インド東部稲作民の自然観ームンダ人の事例を中心に

抄録

The Munda people, who lives in the Chotanagpur plateau in eastern India, is a ricecultivator. This paper is to investigate the Munda’s view on Nature.
I begin to discuss the concept of soul in Mundari, which is very complicated. In the correspondence to the word ‘soul’ in English, we have four words; e.g. ji, roa, raisi, wnbul. The words roa and raisi are used only for humanbeings, domesticated animals; i.e., cows and goats, and main crops; i.e., rices and finger millets. Further, I found the paratlelism between human’s or ancestoral soul and rice’s soul in the myths and rituals. This is an important idea to understand the Munda’s view on Nafire.
Moreover, the Munda people prays God for successful rice cultivation in the agrarian rituds. These ue singbonga (Sun God), buru bonga (Mountain God) and ikir bonga (River God). All is belonging to the nature. It means that the rice-ancestor-nature complex can be found in the Munda microcosmos.
ln conclusion it seems to me that the Munda culture also contains a typical feature of pan-Asian rice culture. We need a comparative study on Asian rice culture in this respect.