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Unit IV Environment and Society A. Inter Relationship Between Society and Environment: Nature - Man-Spirit Complex

Vidyarthi proposed the concept of a Nature-Man-Spirit Complex to describe the culture of the Maler tribe in India. He observed that the Maler tribe's social organization, economic activities, and religious beliefs were intimately intertwined with and dependent on their natural environment. The book described the Maler culture in three parts: Nature, looking at the tribe's ecological dependence on forests and slash-and-burn agriculture; Man, examining their social institutions and lifecycle; and Spirit, covering their religious beliefs and sacred practices. Vidyarthi concluded that for tribes in India, close relationships exist between social organization, religious complexity, and local ecology.

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660 views2 pages

Unit IV Environment and Society A. Inter Relationship Between Society and Environment: Nature - Man-Spirit Complex

Vidyarthi proposed the concept of a Nature-Man-Spirit Complex to describe the culture of the Maler tribe in India. He observed that the Maler tribe's social organization, economic activities, and religious beliefs were intimately intertwined with and dependent on their natural environment. The book described the Maler culture in three parts: Nature, looking at the tribe's ecological dependence on forests and slash-and-burn agriculture; Man, examining their social institutions and lifecycle; and Spirit, covering their religious beliefs and sacred practices. Vidyarthi concluded that for tribes in India, close relationships exist between social organization, religious complexity, and local ecology.

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Arindam Prakash
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Unit IV Environment and Society

a. Inter Relationship Between Society and Environment: Nature - Man-


Spirit Complex
The book The Maler: A Nature-Man-Spirit Complex of Hill Tribe (1963) was written by Lalita
Prasad Vidyarthi. He obtained his master’s degree from Lucknow University in anthropology,
studying under D. N. Majumdar. He received PhD from Chicago University in 1958 under the
supervision of Robert Refill and Mckim Marriott. His doctoral dissertation was The sacred
complex of a traditional city of Northern India. Vidyarthi declared that the social scientists
must not ignore the Indian social thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Swami
Vivekananda, Raja Ram Mohan Roy etc. who spoke in terms of spiritual humanism, universal
love and non-violence.

It is for the Indian Anthropologists to take them seriously and not to be carried away by the
voluminous writings of the Western scholars who termed them to be animist and savages. Thus,
in 1951, Vidyarthi learned of the Maler tribe, which according to him was one of the few
primitive tribes of great anthropological interest in India. When he got to know about the
primitiveness of the isolated Malers, he decided to make them the object of his scientific
investigation. The Maler is listed as Scheduled Tribes in Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
They are also known by Malto or Pahariya. He studied man in relation with man and he
presented the four types of Maler spirits, (Gossaiyan the benevolent spirits, Jiwe Urrkya the
ancestors, Alchi evil spirits and Chergani spiritual power of a witchcraft) in a framework of
sacred groves, sacred performances, and sacred specialists. This was the basis of the famous
concept of Nature-Man-Spirit Complex proposed by Vidyarthi.

In his book, in which he describes the culture of a hill tribe the Maler in terms of this complex
where the three ingredients of the complex are interdependent and mutually complementary. It
is based on the fact that arising out of man’s close interaction with and dependence on nature
is his belief in the supernatural and the spirit world. It has been found that in tribal India there
is an intimate relationship and interaction between social organizations on the one hand and
religious complex and ecological conditions on the other hand.

1
The book was divided into three parts with Nature, Man and Spirit respectively. In the first part
he demonstrates the ecological basis of Maler culture showing the importance of hills and
forests as well as the cultivation around which the entire Maler life revolved. In the second part
dealing with man, he examines the network of relationships in all its aspects including the
structure and organization of the family, different social institutions and lifecycle of a typical
Maler. In the third part on spirit, he describes the religious beliefs in supernatural beings, sacred
centers, sacred performances and sacred specialists.

Vidyarthi asserted that Maler culture originated with developed and flourished in the lap of
nature. Forests surround the Malers and mainly exiling it in the context of its forests can have
comprehensive understanding of this culture. In addition to providing land for slash-and burn-
cultivation a main source of Maler economy, the forests provide them with food, drink, shelter,
medicine etc. He discovered that every moment of the Maler life was profoundly influenced
by nature on the one hand and spirit on the other. These two ingredients of the complex play a
paramount role in the life cycle of the Maler people.

He described how the forest and slash and burn cultivation shaped the socio-cultural and
economic life of this tribe. We can assume from this phenomenon that among the tribes in
Indian there is close social organization, religious complexity, and ecology are inextricably
intertwined with each other. The unavoidable relationship makes human society smooth with
socio-cultural mobility. He divided the concept into three parts as Malar Tribe culture reflected
the idealistic connection between the human and other complexity. In the first segment, the
tribe completely depended on the forests and hill for their livelihood as a collection of woods,
foods and cultivating the land for agricultural purposes. Secondly, the Malers try to maintain
the relationship in each dimension of social organization i.e. family, kinship, or other members
of the village. Thirdly, above two segments of human life controlled by the religious
phenomenon, spirit or supernatural power associated with sacred performing of sacred
specialist who makes this possible. So, he derived this notion Nature - Man - Spirit. It explains
that men have closely interacted with nature through the belief system of supernatural being or
spirit.

*Refer to class discussion regarding Durkheim’s explanation of sacred and profane


*Must explain together with the concept of sacred groves

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