Santals

Santals, an aboriginal tribe of India, belonging to the Kolarian family, occupy a long narrow strip of country between the mouth of the Mahanadi in Orissa and the Ganges near Bhagalpur. In 1891 the total number of persons speaking Santáli was 1,709,680, including Christian converts, and 10,000 Santals labouring in the Assam tea-plantations. They are fond of change, and prefer to live on the edges of the great forests: when the ground gets well cleared and cultivated they move to a new site. In personal appearance they are not unlike negroes, having a broad round face, a broad flat nose, a large mouth with projecting lips, and coarse black hair. Their chief occupations are cultivating the soil, hunting, playing the flute (in which they are great proficient), and dancing round dances. They worship the sun for their supreme god, and after him a number of malignant spirits, whose evil influence they seek to avert. They are divided into twelve tribes, and their village government is patriarchal in type. The exactions of the Hindu money-lenders provoked the Santals to revolt in 1854; the rising was not suppressed without a good deal of bloodshed. Since then this people have been allowed to exercise their own forms of self-government, under the supervision of the British authorities. There is a Santal grammar by Skrefsrud (Benares, 1873).