RARE LIVE COLLECTION OF LANJIA SAURA SONGS AND DANCES WITH EXPLANATION BY PROF. T. SUBRAMANYAM NAIDU

SUBRAMANYAM NAIDUA RARE LIVE COLLECTION OF LANJIA SAURA SONGS AND DANCES WITH EXPLANATION
Lanjia Saora constitutes one of the vulnerable sections of the Saora tribe. They are also called by their neighbors for their distinct style of male dress in which the long and narrow strip of male loin cloth is worn in such a fashion that both the red embroidered ends hang down in front and back like a tail (Lanjia). They are called by various names such as Lanja Soura, Lanjih Soura with a surname as Savara, Sabara, Saur, Sora, etc.
Origins and History
The Saoras are one of the most ancient tribes of India. Frequent references to the tribe are found in Hindu mythology and classics. More often, they find mention in the Sanskrit literature, the epics, the Puranas and other religious texts.
. Dress and Ornaments
The traditional dress of a woman is a coarse waistcloth with gray/red borders about three feet in length and about two feet in breadth, which hardly reaches the knees. The women greatly enlarge their ear lobes to ear rounded pegs and have a characteristics tattoo mark down the middle of the forehead.
Marriage by arrangement, negotiation, by capture, by service is the accepted forms of marriage. Polygyny is prevalent. They say that a man having more fields to cultivate must have several wives. To marry the selected woman, the man pays the bride price (Panshal) in both cash and kind. On the marriage day they have to give a feasts consisting of rice, buffalo meat and liquor.
Lifecycle Rituals
The Lanjia Saora cremate their dead. The corpse is carried to the cremation ground accompanied by a musical band. The next day, the bereaved family members examine the ashes at the cremation ground to discover sign of the cause of death. In the evening, a fowl is killed there and cooked with rice and bitter leaves and the mourners of the village share the meal. Observe Guar, the secondary burial ritual to commemorate the dead by sacrificing buffaloes and by erecting menhirs.
The upper terraces, which are dry, are locally called jyanum and used for cultivating ragi (elusine corocana), biri (phaseolus mungo) and Kulthi (dolichos biflorus). In the lower terraces where adequate irrigation is available they raise a second paddy crop in Saroba during summer months.The Lanjia Saora love trees and take care to protect the fruit plants like datepalm, tamarind, jackfruit, mango, Mohul, Ramphal, Sitaphal, Salap, etc.
Religious Beliefs
Sonnum or sunnam is the general name of the Saora dieities and spirits. They have no concept of a supreme deity. Install the village guardian deities represented by wooden posts at the entrance of the village. They have shamans – both male and female, called Kudan and Kudan Boi respectively, They act as diviner-cum-medics who can establish direct communication with the unseen world in a trance and cure illness and ward off mishaps and misfortunes caused by the wrath of evil spirits.
Folk art
The Sauras are very artistic people, their artistic skill we not only revealed their wall painting but also in their dance and music. To keep the gods and spirits in good humour the Saora make their famous wall paintings, or icons known as italons, initial or idital inside the house. The icons, which contain sketches of human beings, airplanes, cycles, plants, animals, hills, forests, sun, moon, etc., are very difficult to understand.
12. References
Risley, H.H., The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Calcutta, 1981.
Sbramanyam Naidu. T. 2016, The Ethnographic Document Film on The Lanjia Saora, Man in Search of Man, Bangalore.