A Somatometric Study of Bastar Tribes

Comparison between the Gondi and the Telugu

Abstract

Somatological researches of the three tribes; the Gondi-the distinct Central Dravidian speaking people, in Bastal district of middle India and of the populations in two areas, Hyderabad and Visakhpatnam; the Telugu speaking people, of Andhra Pradesh were carried out in 1981. The data on 290 persons in total; of the three tribes-the Muria (30 males and 14 females), Abujhmarias or Hill Marias (30 males and 12 females), Bison-Horn Maria (22 males and 19 females) and of the two populations-Hyderabad (54 males and 24 females) and Visakhapatnam (49 males and 36 females), was collected (Tab. 1).
The means with standard errors of 13 measurements and 9 indices of the head and face, and stature for men and women of the tribes and the Telugu are shown in Table 2. The morphologic facial height and the nose height were measured as the distance from the supraorbitale, not the nasion, to the gnathion and the subnasale respectively. Other measurements applied the methods describing in the textbook of anthropology by MARTIN & SALLER (1957).
The somatometric traits for both the sex of the three tribes in Bastal district have close resemblance to each other, and, according to their geographical distribution (Fig. 1), the means of the longitudinal measurements of the tribes tend to the north-south gradients of larger to smaller dimensions, that is Abujhmaria>Muria>Bison-Horn Maria in order, as pointed out by RAKSHIT (1974) shown in Table 3, but, except the nose height of the females, no significant differences are recognized statistically among them (P<0.01).
There are no significant differences for both the sex of the Telugu people between Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam in their somatometric traits, in spite of the means of the measurements for the females of Visakhapatnam, except the head length, show the tendency to smaller dimensions than those of Hyderabad.
Comparing the means of each measurements and indices of the Gondi; the three tribes in Bastal, with those of the Telugu in the two areas; Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, the means for both sex of the Gondi are smaller dimension than those of the Telugu except the nose breadth of the Gondi which is greater than that of the Telugu. The significant differences are recognized between the means of the two language groups except the bigonial breadth of both sex and the bizygomatic breadth of the females (P<0.01). As for the indices, the Gondi tend to more dolichocephalic and to more euryprosop than those forms of the Telugu, but no significant differences are recognized among them, and only the nasal index of the Gondi is more chamaerrhin with significant difference statistically (P<0.01).
However, the Gondi and the Telugu show greater similarities between them than either of them to the Todas in Nilgiris of south India (ABE, 1981) or the Sikh in east Punjab (EICKSTEDT, 1934) which belongs to the Indo-Afghan stock. The differences of the measurements and indices between the Gondi and the Telugu seem to show the morphological variations within the Central Dravidian speaking people or some same racial stock. My deep thanks are to Prof. G. G. REDDY (Andhra Univ., Visakhapatnam), Mr. A. SINGH (Head of Panchayat, Palki), Mr. G. L. TAN DON (National Mineral Development Corporation, Hyderabad), Mr. S.C. PURI (Baila Iron Ore Project No. 5, Bacheli), Mr. T. KUBOTA (Foundation for Advancement of International Science), Mr. T. SASAKI (Okura & Co, Ltd.), Mr. S. YAIIMA (Nichimen Co., Ltd.) and other field collaborators for their encouragements and arrangements. I am specially grateful to Prof. E. P. MENON (Friends World College, Bangalore) who helped to overcome many difficulties to obtain the anthropological data in the field and jungle.