Sacred Facts · At a Glance
- Element
- fire
📷 Dirk Beyer · [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Religions
Gondi Religion (Persa Pen)
Gondi Religion
Gondi Religion
No primary scriptures are catalogued for this entry yet. If you know of scriptural references we have missed, please contribute them.
⚠️ CONTENT VERIFICATION STATUS: This draft is . All citations require validation.
The Gondi religion is the indigenous faith of the Gond people (also called Koitor), one of the largest tribal communities of India, with over 10 million people across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh. It is a rich nature-centred tradition of one supreme God, a great company of clan and village deities, ancestral spirits, and sacred groves.
The Gonds call themselves Koitor and their faith the way of the ancestors. Worship centres on the village deities (Pen) — protectors of the village and the clan — and on the supreme creator, Bara Deo (also called Persa Pen or Bhagavan).
Core beliefs:
The divine order: Gond cosmology is layered:
The sacred grove: Every Gond village has its sacred grove (the Devangudi or Jaher in regional usage), an uncut patch of forest where the village deities reside and where the community gathers for its great rituals. The grove is both a religious centre and an ecological sanctuary — a tradition that has preserved many acres of original forest.
The religious specialists:
The great festivals:
History and identity: The Gonds ruled significant kingdoms in central India — most famously the Gondwana kingdoms of Garha-Mandla, Deogarh, and Chanda — from the 15th to the 18th centuries, before their defeat by the Marathas and the British. Their religious traditions, recorded in the great Gondi creation myths collected by Verrier Elwin (e.g., The Muria and Their Ghotul; Myths of Middle India), are among the richest in India. In the modern era, a Gondi revival movement has promoted the Koitor identity, the Gondi language, and the recognition of the faith as a distinct religion.
Daily life: Gond families begin the day with simple offerings to the household deities; the ancestors are honoured at meals and family rites. The village gathers at the sacred grove for festivals and for the resolution of community matters.
The great cycle: The agricultural year — sowing, first fruits, harvest — is marked by rituals of thanksgiving and protection. The Dandari-Gusadi dance cycle in the Deccan, with its magnificent peacock-feather headdresses, is among the most celebrated tribal arts of India.
The Pardhan epics: The bards of the Gonds sing the long creation myths — the birth of the gods, the making of the world, the adventures of the ancestral heroes — at festivals and weddings. These epics are the scripture of the Gondi religion, transmitted orally for centuries.
The Gondi religion remains the living faith of the majority of the Gond people, especially in the forest belts of Bastar (Chhattisgarh), Gadchiroli (Maharashtra), and the Satpura hills of Madhya Pradesh, while Hindu and Christian influence is significant in other regions.
Contemporary significance:
The Gondi religion's historical importance lies in its depth and resilience: one of the great indigenous religious systems of the subcontinent, with its own theology, epics, and arts, sustained across millennia and still alive in the forests of central India.
Recommended reviewers: A Gond religious leader (Pujari or Devari), an anthropologist of central Indian tribal religion, a scholar of Gondi language and epics.
