Tirkey Gotra
Oraon
At a glance
- Called a
- Gotra
- Community
- Oraon
- Found in
- Jharkhand
About
Tirkey, written Tirki in older books, is a clan of the Oraon (Kurukh) of Chota Nagpur. Roy (1915) gives its totem as young mice and records an unusually long set of rules for it. A modern list on Wikipedia gives an eagle instead. Roy and Roy (1937) note that the Kharia took the name Tirki from their neighbours and that the Munda also have it. 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 its totem. Roy lists Tirki (young mice) among the Oraon beast totems (1915, p. 325). A modern list on Wikipedia gives an eagle; no book on disk does, and Roy's detailed account of the clan's rules is all about mice. Roy records no story of how the clan took the mouse, but he gives two versions of a story about another of its rules, the one about the sonnarkhi plant (pp. 333-335).
Historical Journey
The Tirkey clan has no written history of its own, but Roy's account of 1915 records more about its rules than about almost any other Oraon clan, and calls them a fourfold taboo. Men of the Tirki clan do not eat, hurt or kill mice. They should not look at any young animal, such as a puppy or kitten, before its eyes have opened, since young mice are born with their eyes shut; strict custom said a Tirki father should not even look at his own children unless they were wide awake. And they do not sit under the sonnarkhi or bandar-louri plant, or cut or burn its wood (pp. 333-335). Roy also found that the Bhuinhars, the first-settler families, of Kudarko village belonged to the Tirki clan; their jatra emblem was a wooden horse, adopted within living memory (p. 340). Among the Kharia, Roy and Roy record Tirki as a newer name for their Tetetehoin clan, taken from Oraon and Munda neighbours (1937, p. 133).
How the Gotra Is Kept
Members of the Tirkey 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 rules Roy records are those above: no eating, hurting or killing of mice, no looking at newborn animals whose eyes are closed, and no sitting under, cutting or burning the sonnarkhi plant. Roy says the Oraon explain the last rule by calling the plant the clan's bhaisur, husband's elder brother, and that men of other clans tease the Tirki about it. No family deity is tied to the Tirkey clan in the sources checked.
Presence Across Regions
Kudarko, Chota Nagpur
Tribal - Oraon
Roy (1915, p. 340) found that the Bhuinhars of Kudarko belonged to the Tirki clan; their jatra emblem was a wooden horse.
Ranchi district, Jharkhand
Tribal - Kharia
Roy and Roy (1937, pp. 133, 139) record Tirki among the Kharia as a newer name for the Tetetehoin clan, whose first village was Amkuli.
Stories and Legends
The sonnarkhi bush
As Roy recorded it, a woman of the Tirki clan gave birth under a sonnarkhi bush while gathering firewood, and left the after-birth hanging on the bush. Her husband's elder brothers, coming home from a hunt, took it for an animal's entrails and cooked and ate it. When the mistake came out, the plant became taboo to the clan. Roy heard a second version, in which a brother was sent to fetch meat and told not to come home without it.