Chapter 4: Tribal Verse

In ‘A Munda Song’, the perspective of the tribal mind towards the girl child is different from that of (other) mainstream communities. The girl child’s birth is greeted and celebrated in this song. Contrary to the mainstream communities attitude, the girl’s birth is regarded as auspicious in the Munda song. This is aesthetically expressed in the lines – A daughter was born, the cowshed filled up. The birth of the boy child in mainstream communities is celebrated. They are considered to be the carrier of the family line baton while the girl child is perceived as a burden and an object of neglect.

Tribals have a strong urge to gain domination over time though they don’t have ownership over land. This urge is aesthetically substantiated in ‘A Kondh Song’ by considering the talk they had with their ancestors, who are dead. The ancestors’ spirits are requested to accept their offerings of a baby fowl they make. They are offering it as they consider the ancestors to be alive. The spirits are requested not to impose pain after the departure of the spirits.

The ‘Adi Song for the Recovery of Lost Health’ is in Miri Agom. In our daily conversation, this language is not used. It is a highly rhythmic language which is used during rituals while chanting. The two different languages’ existence testifies to the great level of sensitivity of the language of the Adi Tribe. Such parallels are found even in modern languages as well. The Bangla language, the Hindi language, and the English language contain two different languages – one is the colloquial variety and the other is literary.