Mythologies of the Koya Tribes
Koya are an Indian tribal community found in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. Koyas call themselves Koitur in their dialect. The Koyas speak the Koya language, also known as Koya basha, which is a Dravidian language related to Gondi. Koyas are commonly referred to as Koi, Koyalu, Koyollu, Koya Doralu, Dorala Sattam, etc. Koya tribes can be further divided into Koya, Doli Koya, Gutta Koya or Gotti Koya, Kammara Koya, Musara Koya, Oddi Koya, Pattidi Koya, Rasha Koya, Lingadhari Koya (ordinary), Kottu Koya, Bhine Koya, Raja Koya, etc. The Koya population is concentrated in northeastern Telangana, northern Andhra Pradesh, far-southern Chhattisgarh and southwestern Odisha. In Telangana they live mainly in Khammam, Bhadradi Kothagudem and Warangal districts and are sparsely found in the old Adilabad and Karimnagar districts. In Andhra Pradesh the Koya mainly live in Alluri Sitharama Raju district, while in Odisha they live almost exclusively and are the dominant tribe in Malkangiri district in the far southwest of the state. in Chhattisgarh they live in the far-southern Bastar region, mainly in the districts of Sukma and Bijapur. The Koya in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had a population of 590,739 according to the 2011 census. However, many became residents of Andhra Pradesh when their lands became part of Andhra Pradesh during the Polavaram project. There are another 147,137 Koya in Odisha, and approximately 46,978 Dorla (who are a mixed group in-between Gondi and Koya) in Chhattisgarh.
In a move to conserve the Indian Bison in their forests, the indigenous Koya tribe inhabiting the Papikonda hill range in Andhra Pradesh have made an exemplary transition by shedding the use of bison horns to make their traditional flute, Permakore, and replacing it with an instrument made of eco-friendly palm leaf. Living up to their reputation as the numero uno guardians of the forests, the indigenous Koya tribe inhabiting the Papikonda hill range along the rivers Godavari and Sabari in Andhra Pradesh have decided to do away with millennia-old traditions in an attempt to conserve the Indian Bison (Bos gaurus). The Koyas have moved on from using traditional Indian Bison horns to palm leaves to craft their traditional flute, Permakore, as a gesture of conservation of the Indian Bison in the Papikonda hill range in the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh. In the Koya language, ‘Permam’ stands for Indian Bison or Guar, and ‘Kore’ stands for ‘horn’, and thus, the flute made of Bison horn is called Permakore. On one corner of the horn is a bamboo pipe inserted from where the air is blown into the horn to produce sound.
The Koyas are one of the few multi-lingual and multi-racial tribal communities living in India. They are also one of the major peasant tribes of Andhra Pradesh numbering 3.60 lakhs in 1981. Physically they are classified as Australoid. The Koyas call themselves as "Koithur". The land of Koithur or the Koya land includes the Indravati, Godavari, Sabari, Sileru rivers and the thickly wooded Eastern Ghats, covering parts of Bastar, Koraput, Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar and the East and West Godavari districts. This region is situated at a height of 150-300 metres. The Koyas speak the language called "Koyi". It is blended with Telugu in Andhra Pradesh. There are many endogamous sub-divisions among the Koyas of Bhadrachalam agency, such as Racha Koya, Lingadari Koya, Kammara Koya and Arithi Koya. Each group is vocationally specialized having a separate judiciary system which ensures group endogamy. There are also differences in food habits. Lingadari Koyas do not eat beef and do not interdine with others. They perform purificatory rites to depollute the effects of intergroup marriages. The Racha Koyas are village administrators. They also perform rituals during festivals. Kammara Koyas make agricultural implements. They are blacksmiths and are generally paid in kind. Arithi Koyas are bards. They narrate the lineages. They are the oral custodians of Koya mythology.
In Godavari Valley, the Koya tribe faces a cultural crisis as raids by the Special Enforcement Bureau threaten their cherished tradition of Mahua liquor consumption. Koya are one of the few multi-racial and multi-lingual tribal communities in India. They live in the forests, plains and valleys on both sides of the Godavari River, in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. They are said to have migrated to central India from their original home in Bastar, northern India. The Koya language, also called Koyi, is a Dravidian language. It is closely related to Gondi and has been strongly influenced by Telugu. Most Koya speak either Gondi or Telugu, in addition to Koyi. Traditionally, they were pastoralists and shifting cultivators, but now-a-days, they have taken to settled cultivation supplemented by animal husbandry and seasonal forest collections. They grow Jowar, Ragi, Bajra and other millets.
Regarded as one of the primitive tribal groups of Odisha, the Koya villages are located in clearings in the forests. Originally practitioners of shifting agriculture, they have recently taken to settled cultivation. Often a single family in the interior villages may own up to three or four hundred head of cattle. They are also engaged in collection of roots and fruits from the forest to supplement their harvest and are fond of hunting small game and birds. They fish communally often using poison to catch fish and also engage in basket making.
Indigenous Koya tribe inhabiting the Papikonda hill range along the rivers Godavari and Sabari in Andhra Pradesh have decided to do away with millennia-old traditions. The Koyas have moved on from using traditional Indian Bison horns to craft their traditional flute, Permakore, as a gesture of conservation. Living up to their reputation as the numero uno guardians of the forests, the indigenous Koya tribe inhabiting the Papikonda hill range along the rivers Godavari and Sabari in Andhra Pradesh have decided to do away with millennia-old traditions in an attempt to conserve the Indian Bison (Bos gaurus). The Koyas have moved on from using traditional Indian Bison horns to palm leaves to craft their traditional flute, Permakore, as a gesture of conservation of the Indian Bison in the Papikonda hill range in the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh. In the Koya language, ‘Permam’ stands for Indian Bison or Guar, and ‘Kore’ stands for ‘horn’, and thus, the flute made of Bison horn is called Permakore. On one corner of the horn is a bamboo pipe inserted from where the air is blown into the horn to produce sound.
The Koya tribe, thickly populated in the Chinthur Mandal, of the Bhadrachalam agency in Andhra Pradesh, are migrants from the Bastar region in northern India, who live on both sides of the Godavari river. Physically they are classified as Australoid and they call themselves “Koithur”. They are one of the few multi-lingual and multi-racial tribes in India. Their population in Andhra Pradesh counts up to 106,000 and almost 795,000 spread out in other states of India like Telangana and Odisha. Koyas also live in Chhattisgarh as a mixed tribe with the Gond tribe, which had a considerable influence on their language, Koyi, which is closely related to both Gondi and Telugu, which is their primary language. They believed life to be originated from water, according to their mythology. All Koya belong to one of five sub-divisions called gotrams. Every Koya is born into a clan, and he cannot leave it. The Koyas are farmers by occupation, who depend on rain for irrigation, with the slash and burn cultivation techniques being their traditional mode of agriculture. However, the government has now restricted their movement and has encouraged them to farm on fixed plots. They showed the Koya how to farm coconut and coffee. They also granted the Koya permanent ownership rights to their land if they would grow rice there. Their staple diet is sorghum and they survive on palm juice for over 4 months, and consider the palm tree as a gift of nature and to secure this gift they worship the village Goddess “Muthyalamma” and consume mohuva liquor to get relief from the physical hardship of the day and to withstand extreme variations in the climate. They are also expert hunters, owing to their need for food and safety from the wild animals. In their culture, Cattle are symbols of wealth.
Members of the Koya tribe inhabiting the foothills of the northern Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh are worried. Their lives have been in disarray since India’s nationwide lockdown began on March 24. The government has restricted their movement through the forests, leaving them completely reliant on a few grocery stores in nearby towns, which open only for a few hours every day. Their incomes have also been plummeting, and they are often at the mercy of government agencies, and a few compassionate law-enforcement officials, for their staple foods. The Koya and Konda Reddi are the two largest tribal groups in the northern Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh. Other tribes include the Nayakpod, Khond, Gadaba, Bagatha, Savara and Paraja. The northern Eastern Ghats is contiguous with the Dandakaranya region in the west, a thickly forested plateau covering the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh and parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra. A large number of the Maria Gond (Gutti Koya in Andhra), displaced from Chhattisgarh over the last two decades due to armed conflict, also inhabit the northern Eastern Ghats. These communities have lifestyles linked strongly to forests, sustaining themselves primarily through minor forest produce collection, shifting cultivation and seasonal employment in farms. More recently, they have also been forced to seek work in forest plantations and make occasional hunting forays. However, all these livelihood activities have come to an abrupt halt as entry into forests or movement outside villages has been prohibited. As nations around the world grapple with the health, environmental and economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic, we take a bird’s eye view of how the pandemic has affected India’s forest-dwelling tribal communities.
The Koyas are a subdivision of the Gond tribes of central India. They are most closely related to the Bison Horn Maria Gonds of Bastar. The majority of Koyas live in Andhra Pradesh, but significant numbers also live in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. Their habitat is the alluvial plain of the Godavari River and its tributaries and the forested hills that rise up on both sides of the Godavari River. The hills range from 60 to 1,200 meters above sea level and are cut by numerous short streams that are dry for much of the year but become impassable in the monsoon. Approximately one-third of this habitat is reserve forest administered by the Forestry Department of the state government. The alluvial soils are rich and fertile, but the hill soils are thin and subject to erosion when deforested. Rainfall is abundant but dependent on the monsoon. Koyas recognize three seasons: the hot weather (April-June), with highs regularly above 38° C; the rains (June-November) ; and the cold weather (December-February), when night temperatures are frequently around 4° C. Communication within this area is poor. Only one major road parallels the Godavari River for approximately 160 kilometers, and it is unusable during most of the rainy season. The hills away from the river are reachable only by cart trails and footpaths. The area is also isolated by its reputation as a center for endemic malaria. The Koyas speak a Central Dravidian language closely related to Gondi. The language, both in vocabulary and grammar, has been strongly influenced by Telugu, the language of the neighboring Hindu population. Most Koyas are bilingual in Gondi or Telugu, and in the plains villages many are now literate in Telugu. Koya has no literature of its own aside from two books of the Bible translated into Koya and printed in Telugu characters by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century. In 1971 there were approximately 344,437 Koyas, of whom roughly 285,226 lived in Andhra Pradesh, 59,168 in Orissa, and the remainder in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Population density varies considerably between plains and hills, with the plains areas adjacent to the main road being much more densely populated.
Koya is a predominant tribe in Telangana, second only to the Lambada, with a population of 4,86,391 as per Census 2011. The tribe mainly inhabits the hilly areas of Khammam and Warangal districts and are sparsely found in Adilabad and Karimnagar districts. In 2005, a section of the Koya tribe migrated from Chhattisgarh to Telangana to escape violence inflicted by Naxalites and Salwa Judum, a Chhattisgarhgovernment sponsored militia. They settled in Jalagalancha forestlands and have been doing podu cultivation, a form of shifting cultivation using the slashandburn method. Over the years, the Koyas have faced several attempts of forced evictions by the Telangana forest department as the state believes their cultivation method harms the forest. Forest officials have also questioned their right to the forestland. Therefore, their internally displaced status makes the Koyas more vulnerable to state atrocities. In April 2015, forest officials destroyed the tribal hamlets and farmlands belonging to the Koyas in a series of incidents. On April 21, 2017, the forest department and the police entered the Devunigutta tribal hamlet in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district, beat up families, burnt all their possessions, destroyed their mango and mahua trees, burnt their bicycles and phones, beat up their cattle, stole their goats, razed their homes and told the villagers to leave the forest. During the past four months, the village has been attacked by the forest department 11 times. After the recent attack, many of the tribespeople ran into the forest and their whereabouts are unknown, CPI(M) district secretary Krishna Reddy told the media. In September 2017, officials from the forest and revenue departments, along with the police, resorted to violence while attempting to forcefully evict the Koyas from their makeshift homes. According to a media report, women were tied to trees for resisting the eviction attempt, while the officials dragged children out of their homes. Bulldozers brought down the homes of nearly 40 families and also damaged standing crops. According to a news report published on May 4, 2019, the Telangana High Court issued a restraint order on the eviction of the Koyas after hearing a petition filed by 40 tribespeople. The forest officials threatened to dispossess the petitioners from the crops they were cultivating and from their homes, the report quoted S. Raj Kumar, the counsel for the petitioners, who clarified that Section 4(5) of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, says that no tribal can be evicted till the verification and registration process is over. Following another writ petition, dated September 20, 2019, filed by the Koyas, the forest officials asserted to the high court that since the Koyas migrated from Chhattisgarh and entered the forestland in 2012, they are not entitled to protection under the provisions of the FRA. The High Court ruled against the evictions and ordered the state to issue notice to the tribespeople in accordance with the law and not to evict them until the process of verification was complete.
The Koya live in the forests, plains, and valleys on both sides of the Godavari River, which lies in the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Many also live in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. The Koya are said to have migrated to central India from their original home in Bastar, northern India. They believe their main deity still resides in a cave in the Bastar region. According to Koya mythology, life originated from water. The Koya language, also called Koyi, is closely related to Gondi and has been strongly influenced by Telugu, the tongue of the neighboring Hindu population. The Koya are one of the few multi-racial and multi-lingual tribal communities in India. Most Koya speak either Gondi or Telugu, in addition to Koyi. Since India's independence from the British in 1947, the Indian government has increased its influence over the Koya. As a result, the Koya have rebelled numerous times. The Koya resent the restrictions that have been placed on their use of reserve forests and distillation of liquor. They also resent the hydroelectric projects and rehabilitation of refugees in their land.
In mid-April, 25-year-old Madakam Janakamma was filled with joy as she started preparations for the naming ceremony of her first child due in two weeks. A part of Koya tribe celebrations, liquor brewed from dried Mahua flowers was central to her plans. She took stock of the 20 litres of liquor that she had already brewed from flowers collected earlier, before heading to the lone Mahua tree in her backyard. She was about to collect the flowers scattered on the ground, when two unexpected visitors in a government vehicle, arrived at her house located in a remote village of Andhra Pradesh. They identified themselves as the staff of the Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB), a newly-created wing of the State police responsible for enforcing sand and liquor regulations. “I was working in the fields nearby when the police came to raid our house. Janakamma was alone at home at that time. She had brewed nearly 20 litres of Mahua liquor and police took away half of it. They also took the Aadhaar cards of all our family members,” says Janakamma’s sister-in-law Madakam Adamma, 30, who stays in the same house. The following day, the police returned the documents after Janakamma’s husband shelled out ₹10,000 so that no further legal charges would be slapped against the family for brewing Mahua, says Adamma. Towards the end of April, Janakamma delivered a baby girl, but the naming ceremony was held without Mahua liquor, a cultural shock for the family’s Koya friends and relatives. Their village, Kokkeragudem, in Alluri Sitarama Raju district, is nestled in the heart of a jungle with 50-odd households. It is located about 5 kilometres deep within an isolated forest from the Chintoor-Bhadrachalam national highway on the Andhra Pradesh-Chhattisgarh border. The village takes great pride in conserving Mahua trees, and remarkably, has three times more such trees than homes. Mahua, a tropical tree known by its scientific name Madhuca longifolia, holds great significance in the lives of various tribal communities in India. In Koya society, the tree is considered sacred and forms part of several rites and rituals. Its flowers bloom in early summer and are primarily used for brewing liquor. Dry flowers serve as a major source of income for the collectors. In the Godavari Valley of Andhra Pradesh, the Koyas extract edible oil from Mahua nuts.
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