Minj 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.

Name and Origin

The clan is named after its totem, a kind of fish; Roy does not name the species (1915, p. 326). He records no story of how the clan took the fish. An Oraon tradition he heard, which he thought was worked out after the fact rather than remembered, says that people who lived in river valleys took the tortoise or a fish as their totem, and that the Minj Fish clan began at Lundri, a place on the Chota Nagpur plateau (pp. 309-310).

Historical Journey

No written history of the Minj clan is known, but Roy's account of 1915 places it in village life. The Bhuinhars, the first-settler families, of Biasi in Mandar thana belonged to the Minj fish clan; the emblem the village carried to the jatras, the gatherings where villages meet to dance, was a wooden ox, and Roy thought such an emblem might go back to earlier settlers who had died out or been displaced (pp. 340-341). In a parha, a union of nine villages, that Roy describes, one village's Bhuinhars were of the Minj fish clan; its emblems were two white flags and a pair of wooden birds' heads, painted black, set on a pole so that they seemed to peck at each other when a string was pulled (pp. 417-418).

How the Gotra Is Kept

Members of the Minj 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 every Oraon totem is that members of the clan should not eat, keep, kill or hurt it, or use anything made from it (p. 330). No family deity is tied to the Minj clan in the sources checked.

Presence Across Regions