Lodha

Clans and Kinship

Bhowmick (1963) found every Lodha to belong to one of nine clans, each with a totem held sacred; marriage within the clan is forbidden, and he found only one exception in 476 marriages. The clan is a patrilineal unit: a girl is initiated into her husband's clan at marriage, though she still respects the restrictions of her father's clan. The Bhakta, the largest clan, is divided into Bara and Chhota sub-clans, named after a larger and a smaller kind of yam, which do not intermarry. Families are nuclear or extended, and patrilineal and patrilocal. The village council (desh) includes all adult men and is led by the mukhia or sardar, with the dakua or athgharia as messenger (SCSTRTI).

The nine clans in Bhowmick's Table 18 (1963, pp. 53-54), in his order, with his totems; SCSTRTI's handbook (2010) gives the same nine.

In the Official Lists

• Scheduled Tribe

  West Bengal, Odisha

  Listed as: Lodha

  West Bengal: in the joint entry 'Lodha, Kheria, Kharia'. Odisha: 'Lodha' (census table: 'Lodha, Nodh, Nodha, Lodh'), and also in the joint entry 'Shabar, Lodha' (order and 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. The census gives no single Lodha total: Odisha's 'Lodha, Nodh, Nodha, Lodh' counted 9,785 and its joint entry 'Shabar, Lodha' 516,402, and West Bengal's joint entry 'Lodha, Kheria, Kharia' 108,707. Bhowmick (1963) objected that the Lodha and the Kheria, peoples of distinct cultures, were being counted together. The PVTG list reproduced from the 2019 PIB release names the Lodha for West Bengal and Odisha.

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

Bhowmick (1963), who surveyed Lodha villages of Midnapur between 1952 and 1957, took Lodha to be a corrupt form of lubdhaka, a trapper, but found that the Lodha prefer to be called Savara or Lodha Savara. They count the Kirata and Vyadha of the epics as their kin, and tell how Viswavasu, the Savara chief of Nilachal, worshipped the god Nilamadhava until the Brahman Vidyapati married his daughter Lalita and, with her help, carried the god away to King Indradyumna at Puri. SCSTRTI records the same claim of descent from Viswavasu, and that the Lodha hold Jagannatha as their supreme deity.

History

SCSTRTI (2010) records that the Lodha once lived by gathering forest produce such as cocoons, lac, resin, honey and wax, with hunting and fishing; today they depend on farming and farm labour, with sabai-grass rope, leaf plates and bamboo work. In 1916 the Lodha of Midnapur were brought under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, and they were released from it when the law was repealed in 1952 (Bhowmick 1963). They are now among the PVTGs of West Bengal and Odisha, and a Lodha Development Agency works at Morada in Mayurbhanj.

Faith and Worship

SCSTRTI records that the Lodha hold Jagannatha as their supreme deity. Their ritual specialists include the dehuri, the village priest; the talia or chharidar, his assistant; the hantakar, who makes the sacrifices; the gunni, a medicine man; and the byakra, a shaman. Inside the house, by the hearth, a raised earthen platform called isan is the seat of the family deity (SCSTRTI).

Deities named in the sources: Jagannatha

Customs

Clan exogamy is strict. Marriage by negotiation, with a bride-price, is usual; marriage by service, by exchange of sisters, by elopement, and the remarriage of widows and the divorced also occur (SCSTRTI). Birth pollution lasts twenty-one days and ends with the ekusia rite; the first rice-feeding and hair-cutting follow at six months, on a Tuesday. A married woman wears vermilion and an iron bangle.

Festivals