JUANGS (Patuas, literally " leaf-wearers ")

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 530 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: JEE-JUN

JUANGS (Patuas, literally " leaf-wearers ") , a jungle tribe of

Orissa

ORISSA

, India. They are found in only two of the tributary states, Dhenkanal and Keonjhar, most of them in the latter. They are estimated to amount in all to about 1o,000. Their language belongs to the Munda family. They have no traditions which connect them with any other race, and they repudiate all connexion with the Hos or the Santals, declaring themselves the aborigines. They say the headquarters of the tribe is the Gonasika. In manners they are among the most primitive people of the world, representing the Stone age in our own day. They do not till the land, but live on the game they kill or on

snakes

SNAKES

and vermin. Their huts measure about 6 ft. by 8 ft., with very low doorways. The interior is divided into two compartments. In the first of these the father and all the females of a family huddle together; the second is used as a

store

STORE (from O. Fr. estor or estoire,
Late
- LATE
Lat. staurum or instaurum, stock, provisions,
supply
- SUPPLY (through Fr. from Lat. supplere, to fill up)
, from the
late
- LATE
use of instaurare, to provide, properly to construct, renew, restore)

-room. The boys have a separate hut at the entrance to the

village

VILLAGE

, which serves as a guest-

house

and general assembly place where the musical instruments of the

village

VILLAGE

are kept. Physically they are small and weak-looking, of a reddish-brown colour, with flat faces, broad noses with wide nostrils, large mouths and thick lips, the

hair

HAIR (a word common to Teutonic languages)

coarse and frizzly. The women until recently wore nothing but girdles of leaves, the men, a diminutive bandage of cloth. The Juangs declare that the river goddess, emerging for the first time from the Gonasika rock, surprised a party of naked Juangs dancing, and ordered them to wear leaves, with the threat that they should die if they ever gave up the custom. The Juangs' weapons are the bow and arrow and a primitive sling made entirely of cord. Their religion is a vague belief in forest spirits. They offer fowls to the sun when in trouble and to the earth for a bountiful harvest.

Polygamy

POLYGAMY, (Gr. nabs, many, and yayos,
marriage
- MARRIAGE
)

is rare. They burn their dead and throw the ashes into any running stream. The most sacred oaths a Juang can take are those on an ant-hill or a tiger-skin.
See E. W. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (1872).

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