Nanga Baiga

Nanga Baiga, 'the Naked Baiga', is the primordial first man and archetypal earth-priest from whom the tribe descends and takes its vocation. A magician of great power, he was set by God to remedy the newly made earth, which trembled and would not hold still: receiving four great nails forged by the Agaria smith, he (with Nanga Baigin) drove them into the four corners of the world and fixed it fast, and for this the Baiga are honoured as guardians of the earth. He sacrificed a sow to Dharti Mata, a pig to the tiger-god's shrine, a goat to the forest spirit and a white cock to Thakur Deo, binding the powers of the land by covenant. Given an axe rather than a plough, he raised the sacred grains kodo and kutki by bewar and forbade the tearing of Mother Earth. Sources differ on his origin, some making him the son of Dharti Mata, others born of the sage Vashishta's urine on the Hill of Elephants; his union with Nanga Baigin produced the sons from whom, in one telling, both Baiga and Gond descend.

Parentage

• maternal: Dharti Mata

Domains

• earth guardianship
• magic
• shifting cultivation
• priesthood

Powers

• pins down the four corners of the trembling earth
• commands great magic power over land and beasts
• institutes bewar shifting cultivation with the axe

Epithets

• Nanga Baiga — the Naked BaigaVerrier Elwin, The Baiga (1939). (primary)
• Bhumia — earth-lord, earth-priestR. V. Russell & Hira Lal, Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces, vol. II (1916). (secondary)

Relations

• spouse: Nanga BaiginThe naked first pair, ancestors of the Baiga.Verrier Elwin, The Baiga (1939). (primary)

Sources

• Nanga Baiga is the naked first man and earth-priest of the Baiga, a great magician who steadied the trembling earth and founded bewar cultivation.: Verrier Elwin, The Baiga (London: John Murray, 1939). (primary); Verrier Elwin, Myths of Middle India (Oxford University Press, 1949). (primary)