Adivasi - v21_No.1-4

Abstract

The Didayi are a small primitive hill tribe inhabiting a small forest clad hill-tract hidden inside the inaccessible 4,000 plateau of Kondakamberu range of Eastern Ghats which stretches along the South-Eastern border between Malkangiri and Koraput Sadar Subdivisions of Koraput District, Living far away from the main-stream of civilisation, this little community is almost unknown to outside and hence devoid of ethnographic attention. Dr. Verrier Elwin refers them as a 'wild tribe' in his 'Tribal Myths of Orissa' and in 'The Bondo High landers'. The natives call themselves 'Gntre'-the people. The present name Didayi meaning the wild people has been bestowed upon them by their Oriya neighbours, which they have accepted unhesitatingly. The romance and love, the horror and mental agony that once quivered the skeleton of the Juang in the remote past, being unknown, are still murmured in their stories, songs, dances combinedly taken as folklore and exist as an invincible culture