Halba

Clans and Kinship

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) found local divisions named Bastarha, Chhattisgarhia and Marethia, and everywhere two divisions that do not intermarry, called Purait and Surait in Bastar and Chhattisgarh and Barpangat and Khalpangat in Bhandara. The Bastar research institute's study (Rajendra Singh) found both Purait and Surait families in its survey. Above the clan stands the thok, a group of one or more clans whose members count each other as brothers and do not intermarry. The clans themselves, called gotra (the institute's study gives the local word as bas), are exogamous and totemic: the Nag clan honours the cobra, the Belsariya the bel tree, and Russell records that in Bastar a man who accidentally killed his clan's sacred animal tore off a piece of his cloth for its shroud. Members of a clan count themselves blood relations, worship a clan deity at an annual or three-yearly gathering, and adopt from within the clan; families of the clans they marry into serve at their rites. Descent is patrilineal.

First the gotras found in the Bastar research institute's survey of Halba families (Rajendra Singh, Anthropological Study of Halba Tribe, TRTI regional unit Bastar), most common first; then the totemic septs Russell and Hira Lal (1916, vol. 3, p. 186) give, and septs that appear in both Russell and the list of 75 gotras the study quotes from the All India Halba Samaj journal (2007). That list also includes Alaniya, Arosiya, Belgaiya, Bisen, Borjhariya, Churpal, Diwan, Gagda, Kothewar, Kosma, Naik, Negi, Pujari, Rana, Sahni, Taram and many more, not all reproduced here.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh

  Listed as: Halba, Halbi

Checked against the 2011 census tables for Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and Wikipedia's compilation of the order; amendments after 2011 were not checked.

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

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) record several Halba stories. In one, Mahadeo and Parvati gave life to four scarecrows in an Oriya raja's field, and because they had caught Parvati's eye by waving in the wind (halna) they were called Halba. The same story says the Halbas came to Sihawa with a raja of Jagannath who had leprosy; he was cured by bathing in a spring there and stayed to become the ancestor of the Kanker rajas. Members of the community also hold that they came to Bastar with its rulers from Warangal, as the Bastar research institute's study records; Russell gives a missionary's view that the name is an old Kannada word for the ancient inhabitants, and notes that Halbi shows no trace of Kannada. In Bhandara Russell heard a separate story of descent from Rajput families of the north.

History

Russell and Hira Lal (1916) counted about 100,000 Halbas in 1911, in the south of Raipur district, Kanker and Bastar, with some in Bhandara and Berar. At Kanker a Halba with the title Rapardar invested each new chief with the royal robes, and a Halba was priest of the temple over the healing spring at Sihawa. In Bastar Halbas carried the royal umbrella at Dasahra and guarded the raja. Russell records a Halba revolt in the reign of Daryao Deo of Bastar, after which the Halbas took an oath of loyalty before the goddess Danteshwari, recorded in a stone inscription at Dongar dated Samvat 1836 (1779). Some Halba families held zamindari estates in Bhandara under the Gond rajas of Chanda. The Bastar research institute records that Halbas still represented their parganas at the Bastar Dasahra, and that the regional Halba samajs joined into an all-India body on 26 December, now kept as Shakti Divas.

Faith and Worship

The Bastar research institute records that the Halba worship the deities of the old Bastar kingdom as their own, Danteshwari, Bhairam Deo and Mawli Devi, with Danteshwari and Durga as the highest, and in each village the village deities at the devgudi shrine, among them Thakur Deo and Sheetla. They also keep Hindu festivals such as Holi, Diwali, Raksha Bandhan and Teeja.

Deities named in the sources: Danteshwari, Bhairam Deo, Mawli Devi

Customs

The Bastar research institute describes a council system of village elders and pargana councils that hears disputes, marriages outside the community and the readmission of those put out of it. Festivals of the farming year include Amus at the new moon of Savan, when the priest hangs branches from the forest on every door against harm; Nayakhani, the new-rice feast in the bright half of Bhadon; Diyari in Pus, which honours the cattle and their herders; and Chherchhera at the full moon of Pus, when groups go from house to house singing and collecting grain. Russell and Hira Lal (1916) record that marriage was forbidden within the clan and the thok.

Festivals

Stories and Legends