ABSTRACT
The term ‘millenarianism’ has a specifically Christian origin. The Book of Revelation prophesied that Satan would be overthrown and Christ would rule on earth for a ‘millennium’, or literally, a period of one thousand years. The Mundas are one of the more numerous tribes, and survived as settled, subsistence cultivators who supplemented what they grew with products from the forest. Munda society was patrilineal and land was an inalienable right of the clan, traceable back to the original men who cleared the trees, established the village and left as their monuments large burial stones, which, for the non-literate Mundas, were later pointed to as proof of their ‘title’ to the land. The Nagbansi kings therefore began transferring their rights over some Munda villages to lesser members of the royal family as a means for their upkeep, or to Hindu, Muslim and Sikh outsiders as a form of payment for service.
