Ethnographic account of traditional healing beliefs and practices among Korku tribes in Maharashtra through emic approach

Abstract

Indigenous culture and practices have evolved largely around nature and natural systems of their surroundings. This holds true even for their traditional medicines and healing practices, which, for several reasons, have been a life support system for tribal communities such as that remain excluded from modern healthcare systems. However among Korkus, not much have been studied about this traditional system of medicine. The current study aims to present an ethnographic account of the processes of traditional healing beliefs and practices used to treat several diseases by the Korku tribes in this context. The study highlights how in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, a combination of various natural elements such as plants and animal parts and several supernatural elements such as charms, sacrifices and magic are used to cure pneumonia, migraine, fever, jaundice, infertility, weakness and malnutrition, leucorrhoea, diarrhoea, skin infections, dog bites and snake bites. This study recommends that the scope, limits and growth of traditional healing practices in tribal health be taken into account.