Kerketta Gotra
Oraon
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotra
- Community
- Oraon
- Found in
- Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
About
Kerketta, written Kerketa in older books, is a clan name kept by three peoples of Chota Nagpur. Among the Oraon (Kurukh) it is a totemic clan whose totem is the hedge-sparrow. The Munda count a Kerketa killi among their twenty-one original killis, and among the Dudh Kharia, who also call the clan Samad, it is one of nine original clans, with a bird for its totem. This page is for the Oraon clan and notes what the books record for the others. It is not a Vedic gotra.
What “Gotra” means for the Oraon
Oraon families call their clan a gotra (Roy 1915, pp. 325, 335): a totemic clan passed from father to children, within which no one may marry. It is not a Vedic gotra and names no rishi. The Munda call the same kind of clan a killi, and Roy and Roy write the Kharia clan as gotra or gotar.
Every gotra of the Oraon, with how the clan system works: the Oraon page.
Name and Origin
The clan is named after a bird. For the Oraon, Roy (1915) gives the totem as the kerketa or hedge-sparrow, and records that men of the clan keep the same rules toward the dhichua, the king-crow, because it too has a long tail (pp. 325, 332). For the Kharia, Roy and Roy (1937) gloss the Kerketa as the quail in one list and simply as a bird in another (pp. 131, 143). The Dudh Kharia account of their nine clans says an old Kharia and his nine sons survived a great flood in a cave, and that each son met a different creature or thing at a pool; the son who saw a kerketa bird began the Kerketa clan (pp. 137-139). In a Munda legend the kerketa is one of the messengers of Sing Bonga, the sun god (Roy 1912, Appendix II, pp. 339-340).
Historical Journey
No written history of the Kerketta clan is known, and the books do not explain how one clan name came to be kept by peoples who speak different languages: the Oraon speak Kurukh, a Dravidian language, and the Munda and Kharia speak Munda languages. What is recorded is where the name appears. Roy lists Kerketa (hedge-sparrow) among the bird totems of the Oraon (1915, p. 325). In his Munda book he names Kerketa among the twenty-one original killis (1912, p. 71 n.), and a Munda legend makes Kura Munda its founder (Appendix I, p. 335). Among the Dudh Kharia, Roy and Roy record Samad or Kerketa as one of the nine original clans and one of the three senior ones, from which the heads of tribal councils and parhas were chosen; it was called the Bhandari (pp. 131, 175). Its first village in Chota Nagpur was Porha or Pora, and later villages it claims to have founded include Sode, Galaitoli and Aghirma (pp. 139-140). In the former Jashpur State the Dhelki Kharia clan of this name counted 68 families when Roy and Roy surveyed it (p. 130).
How the Gotra Is Kept
Members of the clan do not marry each other, and the clan passes from father to children; Oraon clan names are now used as surnames. Roy's rule for every Oraon totem is that members should not eat, keep, kill or hurt it, or use anything made from it, and the Kerketta extend this to the king-crow (1915, pp. 330-332). Among the Kharia, Roy and Roy record that a clan may not eat, use, kill or injure its totem, and that marriage within the clan is condemned as gotra badh, 'clan-murder' (1937, pp. 127, 142). Whether an Oraon Kerketta may marry a Kharia or Munda Kerketa is not addressed in the books checked. No family deity is tied to the clan in these sources.
Presence Across Regions
Ranchi district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Oraon
A bird clan of the Oraon with the hedge-sparrow as its totem (Roy 1915, p. 325).
Ranchi district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Munda
Kerketa is one of the twenty-one original Munda killis in Roy's list (1912, p. 71 n.).
Simdega and Kolebira, Jharkhand
Tribal - Kharia
One of the nine original Dudh Kharia clans, also called Samad; Tingul Kerketta of Saldega was one of the elders who gave Roy and Roy the migration tradition (1937, pp. 36-37).
Jashpur, Chhattisgarh
Tribal - Kharia
Roy and Roy counted 68 Dhelki Kharia families of the Samad or Kerketa clan in the former Jashpur State (1937, p. 130).
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.
Why the kerketa is grey
In the Munda legend of the Asurs, the iron-smelters, as Roy heard it, Sing Bonga sent the dhechua bird and the watchful kerketa to tell the Asurs to stop working their furnaces day and night. The Asurs mocked them and smeared the dhechua with coal-dust and the kerketa with iron-ore dust. Sing Bonga comforted the two birds, and since then, the story says, dhechuas are black and kerketas grey (Roy 1912, Appendix II).