Background: The Santals have innate expertise in managing their livestock’s health and it is still actively practiced the districts of rural West Bengal, India. Perusal literature indicates that no research work exclusively on ethnoveterinary medicine has been carried out till date from Purba Paschim Bardhaman Bengal. In this regard, indigenous therapeutic knowledge (ITK) for livestock care bei...

BACKGROUND: The aboriginal tribes of India constitute an important segment of the society in the world. Though a large number of genetic studies have been carried out in India, the genetic data of the populations in the state of Orissa are very limited, especially per taining to the indigenous tribal people. Most of the earlier studies were restricted to either a single tribe or a few genetic m...

understanding” (Johnson, 1987: xiv-xv) My Santal experience had drawn my attention not only to the fact that so-called primordial attachments were reproduced and changed in daily events of cultural constructions. However, I had hardly any observations on the ‘cultural constructors’ who were most active in such construction processes, and on their search for metaphoric imageries that expressed a...