Gadaba

Clans and Kinship

SCSTRTI (2009) describes exogamous totemic clans, among them Khora (sun), Nag or Hontal (cobra), Bag or Khillo (tiger), Bhalu (bear), Gid (vulture) and Kira (parrot); marriage is outside the clan and within the tribe, and the family is patrilineal and patrilocal. Thurston (1909) found the septs Kora (sun), Nag (cobra), Bhag (tiger), Kira (parrot) and Gollari (monkey) among the Bodo and Olaro sections, and noted that Gadabas settled in the plains had forgotten the sept names but would still not harm certain animals, such as the cobra. The village council is headed by the naik, with the challan and the barik as messenger; the disari is priest, medicine man and astrologer (SCSTRTI).

The clans SCSTRTI (2009) names, in its order, with Gollari added from Thurston's list (1909, vol. II, p. 247). SCSTRTI's 'etc.' shows there are more.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh

  Listed as: Gadaba

  Odisha: 'Gadaba' (census table: 'Gadaba, Bodo Gadaba, Gutob Gadaba, Kapu Gadaba, Ollara Gadaba, Parenga Gadaba, Sano Gadaba'); Andhra Pradesh and Telangana: 'Gadabas, Bodo Gadaba, Gutob Gadaba, Kallayi Gadaba, Parangi Gadaba, Kathera Gadaba, Kapu Gadaba'; Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh: 'Gadaba, Gadba'.

Checked against the 2011 census table of each state and Wikipedia's compilation of the order; amendments after 2011 were not checked. The Andhra Pradesh table covers the state before Telangana was formed in 2014. The PVTG list reproduced from the 2019 PIB release names the Bodo Gadaba and Gutob Gadaba for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; the Gadaba are not among Odisha's PVTGs.

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

Thurston (1909) records a tradition that the Gadaba take their name from the Godavari, on whose banks their ancestors lived before they settled at Nandapur, the old capital of the rajas of Jeypore. SCSTRTI suggests instead that the name is gada with the ending -ba, 'belonging to'. Thurston was told that the Bonda speech is close to the Gadaba language, and Elwin (1950), as THRTI quotes him, gives a Gadaba story that the Bonda descend from the first Gadaba couple.

History

Thurston (1909) describes the Gadaba of the Vizagapatam district as cultivators and hunters; some had been settled by a former raja on the road between Sembliguda and Koraput to carry palanquins. He gives five sections: Bodo (big) or Gutob, Parenga, Olaro, Kaththiri or Kaththara, and Kapu, the last two settled in the plains and said to have come down from the hills. SCSTRTI (2009) lists the Bodo or Gutob, Sano or Parenga, Ollar, Jurumu, Kapu and Kalanji Gadaba, each with some customs of its own.

Faith and Worship

Thakurani, represented by a stone slab at the village shrine (hundi), is the chief village deity; the disari offers fowls to her at Bandapana in Shraban and officiates at all worship (SCSTRTI). From time to time a village holds gottar, a secondary rite for its dead (duma), at a fixed ground, the gotar manda: stones are added to the memorial ground and a buffalo is offered for each of the dead. SCSTRTI's profile says it is held every three to five years; its handbook says it covers all the deaths of a clan over ten to fifteen years.

Deities named in the sources: Thakurani

Customs

Adult marriage and a bride-price are usual, with arranged marriage, capture and other forms; monogamy is the rule (SCSTRTI). Thurston (1909) records that a Gadaba girl had to learn to weave her own cloth before she could marry, from the fibre of jungle plants dyed blue and red-brown, and describes women's large earrings of coiled brass wire. Gadaba villages have houses of three kinds, two rectangular and one round with a conical roof (SCSTRTI).

Festivals