ABSTRACT

If the Caco Chatiar ceremony gives Santal children a new status, it is the village dances that gradually merge them in the society of the adult. From the time a girl can toddle, she joins the line of dancers, while little boys strut round and round aping the antics of the drummers. During the Karam ceremony, the annual hunt and at the savage spectacle of bitlaha, the men have special songs and dances, and during the performance of a wedding, both men and women dance. The village girls and women form a single swaying line while a group of boys bring out two types of drum - the tumdak’ with its cylinder of clay and the tamak’ with its great hide-covered bowl. The lagre dance which forms the mainstay of these meetings has a standard form called tahri. The girls form a curving line facing the drummers.