A Comparative Study of Creation Myths Among the Indigenous Communities of Junglemahal
The forested borderlands of West Bengal and Jharkhand — historically known as Junglemahal — have been home to several distinct indigenous communities for millennia. Each of these communities carries its own story of how the world began, how human beings came to exist, and why things are the way they are. This chapter brings together the creation myths of five such communities: the Kudmi, the Santal, the Munda, the Oraon, and the Bhumij. Rather than treating these narratives as isolated curiosities, the chapter reads them as a family of stories — related, overlapping, and yet meaningfully different from each other. The comparison reveals patterns that run deep across the region: a world submerged in water at the beginning of time, a creator god who works gradually and sometimes imperfectly, the role of animals in helping bring the earth into being, the creation of humans from clay, a chance accident that disrupts the original plan, and the emergence of clan identity through totemic bonds with the natural world. At the same time, each community has its own emphases, its own cast of characters, and its own way of understanding what it means to be human and to belong to a community. Together, these myths form a rich, living archive of indigenous knowledge about the world, about society, and about the relationship between people and the land they have always called home.