Kujur Gotra
Oraon
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotra
- Community
- Oraon
- Found in
- Jharkhand
About
Kujur is a clan of the Oraon (Kurukh) of Chota Nagpur. Its totem is a plant: Roy (1915) lists Kujur as 'a kind of fruit' among the Oraon plant totems and tells how a kujur plant once protected the clan's ancestor. Roy also names a Kujri or Kujur killi among the twenty-one original clans of the Munda. 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 is named after the kujur plant, whose fruit gives an oil. Roy (1915, p. 327) records the Oraon story of its beginning: an Oraon fell asleep under a kujur plant, a supple twig of the plant wound itself round his body and protected him from harm, and so the man took the kujur for his totem; his descendants form the Kujur clan. Another tradition Roy recorded, which he thought was worked out after the fact, places the clan's beginning at Silagain on the Chota Nagpur plateau (p. 310). Roy does not name the plant botanically; a modern list on Wikipedia calls it a medicinal plant.
Historical Journey
The Kujur clan has no written history of its own, but Roy recorded several things about it. It appears in his list of Oraon plant totems as Kujur, 'a kind of fruit' (1915, p. 326). He found that older Oraons held that a man of the Kujur clan would fall ill if he rubbed his body with oil made from the kujur fruit (p. 337). The name is not only Oraon: Roy's list of the twenty-one killis that Munda tradition counts as original includes 'Kujri or Kujur' (1912, p. 72 n.), and Roy and Roy list a Kujri clan, glossed as a fruit, among the Dudh Kharia (1937, p. 143). The books do not say whether these lines share an origin.
How the Gotra Is Kept
Members of the Kujur 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. Roy's rule for Oraon tree and plant totems is that members of the clan will not sit in the shade of the plant, cut or burn its wood, or use what it gives (p. 330); for the Kujur he records the belief that kujur oil on the body brings illness (p. 337). No family deity is tied to the Kujur clan in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Silagain, Chota Nagpur
Tribal - Oraon
An Oraon tradition recorded by Roy (1915, p. 310) places the Kujur clan's beginning at Silagain, a place on the Chota Nagpur plateau.
Ranchi district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Munda
Kujri or Kujur is one of the twenty-one original Munda killis in Roy's list (1912, p. 72 n.).
Ranchi district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Kharia
Roy and Roy (1937, p. 143) list a Kujri clan, glossed as a fruit, among the Dudh Kharia.
Stories and Legends
Under the kujur plant
As Roy recorded it in 1915, an Oraon lay asleep under a kujur plant. A supple twig of the plant wound itself round his body and kept him from harm while he slept. In gratitude he took the kujur plant for his totem, and his descendants are the men of the Kujur clan.