Munda - Settlements

Most Munda live in villages, though some live and work in towns such as Ranchi and Jamshedpur, and some Birhor and Korwa, being seminomadic, have temporary forest camps. Traditionally, there was a tendency for villages to be fixed only temporarily because of the requirements of shifting cultivation, but with the government trying to discourage this form of agriculture, villages now tend to be more permanent. Villages may consist of detached dwellings or sometimes (as among some Sora) of dwellings connected into a longhouse. Houses are not generally oriented toward particular compass points, but they are usually symbolically divided internally according to principles of gender and age (the eldest members sleep nearest the hearth, male members on the right of the house, female members on the left, etc.). The hearth is especially important ritually and is the spiritual center of the homestead.