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The tribes nestle in the laps of densely wooded hills and are often somewhat inaccessible. Generally small in size, the households in a village average only about thirty to forty. Even when the village has larger number of households, sometimes going up to two hundred and fifty, they consist of several hamlets. The settlements occur in a number of small hamlets. The Tribal is not nomadic and the villages as also the village-sites often have a long tradition hallowed by legends and community-memory. The village is sacred. Its soil is the sacred soil of ancestors, which contains their last remains. The deities guard the village. They are symbolized through carved wooden pillars not very elegant but impressive. They are supposed to protect the village from evil spirits and their wrath as also form diseases and epidemic. The village often has one more deity. It is symbolised through a wooden pole, somewhat bare and not as neatly carved. It is generally placed on an earthen platform with a tiny thatched roof above its head. The Santals happen to be one of the largest tribal groups in Orissa. In fact in one of their traditional songs of migration there is a reference to their leaving behind those beautiful houses they had lived in. “There outer walls were so polished that even a fly could not sit on it and would fall off if it tried. And what exquisite paintings on those walls! It bleeds one's heart to remember them and to know that we had to leave them behind.” The Santals have a written script, Ol Chiki and literature produced by their guru gomkey late Pandit Raghunath Murmu is of a fairly by many anthropologists. W.G. Archer considered them easily the most beautiful in Eastern India. The Juangs live in the valley of the hills around Gonasika, the source of the sacred river Baitarani, in Keonjhar district. The area is called Juangpirh. They are also found in Dhenkanal district. Their population in Orissa is around 27 thousands. The Dongria Kondhs is sub-group of the Kondh tribe, which is the most numerous tribes in Orissa. The Dongrias live on the densely wooded slopes of the Niamgiri hills in Koraput district. They are celebrated in history for the right of human sacrifice or Meria. The Bhuiyans live in a contiguous belt on hill-slopes in Dhenkanal and Sundergarh districts and the area is known as Bhuiyanpirh (the hill of the Bhuiyans). The Gadabas who number around fifty thousand live in the district of Koraput. They have several sub-group knowns as Bada, Olai, Kalanji, Kapu and Jurmu based on a system of social ranking. All these five tribal communities are agriculturists. Settled as well as shifting cultivation on hill-slopes are the mainstays of their economy, The Santals are the most acculturated and despite an emphasis on separate identity, in material culture they have approximated the maximum to the neighbouring non-tribal world. The Juangs are perhaps the most backward among them. A sensitive withdrawn group living on Juangpirh, they have remained rather indifferent and non-responsive to development efforts through State intervention, The Dongrias also designated as a primitive community like the Juangs are, however, more responsive to change. Well-known as horticulturists, they have taken to pineapple and banana on the hill-slopes, which were earlier used for shifting cultivation. The Bhuiyans are primitive subsistence agriculturists like Gadabas but have accepted certain modern cultural operations in agriculture. The Santal villages are fairly large settlements on plain land or among gently undulating valleys. The houses are arranged in a liner form on either side of the wide village street. Built on a rectangular or Lshaped ground plan, the walls are generally of mud or sun-dried brick and the roof thatched with straw or tiles. The sizes of the houses vary according to economic condition of the family but they are generally around 25 ft. long and 10 ft. wide. Often there is a wide front verandah. Often too there is a less wide verandah running on all sides of the house. The smallest house of one room only would have a partition wall, which separates the living-cum-sleeping area and kitchen from the inner area where ancestors are worshipped and grain bins are kept on a raised platform. The cowshed and goad pens are generally next to the house. The Juang villages are located on foothills along gentle slopes not far from water-sources. A typical village is generally very small, sometimes with only 8 or 10 houses and are mostly irregularly placed and not symmetrically as in a Santal village. Mostly rectangular in pattern a house has the average dimension of 15 ft. by 12 ft. Generally there is door and no windows. The walls are wooden poles stuck to each other very closely and then plastered over with red earth. The roof has a thatch of local grass. Inside, a small area of the room is nationally set apart as a kitchen. There is also an arrangement for pounding grains almost at the entrance to the house or the room. In a Juang village, the dormitory known as Mandaghar is not only the largest but the most conspicuous. The unmarried boys sleep here at night. A low smouldering fire is dept on constantly. Guests who come to the village are entertained here and live here. The Juang percussion instruments called Changus are hung on the walls of the Mandaghar. The roof is supported by wooden posts with carved design of animals as also geometric patterns. The Dongria Kondh villages are generally of linear pattern with two rows of compact houses. But the streets are neither as wide nor as regular as in case of the Santals. The houses are often almost squatting on the ground so that they prevent very cold winds blowing in winter or getting too warm in summer. Like houses of other Kondh sub-groups, their houses are also often made of mud-walls or with planks closely fitted to each other and then plastered with red earth. The Bhuiyan villages are of moderate size but there is no definitive pattern in the formation of a cluster of houses. They are mostly mud-walled with thatch of straw. The Gadaba village is somewhat like that of Santals. The houses are arranged in two linear rows along a fairly wide street. Like the Juang Mandaghar, they have also a community house called Sadar, which is easily the largest one in the village. Like the Mandaghar again this is where the village assembles during happiness, tragedy, or on festive occasions particularly to entertain friends. Generally three types of houses are found in a Gadaba village. They are the Maha dien, the Dandual dien and the Chhendi dien. The former two have a rectangular plan while the latter has a circular plan with a conical roof. The walls of the houses are made of Piri grass (Like that of the Dongrias) which grows locally. A small portion of the house is set apart for the kitchen; in the remaining bigger part of the room, they have a grain grinder, a hearth, and a hole for husking grains. The rectangular pattern of the house has verandah on the sides as in a Santal house. The tribal villages are irregular in their pattern. More often streets cross each other and the houses are located in rather irregular clusters. Often they are single-roomed and placed somewhat high from the ground and with a low roof. The walls are washed in somewhat high from the ground and with a low roof. The walls are washed in red-earth and inside the house often there is a loft built on wooden beams. The loft is used as a storage space for almost all-conceivable things form clothes, ornaments to agricultural and musical instruments. In most houses one can find a mortar placed on the floor in which grain is husked with the help of a pestle. A number of objects such as gourd-containers, baskets, umbrellas etc., are hung from the roof inside the house. The gourds and basket, which contain ritual objects such as the special clothes of ancestors and tutelary and the sacred pots generally, hanged against the wall where icons are painted. At the time of house construction the earth-god is propitiated with a ceremonial offering of rice and wine. Magic and ritual occupy an important place in the socio-religious life of all primitive communities. There are numerous occasions when an individual, a family or even the entire community is faced by a calamity or a tragedy. It could be a disease in epidemic form; it could be repeated snatching away of men by man-eating tigers or the depredation of other wild animals; it could be a devastating flood or earthquake. Quite often the primitive mind is unable to discern the proximate or remote cause of such tragedies by reasoning and logic. The causes are, therefore, attributed to the wrath of malevolent God or spirits that are supposed to be annoyed or angered for one reason or another. Fear becomes the driving force and an attempt is then made to appease the malevolent God or spirit by a suitable offering. Quite often such propitiation of gods and spirits may be not for the negative purpose of warding off disease or disasters but to positively invoke their blessings for peace and prosperity, for abundant crops, healthy cattle and numerous happy children. The propitiation of gods and spirits takes many forms and a vast complex of ritual-religious ceremonies may be associated with it. After all it is a way of trying to appease and thereby gain control over unspecified and unknown forces of nature. The propitiation as mentioned earlier has a very definite practical purpose. It could be to bring plenty of rain to the crops, fish or game to the nets, stability to a house or lightness to a canoe, to inflict or ward off misfortune, disease or death, to win a loved one, to ac quire skill in war, speed in travelling, beauty and elegance in music or dance. The forms of propitiation vary. But quite often they are a combination of; (a) ritual chartings, invocations or incantations, (b)certain purification rites involving the person or persons offering the worship and the physical space where it is being sanctified, (c) physical objects such as food or drink, flowers, incense etc., and (d) accompanying plastic or performing arts such as specially designed paintings, icons or murals and songs and dance numbers. The entire groups of functions have a ritualistic significance. The performer is quite often a specified person. It could be the priest of the community when the offering or propitiation is communal and is held at the appointed place of religious worship. It could also be in an individual's house in which case the performer could be either the priest or the head of the household.

Tribal Wall Paintings of Orissa, Sitakant Mahapatra, 1991. Published and printed by: J.C. Kanungo, Secretary, Orissa Lalitkala Academy, Bhubaneswar-751014 at I.I.P., Okhla, New Delhi-110020

This work on “Tribal Wall paintings of Orissa” by Dr. Sitakant Mohapatra, is an attempt to present a glimpse of the ritualistic drawings of the Saora tribe of Southern Orissa. Dr. Mahapatra is basically a poet and litterateur. No wonder his work would be more verbal, than visual, and deal with the living conditions and rituals more than the art-style of the Saoras or other tribal groups among these ancient autochthones of Orissa. The art evidently belongs to a continuing tradition of common perception and way of expression of the people. The drawings are essentially bold and linear, and not thin, flowing of curvaceous. The lines are composed to create geometrical patterns, where triangles and squares or rectangles preponderate over circles or dots, ellipses or parabolas, half-circles or chords.

Body Engraving (Tattoo)

The body decoration of the female is most important testimony of the artistic talent of the tribes. They have a belief that if some impression of the great God remains on the body, there will be no danger. In fact they tattooed their body with different types of motives. It is the most popular way among tribal to decorate their bodies. 

There are many interpretations and beliefs regarding them. The motivating idea behind tattooing varies from tribe to tribe and so also does the interpretation of these ides by various anthropologists and philosophers. Tattoos are important for many because they are the only decoration of body, or ornament, which remains throughout the life.

Following similar logic, some of the tribes make the symbols of their village Gods (Gram-devata) and family Gods (Kula-Devata). Sometimes the tattoo artist and other ladies, who perform magic and witchcraft they tattooed of their Gods and Goddess on their breasts as a kind of sympathetic magic protection to save them from the magic of their enemies. They're the opinion that their Gods and Goddess will protect them. Focus points out that tattoo makes on a large part of the body indicate that a girl's parents must be wealthy or must have loved their daughter very much.

In some of tribes especially ladies have tattoo marks on their face, very attractively as compare to their other parts of the body. In their face they have a typical partition from forehead to their chin. The partition have three lines, it continuing forehead to their nose-tip and after a short gap it continuing up to lower lip to chin end. From forehead to nose-tip it have a another partition between the two eyebrows and a small line is marked, though form upper side it have two dots and in the lower side it have three dots. Then after a short gap from lower lip to chin end it again have two dotes which gives a special attraction to their front portion of their face. Towards chin the tribes wears flower motives. The flowers are composed with some dots around a circle. 

The tribes believe that tattoo marks are tattooed for good will. They have marked flower motives on their hands. They think that these tattoo marks gives extra power to their hands and body. That's why the same thing goes to leg also, it gives lot of energy to their legs for more working. Dots and lines are marked both hands and legs. Full hand has lot of dots on some hands dots are composed in the group of three or four in continuing form. These all dots are tattooed in a sequence manner. Perpendicular lines are marked in ascending to descending order. Like hands, legs have also lot of dots too. These dots are tattooed up to their knees. These tribes are believed that tattoo marks is only ornaments which goes to heaven even after their death. They are also believed that if anybody can not have any tattoo mark on his or her body after death, the "Yamaraja" (the God of death) will be tied them on the silk cotton tree. Besides this believe the tribal males are also tattooed some mark on their body. 

Tribes believe that tattooing of their body is very auspicious act of them. Among the tribe, Tattoo is known as Chikita, Kutachita, Kuteichita etc. Every tribal woman has known the technique of Tattooing and they have Tattooing to each other's body. For doing this work, Tattoo artist wants on necklace as a reward and ten rupees or 2kg rice, from the tattooed woman. From this regards, it is know that how old is this technique is running on tribal area. Before Tattooing the girls, pure herself to take a bath. Generally girls tattooed before marriage in their parents’ house. The first tattoo is usually done on a girl at the age of 5 years, at this age girls generally have tattooed on her forehead, nose, cheeks and chin. At the time of marriage or after menstruation they tattooed on their arms and legs. Most of tribe is of darker completion. So that sometimes the tattoos are hardly distinguished from the colour of their body. 

In this place the process of tattooing is deferent form other places. For tattooing they use the black carbon collected form the back of earth bowl used for cooking and the starch from banana plant. They prepare a paste to mix with both of the ingredient. They apply twelve needles together on the limbs for tattooing. They draw the motifs on the limbs directly to deep the needles in the black past. After injecting this needles or tattooing blood comes out and gives lots of pain. For relief the pain, they apply custard seed oil mix with turmeric paste on the tattooed portion.

In present modern society tattooing is a fashion among the youth, Now a days the process of colour Tattooing is very popular among the urban modern lady and this is change the primitive tradition. Through the traditional technique of Tattooing, the possibility to spread of AIDS, the Government conscious the tribes to stop the Tattooing. But the Tattooing is till now the popular and auspicious tradition among the tribe.

1. Tribe, Caste & folk culture – Dr. Chitrasen Pasayal 2. Folklore of Orissa – Dr. Kunja Behari Dash 3. Rangarekha - Published by Orissa lalit Kala Akademi 4. Festival of Orissa - Published by Orissa Sahitya Akademi 5. Indian folk Art & Crafts – Dr. Jasleen Dhamija 6. Art & Culture of the Juang - Published by Orissa Lalit kala Akademi