Q1.
How have such interactions taken place for so long and so naturally?
Answer
The chapter answers its own question in the next sentence: “It is, in the end, because folk, tribal and Hindu belief systems have many similar concepts.” Where two traditions already think alike, borrowing does not feel like borrowing.
| The shared concept | How it appears in all three |
|---|---|
| Nature is sacred | Mountains, rivers, trees, plants, animals “and some stones too” are regarded as sacred — because there is consciousness behind all of them. That reason is the same in folk, tribal and Hindu belief |
| Many deities | Tribes “generally worship many deities associated with those natural elements”. For the Toda of the Nilgiris, over thirty peaks are the residences of a god or goddess — so sacred that the Todas will not point at them with a finger |
| And, above them, one supreme being | “Despite this multiplicity of deities, as with Hinduism, many tribal groups have a concept of a higher divinity”: Donyipolo (Sun and Moon combined) in Arunachal Pradesh, Khandoba in parts of central India, Singbonga among the Munda and Santhal, “who created this whole world” |
What actually crossed over, in both directions:
- Tribal → wider tradition: Jagannath of Puri, by tradition originally a tribal deity; various forms of the mother-goddess worshipped across India.
- Wider tradition → tribal: some tribes “adopted Hindu deities long ago, and possess their own versions of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa” — documented from India's northeastern States all the way to Tamil Nadu.
- Both ways, continuously: “Deities, concepts, legends and rituals have been freely exchanged in both directions.”
And why it happened naturally — that is, without anybody organising it: there was no authority declaring which deity belonged to whom, no requirement to give up one thing before accepting another, and no boundary drawn in the first place, since ancient India had no separate word for 'tribe' at all. People simply lived alongside one another and the traffic followed.
The result, in the chapter's own word: enrichment. “Clearly, the result of this long interaction has been mutual enrichment.” Both sides ended with more than they started with. That is why folk and tribal beliefs and practices “also count among India's cultural roots” — a root, not a borrowing.
Did you know? The page also carries two pictures worth pausing on — a striking tribal painting in white on a deep red ground, its border built entirely from rows of tiny geometric figures, and a photograph of a Toda man of the Nilgiris in an embroidered cloak. Chapter 8 takes up tribal art in detail.