Bihan Mela

About Bihan Mela:

• It is known as the seed festival and the event is participated by the farmers.
• Preparations begin as soon as farmers have harvested Kharif crops, which include both hybrid and indigenous varieties of paddy, millets, maize and sorghum.
• Women are at the helm of this festival and carefully collect seeds of the indigenous varieties and store them in earthen pots.
• On a designated day in December, they decorate the pots with red and white motifs, place them in a bamboo basket and carry it on their head to the village where the fair is being organised.
• This was introduced to help farmers return to their traditional ways of farming like mixed cropping.

Key facts about the Kondh tribe

• They are a tribal group found in the hills and jungles of Orissa in eastern India.
• They fall into two broad divisions.
  • The Hill or Maliah Konds, who are numerically the dominant group, inhabit the interior uplands and have retained much of their original tribal culture.
  • The Plains Konds have had extended contact with the Oriya-speaking peoples of the lowlands and have adopted many aspects of Hindu religion and culture.
• They have several sub-tribes, for instance, the Dongria, Kovi, Kuttia, Languli, Penga, and Jharnia. Raj Konds etc.
• These tribal people speak languages called Kui and Kuvi.
• These belong to the Dravidian language family and have strong similarities to Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada.
• The language has no script of its own, with the Oriya script used for writing Kui, and the Telugu script used for Kuvi.