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Juang, one of the major aboriginal tribes of Orissa, are found in the districts of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal. Very little is known about their history, but they have their oral tales about their origin. According to Dr. V. Elwin, the word 'Juang' in the tribal dialect means simply 'man'. An alternative term, which their neighbors use to denote the Juang is Pattua, meaning the wearer of leaf-dress though leaf-dress has long been abandoned since the time when captain J. Johnstone forced the Juang to wear clothes. The Juang call themselves 'Juang', and fail to give the real connotation of the term. They are medium in stature with long head, prominent cheek bone , and broad nose having depression at the root . Their hair is black and coarse and the skin color varies from brown to black. Except a few they possess fairly strong body-build. On the basis of their linguistic affinities the Juang are grouped as Mundari , and they speak a dialect known as Juang.
Juang is a south Munda language of the western Austro Asiatic language family spoken in central and eastern India. The Munda group generally represents the so-called ‘tribal’ part. They are the least well-known and most poorly documented languages of the Indian subcontinent. The Munda-speaking peoples may have originally extended over a somewhat larger area before being marginalized into relatively remote hill country and forested areas in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar and the newly constituted Jharkand, and isolated pockets in adjacent areas of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra by the encroachment of Indo-Aryan- and, at an earlier period, Dravidian-speakers. Whether many of these groups have maintained the Munda language is unknown; reliable sociolinguistic and census data are lacking, so only rough estimates at total numbers of speakers can be made. Certain Aryanized groups may have originally spoken Munda languages , e.g. the Chero landowners of Bihar or the Lohar (Lohra) weavers of Ranchi (Parkin 1991:9); other groups, for example the Bhils, are thought by some to have been non-Aryan (possibly in part Munda-speaking) tribal originally.
Juang doesn’t have script system. It is written in Oriya script. There is no proper documentation of the language as such. However, collection of folk songs and folk tales are available.
Early accounts on the Juang give a varied picture of the tribe. The first flash of light thrown on the Juang was by E. A. Samuells in 1856. In the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal", he wrote:
"The dress of the men is ordinary one of the native peasantry, but the women wear no clothes whatsoever. Their only covering consists of two large branches of leaves (or rather of twigs with the leaves attached). It is from this original custom that the tribe have obtained from their neighbors the name of Puttooa quasi the people of the leaf ....... No covering is worm on the upper part of the person; but most of the females I have seen had neck. Laces of colored earthenware beads (made by themselves they told me)......Their villages are small, seldom containing more than six or eight families ...The Puttooas do not themselves own land, although they sometimes we were told, assist in its cultivation. The pursuits are chiefly those of the chase."
The next account of the Juang written by Colonel Dalton, appears in "Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal", 1872. According to him the Juang were, "in habits and customs the most primitive people" he had "met with or read of", and he considered the Juang as survival "of the stone age in situ". There huts were "amongst the smallest that human beings ever deliberately constructed as dwellings", though the dormitory was "a building of some pretensions".
W. W. Hunter's "A statistical Account of Bengal", published in 1877, describes the Juang, their dress, and their economy . "The men wore a single cotton cloth. The women had not even this, but simply a string round their waist, with a bunch of leaves before and behind. The life they love best is to wonder about the wood collecting wild products, which they barter for food".
In 1891, H. H. Risley published his. "The tribes and castes of Bengal." He gave an elaborate list of the Juang clans and described the social status of the people. He describes that the Juang "are beyond the pale of Hinduism, and no member of any recognized caste will eat or drink with them. Juangs themselves will take cooked food, water and sweet meats from the Bhunjas, but a Bhunja will not take even water from a Juang. In course of time no doubt they will attain a higher social position and the first step in this direction has already of some of the Hindu Gods".
Grierson (1891-1926) following Sten Kenow, presented a sketch of Juang language in the part IV of LSI. Later on Norman Zide, Arlin Zide, Pinnow(1960), Mahapatra (1962), Matson (1962) and Dasgupta (1978) wrote on various aspects of Juang grammar. The last and the only work on Juang syntax was done by Manideepa Patnaik during 1994-2000 as a part of her PhD thesis in Delhi University.
Prof. N. K. Bose's article on "Juang Associations was published in Man in India", Vol IX, 1929. Mr. Bose gives an elaborate list of Juang clans and describes their dormitory life and kinship system. Mr. Vivian Meik's book, "The people of the Leaves" published in 1931 gives a picture of the Juang which is far from truth and reality. In the words of Dr. Verrier Elwin, Meik's "worthless book would not deserve mention" which is "refreshingly free from the pedantries of maps and names either of people or places".
The most exhaustive paper on the Juang written by Dr. Verrier Elwin appeared in "Man in India". Vol XXVIII, 1948 Nos. 1 and 2. Dr. Elwin toured in Juang villages of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal and described may aspects of Juang life and culture; but the fact that he spent most of his time in Dhenkanal and Pallahara and collected his data mostly from these areas and not from Keonjhar led him to write on many things which are not typical Juang customs.
Juang is an unwritten language that has no script of its own. However, attempts have been made by Tribal Welfare Department of Government of Orissa to prepare teaching materials through Oriya script for training government officials posted in that area. Juang is basically used in household interactions only and not in any other domains of use. Children and adult of the speech community are getting mother tongue medium instruction from Ashram schools and various governmental and nongovernmental bodies. There is no language institute to teach Juang as a special language.
The traditional family tree of Munda (following Zide and Stampe 1964, Bhattacharya 1975) may be given as follows.
(1) Proto-Munda North Munda South Munda Kherwarian Korku Kharia-Juang Koraput Munda Santali Mundari Kharia Juang Gutob-Remo-Gta Sora-Gorum etc. Gutob-Remo Proto-Gta Sora Gorum Gutob Remo Plains Gta Hill Gta.
Traditional classifications of the South Munda languages, e. g. Zide & Stampe (1964) or Bhattacharya (1975), assume that there was a split of the Proto-South Munda into two daughter languages, Proto-Kharia-Juang [KJ] and Proto-Koraput Munda [KM], this latter language at some later point splitting into two daughter languages Proto-Sora-Gorum [SG] and Proto-Gutob-Remo-Gta÷ [GRG];
Juangs are found in Orissa only. The entire community is divided into plain Juang and hill Juanga. Hill Juangs are found in Keonjhar hills whereas plain Juangs are found in various parts of Keonjhar and Dhenkanal districts.
Juang is a free word order verb final language. It exhibits most of the features of verb final languages. Verbs in Juang carry tense,aspect and mood as well as person and number agreement markers. These markers are suffixed, prefixed, infixed and even ambifixed. There are subject and object agreement markers on the verb. It is a postpositional language and nouns carry lexical case markers according to their respective case marked postions.In sentences with a ditransitive verb, the unmarked order of the constituents in a sentence is subject-IO-DO-verb. When the direct object is [-animate], the accusative case marker may not surface. When the case marker does not surface, a classifier or a definite marker normally occurs with the Do. The genitive/possessive precedes the governing noun. In the posseesive/genitinve construction, pronominal clitics are copied on to the possessor or the governing noun. The genitive marker is different from possessive marker in this language. Adjectives, numerals and quantifiers precede the noun. Negative markers can either be prefixed,infixed,suffixed or ambifixed.Yes-No questions and tag-question markers occur to the left of the matrix clause. It has a relative correlative construction. There are clasue-initial as well as clause final complemetizers in this language.
Juang has been in constant touch with Oriya for many years. As a result, convergence at phonological, morphological and syntactic levels took place.
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