Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Purillu, a traditional Jatapu tribal house of Andhra Pradesh has been displayed on the official website and social media pages of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), Bhopal.
It is part of its online exhibition series- 42, which began from April 1. The exhibit is in the Tribal Habitat open air exhibition of the exhibition.
Museum director Praveen Kumar Mishra said Jatapu tribe resides in hilly terrain and foot hills of Viziangaram district of Eastern ghats region in Andhra Pradesh.
The Jatapu community is a section of Khonds. They have synonyms like Khond and Samanthulu. In Telugu, samanthulu means feudatories. Their mother tongue is Kuvi belonging to Dravidian family of languages.
Among Jatapus, the person who fixes auspicious time is called Disari. He is also known as Muhoorthagadu or Chukka Muhoorthagadu. He is consulted to fix time before undertaking any important work like house construction, weddings etc. He also fixes time and day for celebration of festivals and worship of deities.
Museum assistant keeper, P Sankara Rao said house is fenced. The house is generally built with mud, stone, brick, wattle. The roof is covered with a thick bamboo frame and dried local grass called Dabbagaddi is laid.
Jatapus keep their houses clean, plaster floor with cow dung (Avupeda) and decorate houses with black and red borders of earthy colours. They have a good sense of hygiene, a pit (Penta) with a radius of 3 metres, which is 4-metre deep. It is dug 25 meters away from the home. They collect every day waste and dump in pit. Every six months or sometimes once in a year, the waste gets converted into compost.
They use manure for their dry and wet land cultivation. The cattle sheds are constructed either adjacent to dwelling houses or little apart.
