Juang

Clans and Kinship

Risley (1891) found no sub-tribes: the Juang form one endogamous group, divided into totemic septs named after animals, trees and plants, and a man may not marry in his own sept. SCSTRTI (2008) calls the clan bok; each has a totemic origin, its members are believed to descend from one ancestor, and a woman takes her husband's clan at marriage. All blood relatives are kutumb, and those with whom marriage is possible are bandhu. Hill Juang villages were each of one clan, so a man marries outside his village. Each village is a self-governing unit under its elders, the barabhai or bhalabhai, and holds its swiddens, forest, grazing land and house sites in common. Villages are grouped into four pirhs, Satkhand, Jharkhand, Kathua and Rebena, each under a sardar. The family is patrilineal and patrilocal.

Juang septs named in the entries of Risley's glossary (1891, vols I and II), each described there as a totemistic sept of the Juang of Orissa, in alphabetical order with his glosses and without diacritics. Risley's own Juang list in his appendix could not be read in either scan, and a few more glossary entries were too damaged to use, so the list is incomplete.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  Odisha

  Listed as: Juang

Checked against the 2011 census table of each state and Wikipedia's compilation of the order; amendments after 2011 were not checked. The Juang are listed only in Odisha. SCSTRTI and the PVTG list reproduced from the 2019 PIB release name them among Odisha's particularly vulnerable tribal groups.

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

In SCSTRTI's account the Juang believe they were the first people born on earth, from a rishi couple who lived at Rusi Tangar, a hillock near Gonasika in Keonjhar, and they hold the Juang Pirh of Keonjhar to be their homeland. Those who live there call themselves Thaniya, the original settlers, and those who moved down to the plains of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal are called Bhagudia, those who left. SCSTRTI gives the meaning of Juang as 'sons of man'. Risley (1891) recorded that the Keonjhar Juangs claimed to be the first people of the country, and that their language was said to be closest among the Munda languages to Kharia.

History

Risley (1891), drawing on Dalton, records 9,398 Juangs in the Tributary States in the census of 1872, and Gonasika as the head village of the tribe. They cleared and burned forest for their fields, and paid no rent to the raja but served him instead. SCSTRTI describes the Hill Juang as living largely by shifting cultivation and the Plain Juang by settled farming; a Juang Development Agency at Gonasika works among them as a PVTG.

Faith and Worship

SCSTRTI records worship of Dharam Deota (the sun), Basumata (the earth) and Gramsiri (the village deity) at the seasonal festivals, with the nagam or dehuri as priest. Risley (1891) named Baram, a forest deity, at the head of Juang worship, then Thanpati the patron of the village, Basuli and Basumati; offerings were made at sowing and harvest and when forest was cleared, and the village priest (dehari) conducted all rites.

Deities named in the sources: Dharam Deota, Basumata

Customs

In Risley's time girls married when grown, after free courtship, with a cartload of unhusked rice as the bride-price, and the village priest might sprinkle rice and turmeric on the couple. A widow could remarry, usually her late husband's younger brother. The dead were cremated with the head to the south, and offerings to the ancestors were made in October at the rice harvest. The majang, a large house with three walls and an open front with a raised verandah, is the dormitory of the unmarried young, the elders' court, a guest house, a store for grain and musical instruments, and the place where boys and girls sing and dance on moonlit nights (SCSTRTI).

Festivals