Bhumij

Clans and Kinship

Risley (1891) found sub-tribes that differed by district, most named after places: Desi; Tamaria, also called Mura or Manki-Mura; Sikhariya or Meno; Patkumia; Barabhumia; and the Shelo, iron-smelters, of Manbhum and Singhbhum. Their septs are totemic and resemble the Munda clans. A man may not marry in his own sept, nor within three generations, sometimes five, of families that still acknowledge kinship. Titles in use included manki, matkum, mura and sardar. SCSTRTI (2014) describes the Bhumij of Odisha today as four endogamous divisions, Tamudia or Tamaria, Haladipokhria, Teli and Desi or Dehuri, each split into strictly exogamous totemic clans called killi, and these into sub-clans (bhaiyadi). Descent and inheritance go through the father. The village headman is the sardar, who calls the elders together to try breaches of custom.

The first twenty are the septs Risley lists for the Bhumij (1891, vol. II, Appendix I, p. 12) in his order, with his glosses; the two scans of the appendix differ on a few spellings. The last five are killi that SCSTRTI (2014) names for the Bhumij of Odisha, with their totems; it also names Tutia and Naga, noted under Tuti and Nag, and many sub-clans.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand

  Listed as: Bhumij

  Entered in Odisha as 'Bhumij, Teli Bhumij, Haladipokhria Bhumij, Haladi Pokharia Bhumija, Desi Bhumij, Desia Bhumij, Tamaria Bhumij'; Odisha also lists 'Desua Bhumij' separately (Census 2011 tables).

Checked against the 2011 census table of each state and Wikipedia's compilation of the order; amendments after 2011 were not checked. Bihar's list has no Bhumij entry. Risley (1891) noted Bhumij who had gone to work in the tea districts of Assam; they are not in Assam's list, and the Assam table has no Bhumij entry.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Bhumij is explained as 'born of the soil' (SCSTRTI) or 'autochthon' (Risley 1891); Risley thought Hindu settlers gave the name to the people they found holding the land. He considered the Bhumij of western Manbhum, between the edge of the plateau and the Ajodhya hills, Mundas in all but name: they spoke Mundari, called themselves Mura and laid the bones of their dead under great stones. East of the Ajodhya range they spoke Bengali and called themselves Bhumij or Sardar. In the oral tradition SCSTRTI recorded in Odisha, their first home was Tamulia in Bihar, where a man named Munda had four sons; as their descendants grew they spread out, and one line came to Mayurbhanj. Roy (1912) found that the Mundas of Tamar still married Bhumij of the neighbouring Patkum pargana.

History

Dalton's account, which Risley (1891) quotes at length, records that the Bhumij of the Jungle Mahals rose several times against early British rule. In 1798, when the Panchet estate was sold for arrears of revenue, they held the country until the sale was cancelled. The last rising followed a disputed succession in Barabhum: in April 1832 Ganga Narayan, grandson of a former raja, led the ghatwals against the estate's diwan Madhab Singh and killed him; troops came that November, and Ganga Narayan was killed soon after while attacking the fort of the Thakur of Kharsawan. Most ghatwals of the Bhumij country, hereditary holders of village and border police lands, were Bhumij, and Risley thought these tenures continued the old rights of the first clearers of the soil. He took the zamindars of Barabhum, Dhalbhum, Manbhum, Patkum and Baghmundi to be of Bhumij descent, though they then called themselves Rajputs.

Faith and Worship

Risley (1891) records that most Bhumij revered the Sun as Sing Bonga and Dharm, the giver of harvests, and worshipped Jahir Buru in the village's sacred grove (jahirthan) at Sarhul; Karakata, who receives buffaloes and goats as the rains begin; Baghut, who guards against tigers; Gram Deota and Deoshali, who ward off sickness and watch over water; and Buru, the god of the hills. The laya was the village priest. Zamindars and well-to-do tenure-holders employed Brahmans and offered sacrifices to Kali. SCSTRTI (2014) names Marang Buru and Sing Bonga or Dharam Deota as the supreme deities of the Odisha Bhumij, with the sacred grove and the worship of ancestors, whose seat (bongathan) is in a corner of the kitchen.

Deities named in the sources: Sing Bonga, Jahir Buru, Marang Buru

Customs

In Risley's account adult marriage was the old custom, with a bride-price. At the wedding the bride and groom sit in a square marked out in the courtyard; the groom lights lamps at its corners and the bride blows them out, then he marks her forehead with vermilion and their clothes are knotted together. A widow may remarry, preferably her late husband's younger brother. Divorce was marked by tearing a wet sal leaf in two. The dead are cremated; the women gather the unburnt bones, some of which are buried under a tulsi plant in the courtyard and the rest carried to the family's ancestral burial place and laid under a flat stone. SCSTRTI (2014) records nine days of birth pollution, after which the child is named by mustard-seed divination.

Festivals

Stories and Legends