Kharia

The Kharia are a Munda people of the forested uplands where Jharkhand and Odisha meet, centred on the Sundargarh, Simdega and Gumla hills. Their Kharia language forms, together with Juang, its own branch of the Munda languages of the Austroasiatic family. Like other Munda peoples they descend from Austroasiatic settlers who reached the Odisha coast from Southeast Asia by about 1500 BCE.

They are divided into Hill, Delki and Dudh Kharia: the Hill Kharia remained hunters, gatherers and labourers living on game, honey and wild tubers, while the Delki and Dudh sections took to settled plough farming, and many in the plains held land as tenants under zamindars.

Their villages kept close to the forest, and their religion centred on the spirit groves and ancestor cults of the Sarna complex shared with neighbouring tribes.