Every native group has its own mythology and that
further recreates the specific culture, Santals do have the mythology of
creation of world.
They believe that in the beginning, there was only
water and this primitive world was filled with water everywhere. God pondered
about how he could form the land where man can live . To operate both land and
water he created seven amphibian animals which were –crab, crocodile, eel,
pawn, earthworm and tortoise. For creating land, God then asked the king of
these species to help him figure out how to make land. The entire king appeared
before God one by one, but none of them couldn’t solve out the problem.
Finally, earthworm came and succeeded, it is said that for seven day and seven
nights earthworm ate at the bottom of the water which excreted on the back of tortoise.
The tortoise anchored himself on the both side firmly and brought up the earth
when he swam to the top of the water, and thus the earth formed.
This is why there is a belief among Santals that
movement of tortoise causes earthquake. In other words, when tortoise moves or
shakes, earthquakes occur in earth. Santals myth about the creation of world is
substantially different from myth associated with creation of world among the
other indigenous peoples of India and in many sense it is unique that it
ascribe the creation of earth with the help of amphibian animals, specially the
earthworm and tortoise. This is all about the story of creation of earth. We
also get this story on folk songs of Santal which tells about the creation of
world.
In this story, the animals are created in order to help God, it is the lowly king of earthworm that helps God create the land, we can get this true even from scientific viewpoint, because earthworm do aid in the formation of soil, thus this story from Santals captures some empirical truths.
