Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi

At a Glance

• Central figures: Pilchu Haram, the first man, and Pilchu Budhi, the first woman, created by Thakur Jiu from the earth he shaped; also Lita the day horse, Ninda the night horse, and Marang Buru, the mountain spirit who became their guide.
• Setting: The Santhal tradition of eastern India (Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha); the story begins when the earth is new and still wet, set on the back of a tortoise in the primordial waters.
• The turn: Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi are given rice beer by a mischievous spirit and, drunk, they lie together without knowing what they do - and from that act, children come into the world.
• The outcome: Thakur Jiu withdraws from direct contact with the first couple, Marang Buru takes over as the intermediary spirit of the Santhal people, and the twelve clans are born from the children of Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi.
• The legacy: The Santhal trace their twelve original clans - their paris - to the children of the first couple, and the story is recounted during the Baha festival in spring when the sal trees flower.

There was water and nothing else. Thakur Jiu looked at the water and decided it was not enough. He reached down, pulled red clay from the bottom, and shaped two birds - a swan and a smaller water bird called has and hasil. They flew. He shaped a tortoise, set it in the water, and piled earth on its back. The earth stayed. He shaped a crab to hold the edges steady.

The earth was wet. It dried. Grass came. Trees came. The sal tree came first, because Thakur Jiu liked the sal. Then the animals arrived - how, exactly, depends on who is telling it, but they arrived, and they filled the new forest, and they ate and drank and fought one another as animals do.

Thakur Jiu looked at all of it and said it was not enough.

The Red Clay Figures

He took more of the same red earth and shaped two figures. The first was a man. The second was a woman. He set them on the ground and breathed on them, and they opened their eyes.

The man was Pilchu Haram. The woman was Pilchu Budhi.

They stood up. They did not know where they were. They did not know each other. They looked at the trees and the water and the animals moving between the trees, and they did not have words yet for any of it. Thakur Jiu taught them. He gave them the names for the sal tree, the mahua tree, the river, the hill. He showed them which roots to eat and which would kill them. He showed Pilchu Haram how to clear a patch of ground and plant rice. He showed Pilchu Budhi how to husk the grain with a stone.

They lived this way. They ate rice and roots and wild fruit. They slept under the sal trees. They did not touch each other, because they did not know that touching was something people did.

The Heron and the Day Horse

Thakur Jiu sent Lita, the day horse, across the sky each morning. Lita was white and carried the sun on its back. When Lita reached the far edge, Ninda, the night horse, came out - dark, carrying the moon. Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi watched the horses and counted the days by them. They had no other way of counting.

A heron stood in the shallows of the river near their clearing. Every morning it was there. Pilchu Budhi watched it, and one day she waded in to stand beside it. The heron looked at her, and she looked at the heron, and something passed between them - not words, but an understanding that the world was full of living things that stood beside each other.

She went back to Pilchu Haram and stood beside him. He did not move away.

The Rice Beer

This was when the trouble came, or the gift came, depending on who tells it.

A spirit - not Thakur Jiu, not Marang Buru, but a lesser spirit, a mischievous bonga who lived in the mahua tree - brewed rice beer. The bonga left a pot of it near the clearing where Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi slept. The pot smelled sweet. Pilchu Haram drank. Pilchu Budhi drank. They drank more. The world went warm and soft around them, and they lay down together.

In the morning, they woke and did not look at each other.

Thakur Jiu knew what had happened. He was not angry in the way a punishing god is angry. He was quiet. He stepped back from them - not far, but far enough that they could no longer hear his voice directly. The closeness between the creator and the first people broke, like a thread pulled too thin.

Pilchu Budhi’s belly grew. She bore children. She bore many children. Some say seven pairs, some say twelve. The numbers depend on the village, the elder, the season of telling. But the children came, and they grew, and each one was different from the others.

The Twelve Clans

Thakur Jiu would not speak to them directly anymore. He sent Marang Buru instead - the spirit of the great hill, the oldest mountain, the one whose roots went down to where the tortoise held the earth. Marang Buru came to Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi and told them what to do with the children.

Each child became the head of a paris - a clan. The Santhal count twelve original clans: Murmu, Kisku, Hembrom, Marandi, Soren, Tudu, Baske, Besra, Pauria, Chore, Bedea, and Hasdak. Each clan took its character from the child who founded it. The Murmu were steady. The Soren were quick. The Kisku held the headmanship. The Hembrom kept the rituals. And so on down the line, each paris with its own work, its own duty, its own way of standing in the world.

Pilchu Haram taught the sons to clear forest and plant rice. Pilchu Budhi taught the daughters to husk, to brew, to keep the house. Marang Buru taught all of them the proper way to honor the bongas - the spirits of the trees, the water, the crossroads, the thresholds. You leave a little rice beer at the base of the sal tree. You do not cut the mahua without asking. You speak to the river before you take water from it.

The Withdrawal of Thakur Jiu

Thakur Jiu did not vanish. He was still there - above, behind, underneath everything. But he no longer walked among the Santhal the way he had walked with Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi in those first days. The manjhi - the village headman - prays to Thakur Jiu at the start of planting and at the start of harvest, and Thakur Jiu hears, but he does not answer in a voice anyone can hear.

Marang Buru answers. The bongas answer. The sal grove answers, in the spring, when the flowers open and the air smells like honey and the Santhal gather for Baha - the spring festival. They dance. They sing the old songs. They remember that the first man and the first woman stood under these same trees, not knowing what they were, not knowing what they would become.

Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi are buried somewhere in the earth they came from. No one marks the spot. The Santhal do not need to. The earth itself is the marker. Every handful of red clay is the same clay Thakur Jiu shaped them from, and every child born into the twelve clans is proof that the shaping held.