Creation Story in Bonda Religion
The author delineates the history of the Bonda through the central character Soma Muduli, the narrator of the story. Soma Muduli himself is an “unwritten history of the Bonda” (Ray 2001:6).
According to him, his ancestors were the first men to live on earth.Every religion has its own stories of creation. Bondas are not exceptional since they have different versions of stories of creation of their own. Soma Muduli has heard the story of earth’s beginning, from his grandmother. According to the story, when the earth was born, there was no soil and rock. “The world was one vast pond” (Ray 2001:6) and there lived a wild boar. The boar with its tusks and snout raised the bottom of the pond and scattered, and the earth appeared. The spots not scattered by soil became rivers, waterfalls, and streams. The world was created: the trees, birds, beasts, and so on. This story rings a faint bell of the Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu in Hinduism though in this avatar Lord Vishnu saved the already created world from Hiranyaksha the demon who took the earth to the bottom of the ocean. In the Bonda legend, the wild boar jumped over a salap tree (fishtail palm tree) and flung into the sky “two tender branches of the tree” and “an armful of salap flowers” which became the sun, the moon, and the stars (Ray 2001:6) respectively. This again reminds us of the Hindu Vaishnavite creation story, according to which Brahma grew the lotus on which He was sitting into a great tree and split them into three parts and created the Earth, the Skies, and the Heavens (Gallo 2019, para 6).
17.2.1 Birth and Settlement of Bonda
The Bonda feels that no one knows how man was created except Bhagban (the Almighty). The first puru (man) and the first selani (woman) came from nowhere. There are many legends behind the remos populating and spreading their kind. The purus and selani were wanderers initially, roaming the forests, looking for food to satisfy their hunger.
Even when the man and woman met accidentally and produced offspring, they went their separate ways. But when the yong (mother) repeatedly had to face the loss of her child in the forest due to the attack of wild animals, she persuaded the man to stay with her, and thus, began the settlement of the remos (Ray 2001:6-10).There is another tale that explains the birth of the remos. The Mahapru (the supreme God) taught Soma Badanayak, the first man who lived with his two wives on the mountain, to dance. It is believed that the remos were born out of the dance and they spread through the mountains (Ray 2001:258-259).
In yet another legend, the first purus and selani were living happily as brother and sister for a long time when the Mahapru got worried as to how the remo race would survive if there was no procreation. So, He created Gurang Poi (evil spirits), two shadowy figures, from his grime and sent them to enter the eyes of the brother and sister as dreams and teach them “the act of love” and how to procreate (Ray 2001:204).
It is a common belief that the Bonda country originated with the twelve brothers who built their houses in twelve villages. “Its name was barajangar des - the land of the twelve forests” (Ray 2001:12). Those who occupy the mountains are known as upper Bonda and those at the foothills are called lower Bonda.
Pratibha Ray sets her novel in Mudulipara, an upper Bonda village. She narrates how Mahapru, the Supreme God, came to reside in a banyan tree in Mudulipara. According to their religious belief, in the beginning, Mahapru dwelt in Nandpur with his sister Damuli Dei. They lived a happy life. One day, when Mahapru returned home after hunting, He saw His sister naked while pounding grain, and felt ashamed. She was unaware of His return. Mahapru pierced her lightly with an arrow to make her feel His presence. Startled, Damuli Dei disappeared with the wooden pestle and broom into the earth. Mahapru’s effort to stop her ended in failure.
The “Mahapru withdrew into the hollow trunk of the banyan tree in Mudulipara, high up in the Bonda mountains,... Damuli Dei had left her garment behind in Nandpur. So great was her shame that she turned into stone” (Ray 2001:15). In grief, Mahapru also turned into stone and dwelt in the tree. In his book published in 1950 Verrier Elwin records this story, which Pratibha seems to have incorporated in her novel. But, interestingly, Dr. Debashis Patra in his article ‘Lord Patakhanda of the Bonda Tribes’ says that during his decade long visit to the Bonda country from 1999 to 2009 nowhere there did he hear this story (Patra 2013:68-69) though he renders a few other versions. In one such version, the origin of the worship of Lord Patkhanda Mahapru is traced to a historical event that transformed into the mythology of the Bonda tribe. Hundreds of years before, Jagadek was ruling Bastar from the capital of Chitrakot. His minister Madhurantak plotted against the king and killed him in order to capture the throne. To save her son and princeling, the queen Gundi Mahadei escaped with four loyal soldiers and, after many tribulations, came to the Bonda country. According to Debashis Patra (2017:68), the original name of the queen was Gundidei and she changed it to Bundidei to win the confidence of the Bonda. Raja Kishor Mahana (2017:5) opines that the present Bonda tribe gained its name from Bundi/Bondi Mahadei. She used the sword of the dead king to rouse the spirit of nationalism and win the Bonda’s loyalty. The four soldiers merged into the Bonda community. And according to Ray, “Bundi Mahadei was worshipped as the mother” (Ray 2001:5) and the sword subsequently has gained the status of deity by the name of Patakhanda Mahapru and is being worshipped during festivals (Mahana 2017:5). The articles by Patra (op cit.) and Ashok Vardhan (2020) exemplify myths wherein Mahapru is worshipped as a sword while Ray’s novel exemplifies the legend wherein the Mahapru is worshipped as a formless stone. Perhaps, as times change, some versions gain the seat while others go under. But Ray too narrates Bundi Mahadei’s legend in The Primal Land and refers to it in connection with two aspects of Bonda life - their marriage system and their violent nature which are explained later in this chapter. Whatever the version be, the fact is that the legend of Bundi Mahadei has become part of the religious mythology of the Bonda tribe.It is important to recall Tara Douglas’s views on mythologies in this context. She corroborates Verrier Elwin’s view that mythologies are orally transmitted history about the construction of identity of a tribe socially and territorially (see Douglas 2017:20).
17.3