Sanaurhia.—Subcaste of Brāhman. Synonym for Sanādhya.
Sanbāgh.—(A little tiger.) A section of Bhulia.
Sānd.—(The bull.) A totemistic sept of Kawar. They do not use bullocks for ploughing, or are supposed not to. A section of Khangār. They do not give a present of a bull at weddings. A section of Māli.
Sania.—(A grower of san-hemp.) Subcaste of Kāchhi.
Saniāsi.—Name for a religious mendicant. Synonym for Gosain.
Sanjogi.—A class of Bairāgis or mendicants who marry, also called Grihastha.
Sankrita.—An eponymous section of Kanaujia Brāhmans.
Sānp.—(Snake.) A sept of Gond and Kawar.
Santāl, Saonta, Sonthāl.—An important tribe of Bengal, belonging to the Munda family. The transfer of five of the Chota Nāgpur States has brought more than 10,000 Santāls into the Central Provinces. They belong principally to the Sargūja State and a few are returned from Udaipur State and from the Bilāspur District, but in all those tracts they are known as Saonta and appear to have been cut off from the main tribe for a considerable period. According to Mr. Skrefsrud the name Santāl is a corruption of Saontār and was given to the tribe by the Bengalis because they lived in the country about Saont in Midnāpur. Sir H. Risley held that the tribe might equally well have given its name to the locality, and there was no means of ascertaining which theory was correct. The forms Santāl and Sonthāl are only used by natives who have come into contact with Europeans. Santāls call themselves ‘hārko,’ men, or ‘hārhāpān,’ man-child.[81] At the present day when a Santāl is asked to what caste he belongs he will almost invariably reply Mānjhi, which means a village headman, and is the common title of the tribe; if further explanation is demanded, he will add Santāl Mānjhi. Whether the term Santāl was derived from the Saont pargana or not, it is therefore at any rate a name conferred by the Hindus and affords no evidence in favour of a separate origin of the tribe.
There seems good reason to hold that the Santāls are only a branch of the Kols or Mundas, who have been given a distinct designation by their Hindu neighbours, while their customs and traditions have been modified either by long separation from the Mundas of Chota Nāgpur or by contact with Hindu influences. Sir G. Grierson’s account of the two dialects Santāli and Mundāri shows that they closely resemble each other and differ only in minor particulars. The difference is mainly to be found in the vocabulary borrowed from Aryan neighbours, and in the grammatical modifications occasioned by the neighbouring Aryan forms of speech.[82] Of Mundāri he says: “Aspirated letters are used as in Santāli, the semi-consonants are apparently pronounced in the same way as in Santāli; genders and numbers are the same, the personal pronouns are the same, the inflexion of verbs is mainly the same.”[83] Some points of difference are mentioned by Sir G. Grierson, but they appear to be of minor importance. The Mundas, like the Santāls, call themselves hārā-ko or men. In the vocabulary of common words of Mundāri and Santāli given by Colonel Dalton[84] a large proportion of the words are the same. Similarly in the list of sept-names of the tribes given by Sir H. Risley[85] several coincide. Among the 15 names of main septs of the Santāls, Besra, a hawk, Murmu nilgai, or stag, and Aind, eel, are also the names of Munda septs. The Santāl sept Hansda, a wild goose, is nearly identical with the Munda sept Hansa, a swan; the Santāl septs Kisku and Tudu are sept-names of the Hos, a branch of the Mundas; and in one or two other names there is a great resemblance. The principal deity of the Santāls, Marang Buru, is a Munda god. In the inheritance of property both tribes have the same rule of the exclusion of daughters. In his article on Ho, Sir H. Risley indeed states that the Santāls, Hos and Mundas are local branches of the same tribe.