2 The Chota Nagpur Plateau: terrain and people

Eva Reichel

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2 The Chota Nagpur Plateau: terrain and people

Eva Reichel
Eva Reichel

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This chapter is in the book The Ho: Living in a World of Plenty

2The Chota NagpurPlateau: terrain and peopleTheregion ofresearchThe region ofresearch is in the southeastern portion of the Chota NagpurPlateauin India, which is connected with theVindhyanrangesto the west byacontin-uous chain of hills and forests.Thus, inawide sense, the Chota NagpurPlateaucan be saidto extend across India’sPeninsular Plateau.In anarrower sense, as it is used here, it forms the northeastern extension ofthe central plateauofIndia, covering all of the territory of the present-day stateof Jharkhand,touchingupon eastern portions of Maharashtra, andreachingintoMadhya Pradesh,Chhattisgarh,Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,West Bengal, and Odisha.Jharkhand,denoting‘forest region, dense forest’in Hindi, isaname recordedfor and giventoall–or part–of the Chota NagpurPlateauthat can be tracedback to the thirteenth century.Chota NagpurorChotanagpurcannot be definedunambiguously, as it revealsalong history of naming and renaming, of partition-ing andreorganization.It reflectsalong political history of oppression and ag-gressionagainst its multiethnic indigenous population, as well as severalpaci-fication schemes²²and settlements. In the past Chota Nagpur referred to variousadministrative regions of different extension, whereas todayNorth and SouthChotanagpur constitutetwo of the five divisions of present-day Jharkhand state.Geographically, the Chotanagpur Plateauisavast tract of uneven uplandsthat lies between the Gangetic and the MahanadiPlains. Most of the Plateauhas an elevation between1,000 feet, as in the area of research,and 2,300 feetabovesea level, with its highestpeaks, among others, in the Simlipal Massif,which exceeds3,800 feet.Simlipal ismentioned here because Ho alliance rela-tions extend into Simlipal in Odisha, as they do into Jharkhand.Myinformantsrefer to Simlipal when they want to emphasize thatanew marital‘road’(hora)isbeing initiated, that is, when two individuals are about to marry whose clans (ki-liko)are saidto have had no marital interrelations so far. Simlipal in this sense issynonymouswith aregionfar away.Otherwise and characteristically, the regionconsists ofasuccession of plateaux interspersed between undulatinghills,dense forests as well as now-deforestedareas,mountainousregions, and openvalleysdrained by several large rivers, some of which feed into rivers flowinginto theBayofBengal.SeeChota Nagpurin glossary I.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110666199-006

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2The Chota NagpurPlateau: terrain and peopleTheregion ofresearchThe region ofresearch is in the southeastern portion of the Chota NagpurPlateauin India, which is connected with theVindhyanrangesto the west byacontin-uous chain of hills and forests.Thus, inawide sense, the Chota NagpurPlateaucan be saidto extend across India’sPeninsular Plateau.In anarrower sense, as it is used here, it forms the northeastern extension ofthe central plateauofIndia, covering all of the territory of the present-day stateof Jharkhand,touchingupon eastern portions of Maharashtra, andreachingintoMadhya Pradesh,Chhattisgarh,Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,West Bengal, and Odisha.Jharkhand,denoting‘forest region, dense forest’in Hindi, isaname recordedfor and giventoall–or part–of the Chota NagpurPlateauthat can be tracedback to the thirteenth century.Chota NagpurorChotanagpurcannot be definedunambiguously, as it revealsalong history of naming and renaming, of partition-ing andreorganization.It reflectsalong political history of oppression and ag-gressionagainst its multiethnic indigenous population, as well as severalpaci-fication schemes²²and settlements. In the past Chota Nagpur referred to variousadministrative regions of different extension, whereas todayNorth and SouthChotanagpur constitutetwo of the five divisions of present-day Jharkhand state.Geographically, the Chotanagpur Plateauisavast tract of uneven uplandsthat lies between the Gangetic and the MahanadiPlains. Most of the Plateauhas an elevation between1,000 feet, as in the area of research,and 2,300 feetabovesea level, with its highestpeaks, among others, in the Simlipal Massif,which exceeds3,800 feet.Simlipal ismentioned here because Ho alliance rela-tions extend into Simlipal in Odisha, as they do into Jharkhand.Myinformantsrefer to Simlipal when they want to emphasize thatanew marital‘road’(hora)isbeing initiated, that is, when two individuals are about to marry whose clans (ki-liko)are saidto have had no marital interrelations so far. Simlipal in this sense issynonymouswith aregionfar away.Otherwise and characteristically, the regionconsists ofasuccession of plateaux interspersed between undulatinghills,dense forests as well as now-deforestedareas,mountainousregions, and openvalleysdrained by several large rivers, some of which feed into rivers flowinginto theBayofBengal.SeeChota Nagpurin glossary I.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110666199-006

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