Santali People

Santali People

The Santal (also spelled as Santhal (formerly also spelt as Sontal)), are the largest tribal community in India, who live mainly in the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam. There is also a significant Santal minority in neighboring Bangladesh, and a small population in Nepal. The santals belong to the Proto-Australoid group, and may have arrived in India soon after the Negritos. The name is given because of the similarity of racial type with Australian tribes. There is no precise information as to when this race first came into India. It is found among the prehistoric skulls in the Tinnevelly district, and from references in early Sanskrit literature to 'Nishads', where they are described as noseless (anash) with dark skin colour and peculiar speech and habits, there can be no doubt that the Proto-Australoid tribes were meant. The Santals are short in stature, and among them the broad flat nose with a sunken nose ridge is fairly common. They frequently have wavy hair;sometimes it is curly, though it is never frizzy. They share all these characteristics with other primitive tribes in the same group. To the Proto-Australoid races may perhaps be attributed a largest share of totemistic rites, exorcism, food taboos, and magical belief still obtaining in Indian life. The ban on commensality and intermarriage which forms the basis of the caste system must also owe its origin to them. It is impossible to dogmatize on these subjects when one remembers how widespread each of the above factors is among primitive cultures in various parts of the world. The tribal structure of the Santals is totemistic and the clans are patrilinear, as among the other tribes of Central India. Many of the taboos and customs which have grown up round life's crises, many features in the tribal ritual, their attitude towards disease and towards the supranatural world, are fundamentally similar throughout these tribes.

--Raghu Raj Murmu 05:59, 9 November 2012 (UTC)==Santali Language== The Santals have been more tenacious of their language than many of the other people to whom they are racially allied. They are the largest tribe in India to retain a good language to the present day. The Santali Language is part of the Austro-Asiatic family, distantly related to Vietnamese and Khmer. It is closely related to Mundri as well as to Ho, Korku, Savara and Gadaba, languages spoken by smaller tribes. The relationship of the Santhals with these tribes is racial and cultural as well as linguistic, and as they live in neighbouring territories it is very likely that they have a common origin. They have nevertheless been separate long enough to develop their individual languages and to possess distinct though allied cultures.

The Santal script is a relatively recent innovation. Santali did not have a written language until the twentieth century and used Latin/Roman, Devnagri, Oriya and Bangla writing systems. A need for a distinct script to accommodate the Santali language, combining features of both the Indic and Roman scripts was felt, which resulted in the invention of new script called Ol Chiki by Pandit Raghunath Murmu of Mayurbhanj princely state of Orissa in 1925. Sri Purnachandra Bhnja Deo, Maharaja of Mayurbhnaj was immensely impressed by the new invention and permitted him to propagate the use of Ol Chiki script for Santali language. For his noble deeds and contribution of the script Ol Chiki for the Santal society, he is revered among Santals. He wrote over 150 books covering a wide spectrum of subjects such as grammar, novels, drama, poetry, and short stories in Santali using Ol Chiki as part of his extensive programme for uplifting the Santal community. Darege Dhan, Sidhu-Kanhu, Bidu Chandan and Kherwal Bir are among the most acclaimed of his works. Pandit Raghunath Murmu is popularly known as Guru Gomke among the Santals, a title conferred on him by the Mayurbhanj Adibasi Mahasabha.

Beside Pandit Raghunath Murmu, very few Indian linguists worked seriously on the linguistic aspects of the language. One of them was Dr. Byomkes Chakrabarti (1923–1981). He was a Bengali research worker on ethnic languages. He was a renowned educationist and a poet too. His major contribution was in finding out some basic relationship between Santali language and Bengali language. He showed (in 'A Comparative Study of Santali and Bengali') how the Bengali language, under the influence of the Santali language, has some unique characteristics absent from other Indian languages.

The Santali script, or Ol Chiki, is alphabetic, and does not share any of the syllabic properties of the other Indic scripts such as Devanagiri. It uses 30 letters and five basic diacritics. It has 6 basic vowels and three additional vowels, generated using the Gahla Tudag.

His contribution on the origin and development of the Bengali and Santali language was fundamental in nature, and provided the scope for research in newer fields of liguistics.