Pauria Pari
Santhal
At a glance
- Called a
- Pari
- Community
- Santhal
- Found in
- Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Assam
About
Pauria, also written Puria, Pawria or Pauriya, is one of the twelve paris, the totemic clans of the Santhal, and one of the five junior paris. Its totem is the pigeon. Less is written about it than about most paris. The Santhal are a Scheduled Tribe with their own religion, Sarna dharam. A pari is not a gotra, and the Santhal are not described here as a Hindu caste.
What “Pari” means for the Santhal
A pari (plural paris) is one of the twelve totemic clans of the Santhal. Each has a totem, a Santhal does not marry within their own pari, and the pari name is carried today as the surname.
Every pari of the Santal, with how the clan system works: the Santal page.
Name and Origin
Risley (1891) tells that at a famous hunt of the whole tribe the men of this pari killed nothing but pigeons, and so were named after the pigeon; Bonnerjea (1930) repeats the story. Sarma and Mukherjee (2019) and the 2018 list of Lea Schulte-Droesch also give the pigeon as the totem. The guru Kolean, whose account of Santhal tradition Skrefsrud recorded in 1871, names Pauria third of the five paris added after the original seven.
Historical Journey
Little is recorded of the Pauria beyond the name and the totem. Risley's 1891 list puts the pari tenth of twelve. Risley gives pass-words, said to be names of old homes, for every pari except Pauria, Chore and Bedea. Kolean remembered no calling for the Pauria in Champa and said he had forgotten the names of the Pauria and Chore bongas. Bonnerjea (1930) counts eight Pauria sub-clans, among them Jugi, Dantela, Garh and Nij, and Bodding's dictionary has a Sada and a Sidup Pauria. Bodding notes that the pari is called Paulia in some places.
Migration and Diaspora
Kolean's account follows the ancestors from Hihiri Pipiri to Sasan Beda, where the paris were formed, then through Jarpi to Chae and Champa, and from there east to the present Santhal country. The books checked do not say where Pauria families live today.
How the Pari Is Kept
No Pauria marries a Pauria, and a man does not marry into his mother's sub-clan (Risley, 1891). Older accounts say members of the seven senior paris did not marry into the five junior ones (the 2018 list of Schulte-Droesch gives this rule); Sarma and Mukherjee (2019) write that marriages now take place between all paris. Sarma and Mukherjee tell of an old bar on marriage among the three birds of the sky, the owl (Tudu), the hawk (Besra) and the pigeon (Pauria), now no longer followed. Members avoid harming pigeons. Bodding's dictionary says the Sidup sub-clans, the Sidup Pauria among them, stand a sheaf of paddy in the cattle-shed door at Sohrae.
Stories and Legends
The great hunt
Risley recorded the Santhal story of how two of the junior paris got their names. On a famous hunting party of the whole tribe, the men of one pari could kill nothing but pigeons, and the men of another nothing but lizards. The first were called Pauria, after the pigeon, and the second Chore, after the lizard.