Paper short abstract:

Tribal statehood is closely linked with five main factors: the ecology, technology, peoples' organisation, territorial consciousness and ritual practices for boundary maintenance . The hegemony of the emergent clan results in a hierarchy of power that led to formation of incipient statehood.

Paper long abstract:

Binjhals, a pluri clan based tribe , living in western part of Odisha, India and extended to the boardng states like Chattishgarh keep their myths alive through ritual practices every yera . The reconstraction of territorial consciousness among clan members of dominant clan is expressed through rites and rituals that are in the fading memmory of the people which can be reconstructed through demographic distribution and clan concentration, the inter-clan cluster marriage hierarchy and the relative resource holding in terms of individual and community rights over natural resources as of now . The existing theories of origin and development of tribal statehood remains inadequate to understand the dynamism of political structure . The paper tries to link between the existing theories of tribal state formation and explains how among Binjhal unlike other tribes of India and South East countries the statehood in its genesis and development the theories remain inadequate .