Beliefs regarding Causes of Diseases and Healers among the Baiga

Abstract

Various conceptions and misconceptions prevail in human society about causes of diseases. In different human societies in different human cultures, opinions and criteria regarding causes of diseases vary. Such opinions and criteria become perceptions in that particular society. The universe of our sample is 400 married Baiga males belonging to age 18-49 years were selected through multistage random sampling. Structured interview schedule and non-participant observation were used for collection and cross validation of data. most of the respondents (i.e. 75.8%) believed that  sorcery of the witchcraft is the main cause of illness followed by 58.5 %, 58.2 %, 46 % respondents simultaneously accepted that acts of devils, evil eye, evil touch and evil mouth and good goddess were responsible for spread of diseases among them. On the light of above findings more or less all respondents believe that supernatural beings are the main factors for causing diseases, apart from that they think some natural factors also play vital role. It was found that in the choice of their healer whom they appealed as ‘Baiga’, two prime reasons that worked- they had profound faith in him, and secondly, he was readily available.