Bastar The Lost Heritage

Koitors are Gond communities which have kept to their ancient way of life and resisted the pull of Hinduism.

Most of the Adivasis of Bastar belong to the Gonds, the largest tribal group in Central India. There are several million Gonds spread through Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa, and dialects of Gondi are said to be spoken by two million people. They are descendants of the subjects of the Gondwana Empire which flourished from the 12th to the 18th centuries and was made up of several kingdoms. Gondwana was part of the land ruled over by the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur and this came under British rule between 1818 and 1883.

It was barely interfered with by the Mughals but it succumbed first to the Marathas and later to the British. The word “Gond” itself is actually not a tribal word but one used by outsiders for this large group of people. What they call themselves is ‘Koitor’ and those Gond communities which have kept to their ancient way of life and resisted the pull of Hinduism now tend to be known as Koitors. They are people of the forests, at home among trees and plants and animals and used to depending on these for their needs much as their ancestors have done since prehistoric times.

Bastar is home to various different tribes, most of which are Gonds, but customs and beliefs vary considerably even between the different Gond communities as a result of their isolation from each other.

The Koitors, or more traditional Gonds, used to be completely selfsufficient. They tilled the soil with wooden implements and regarded it as hurtful to the land to slice into it with a metal plough. Baskets and the walls of houses and fences were skillfully woven from branches and creepers. Their fish hooks were made of thorns or bone, the combs worn in their hair expertly carved from bamboo, houses constructed out of wicker-work and thatched with grass. They would eat off leaf plates and wear caps made of leaves in the rain. Nowadays, however, most of them possess steel knives,