 232-233). In a Munda village each killi buried its dead in its own sasan, the killi's burial ground, and a member of one killi could not be buried in the sasan of another (p. 222 n.). No family deity is tied to the Horo killi in the sources checked.

Presence Across Regions

Stories and Legends