Soreng Gotar
Kharia
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotar
- Community
- Kharia
- Found in
- Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha
About
Soreng, also written Suren or Surin, is a clan of the Kharia of Chota Nagpur and one of the nine original clans of the Dudh Kharia. Its totem is a rock or stone: Roy and Roy (1937) say the clan was named after a rock, sereng, on which its ancestors offered sacrifices. Members do not use stones to build their cooking hearths. It is not a Vedic gotra.
What “Gotar” means for the Kharia
Roy and Roy (1937) write the Kharia clan as gotra or gotar: a totemic clan passed from father to children whose members count themselves brothers, so that marriage within it is condemned as gotra badh, 'clan-murder'. A woman joins her husband's clan at marriage. The Hill Kharia of Mayurbhanj use the Munda word khili. It is not a Vedic gotra.
Every gotar of the Kharia, with how the clan system works: the Kharia page.
Name and Origin
The clan takes its name from sereng, rock or stone. Roy and Roy (1937, p. 139) record the tradition that the ancestors of the clan offered sacrifices on a rock at a place called Kharia Ghat, a hill pass, and took their name from it. In the Dudh Kharia story of the nine sons, the son who found a block of crystalline rock by the pool began the Soreng clan (p. 138). Roy and Roy note that the name is sometimes also linked with the toreng bird (p. 143).
Historical Journey
Roy and Roy give the clan's first village in Chota Nagpur as Semra, from which its men are also called Semriars, and list later villages the clan claims to have founded, among them Jharo, Rampur and Banaidega (1937, pp. 139-140). In Soma Dungdung's account of the migration, the ancestors of the Soreng clan settled at Barwe in Basia thana (pp. 36-37). The Soreng is one of the eight original clans of the Dhelki Kharia as well, and in the former Jashpur State it was the second largest Dhelki clan, with 91 families (pp. 127, 130). Among some Kharia of the Central Provinces a man of the Soreng clan served as the Negi, an officer of the tribal council who arranged the feast for the readmission of offenders; Russell and Hira Lal (1916) record the same rule (Roy and Roy, p. 175; Russell, p. 451).
How the Gotar Is Kept
Members of the Soreng clan do not use stone for their cooking hearths, which they build of clods of earth only (Roy and Roy 1937, pp. 142-143; Russell and Hira Lal 1916, p. 447). Any breach is thought to bring misfortune but carries no social penalty. The clan passes from father to children, and a married woman takes up her husband's clan and its rules (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 143). Marriage within the clan is condemned as gotra badh, 'clan-murder', and members of one sub-clan may not marry members of another sub-clan of the same parent clan (pp. 127, 142). No family deity is tied to the Soreng clan in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Basia, Gumla district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Kharia
In the migration tradition the ancestors of the Soreng clan settled at Barwe in Basia thana (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 36).
Jashpur, Chhattisgarh
Tribal - Kharia
The second largest Dhelki Kharia clan in the former Jashpur State, with 91 families (Roy and Roy 1937, p. 130).
Chhattisgarh (former Central Provinces)
Tribal - Kharia
Russell and Hira Lal (1916, pp. 447, 451) record the Suren sept, its stone rule and its office of Negi among the Kharia of the Central Provinces.
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.