Kispotta Gotra
Oraon
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotra
- Community
- Oraon
- Found in
- Jharkhand
About
Kispotta is a clan of the Oraon (Kurukh) of Chota Nagpur. Its name means pig's entrails, and Roy (1915) gives it as an example of a split totem, where a clan's totem is part of an animal rather than the whole. In some villages Roy found Kispotta families giving their clan as Kasai, a kind of tree. The Oraon call the clan a gotra, but it is a totemic clan that marries out, 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, though a man may marry into his mother's clan. It is not a Vedic gotra and names no rishi.
Every gotra of the Oraon, with how the clan system works: the Oraon page.
Name and Origin
The clan takes its name from pig's entrails; Roy gives kis as the Oraon word for pig (1915, pp. 325, 327). He records the Oraon story of its beginning: an Oraon killed a pig and ate its flesh but threw away the entrails. The pig's life stayed in the entrails, so that the slain pig was soon seen moving about again in bodily form. From then on pig's entrails were taboo to the man who killed it and to his descendants, who came to form the Kispotta clan (p. 328).
Historical Journey
No written history of the Kispotta clan is known. Roy lists it, with the Amri (rice-soup) clan, as one of the two split totems of the Oraon (1915, p. 327), and he discusses whether such clans arose when one clan with a whole animal for its totem divided, as Frazer had suggested, or when a rule was narrowed for convenience (pp. 331-332). He also found that in a few villages Kispotta men, asked their clan, would give it as Kasai, a kind of tree; they kept the usual rules about pig's entrails and, in addition, would not sit under the kasai tree, burn its branches or eat its fruit. Roy thought this a case of a clan exchanging a name it had come to dislike for a more respectable one, or perhaps of two clans merging (p. 335).
How the Gotra Is Kept
Members of the Kispotta clan do not marry each other, though an Oraon may marry into his mother's clan (Roy 1915, p. 330). The clan passes from father to children, and Oraon clan names are now used as surnames. The rule tied to the clan by its story is to avoid pig's entrails; in the villages where the clan also called itself Kasai, its members kept away from the kasai tree as well (p. 335). No family deity is tied to the Kispotta clan in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Chota Nagpur
Tribal - Oraon
Roy (1915, p. 335) found Kispotta families in a few villages who gave their clan as Kasai and kept rules about the kasai tree.
Stories and Legends
The pig that walked again
As Roy recorded it in 1915, an Oraon killed a pig, ate its flesh and threw away the entrails. But the pig's life had stayed in the entrails, and soon the slain pig was seen walking about again in bodily form. From then on pig's entrails were taboo to the man and his descendants, and they came to be called the Kispotta clan.