Goto Gallery

"Traditional knowledge" is employed to mean knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional life-styles; the wisdom developed over many generations of holistic traditional scientific utilization of the lands, natural resources, and environment. It is generally passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation and for the most part undocumented. Traditional knowledge is valid and awaits its currently relevant wider application for human benefit. >>more

    Goto Gallery

India is an amalgam of 437 types of tribes, consists of 8% of the total population. Linguistically the tribes of India are broadly classified into four categories, (1) Indo-Aryans, (2) Dravidian, (3) Tibeto-Burmese and (4) Austric. Most of the tribes have their own language.

Major part of tribal habitat is hilly and forested. Tribal villages are generally found in areas away from the alluvial plains close to rivers or streams. With the general features such as 1. eco-system, 2. traditional economy, 3. supernatural-beliefs & practices and impacts of modernization, tribes can be classified as 1. Hunting, collecting & gathering 2. cattle-herder 3. simple artisan 4. Hill & shifting cultivation 5. Settled agriculture and 6. Industrial Urban worker. >>more

    Goto Gallery

Among human beings, health management practices, as are all other activities, form a part of the culture, "the man-made part of the environment". All culturally autonomous human groups have their own concept of health management system. Communities, known by the generic eponym 'tribe', live close to and in symbiotic relationship with nature. Consequently, tribal cultural systems exhibit the man-nature relationship at its best. The health management systems of the tribal communities are built around the propitiation of the disease afflicting supernatural agencies and the curative medicines are extracted from the environment, namely, plants, animals, minerals, etc. >>more