Mage Parab is the principal

festival A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...

celebrated among the

Ho people The Ho or Kolha people are an Austroasiatic Munda ethnic group of India. They call themselves the ''Ho'', ''Hodoko'' and ''Horo,'' which mean 'human' in their own language. Officially, however, they are mentioned in different subgroups like K ...

of eastern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, and is also celebrated by the

Munda people The Munda people are an Austroasiatic speaking ethnic group of India. They predominantly speak the Mundari language as their native language, which belongs to the Munda subgroup of Austroasiatic languages. The Munda are found mainly concentr ...

. It is not celebrated by any other Munda-speaking peoples like Juang, Gadab and is much less prominent to the Mundas than to the Hos. It is held in the month of Mage ponai in honor of the deity Singbonga who, in the Ho

creation myth A creation myth (or cosmogonic myth) is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Creation myths develop ...

, created ''Luku Kola'', the first man on Earth. It was first described in 1912 by Indian

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

Rai Bahadur Sarat Chandra Roy in his ''The Mundas and their Country''.

References

Religious festivals in India Festivals in Odisha Culture of Jharkhand February observances Annual events in India Religion in Jharkhand {{India-festival-stub