Importance of Plants in Subsistence of Bhil Tribe

Archana Sahare^{1, 2,} , Vinay Kumar^{3, 2} and Bindu Sharma^{3, 2}

¹Govt Arts Girls’ College, Kota, Rajasthan

²Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Secondary Metabolites, Department of Botany, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur

³Department of Botany, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Cite this paper:
Archana Sahare, Vinay Kumar and Bindu Sharma. Importance of Plants in Subsistence of Bhil Tribe. Applied Ecology and Environmental Sciences. 2021; 9(7):680-686. doi: 10.12691/aees-9-7-6

Abstract

Bhil are the largest ethnic group of India which are mainly found on Gujrat border, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. There are two sub categories of Bhil tribe Ujaliya / Kshatriya Bhil, which are basically considered Kshatriya who went in to the forests at the time of Mughal invasion. While second one is Langot Bhil, they are the original Bhil’s living in the forests, their customs are still old and mainly live in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. According to the census of India, the country had a tribal population of 3 crores in the year 1961 which increased to 10.42 crore in the 2011 census, and which has a decadal growth rate of 23.7%. Current report is based on various surveys of southern Rajasthan to explore their thrift on basis of, culture, customs and their dependency on plants for livelihood that if they are “van putra” then how forests and their products are important for their subsistence. Present investigation has been done during march 2018 to march 2020 and investigators have visited Southern Rajasthan tribal festivals and their local weekly market ‘haat’ to observe their economic securities through forest product as these tribes comes in local markets or in festivals with their unique products to sell them and get some financial security from urban, semi urban or village areas.

Keywords:
Bhils livelihood subsistence plant produce Ethnobotany

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