Tribe vs Adivasi: A collective Identity – Dictionary definition vs. traditional India’s socio-religious and economic distinctions (jana, jati)

The concept tribe has evolved from the Middle English term ‘tribuz’ meaning the three divisions into which the early Romans are grouped. For the Romans, the tribe is a political division. But for others it is equated with geographical divisions. The Irish history conceives the term as families or communities of persons having the same surname.
The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a race of people, now applied especially to a primary aggregate of people in a primitive or barbarous condition under a headmen of chief”.
Nihar Ranjan Ray (1976) has taken attempt at finding out the indigenous essence of the particular group which is analogous to what is called tribe. He discovers the term Jana which is prevailed in ancient Indian languages including Sanskrit and Prakrit. It refers to the communities of people like the Savaras, the Kullutas, the Kolias, the Bhillas and a countless others whom today we call tribe. “Jana, therefore, seems to have been, to my mind, the term for what we have been taught to know as ‘tribe’, and “Jati‘, the socio-religious cum economic organization that was supposed to sustain the Jana and keep the given community of people together (ibid 1972 : 9)”. […]

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Source: CHAPTER – IV, THE CONCEPT OF ADIVASI : IN THE GENERAL CONTEXT OF ETHNIC IDENTITY (1990). p. 124-127
URL: https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/159043/9/09_chapter%204.pdf
Date visited: 4 April 2019

Title: A tribe in an industrial milieu the Orams in Rourkela and adjoining villages
Researcher: Rath, Govinda Chandra
Guide(s): Sinha, Surajit C
Keywords: Industrial
Orams
Rourkela
Tribe
Villages
University: University of Calcutta
Completed Date: 1990
Abstract: Abstract not available
Pagination: viii, 310p.
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10603/159043
Appears in Departments: Department of Sociology

Read or download the full PhD thesis here: https://hdl.handle.net/10603/159043

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