The Oraons of Chota Nagpur

The present work is the results of Fifteen years intimate aquaintance with the Oraons, including three years special inquiries about their customs and usages. The Oraons are spread over such a large track of the Chota Nagpur plateau that local variations of the customs recorded in this book necessarily occur. And as with advancing civilization old customs, habits, ideas and beliefs are now in a process of transformation, decay or disappearance, all the customs and usages described here can hardly be found together in any one village at this day. Should the present work be favourably received by the public it is proposed to follow it up by another volume giving an account of religious and magico – religious system, the domestic ceremonies and usages and the language and folk lore of the Oraons so as to complete our picture of the tribes. The great importance for administrative purposes of the study of the ethnology of such backward tribes as the Oraons have been referred to by the Dr. Haddon in the introduction which he has so very kindly written for this work. As for the scientific interest of such a study, the observations made elsewhere by the same eminent authority with reference to the Cochin tribes apply with equal force to the Oraons. “These backward jungle – folk have a peculiar interest for ethnologist as they appear to retain many of the customs and beliefs which we may well suppose characterized mankind in vary ancient times, the ethnological survivals which bear the same relation to anthropology as that borne to Zoology by those generalized or persistence types dating from geological antiquity in various groups of animals that rejoice the heart of the Zoologist.”