Doma (caste)
ethnic group in India
The Doma (Sanskrit: डोम, romanized: ḍoma, IPA: [ɖoːmɐ]), also known as Dom, Domra, Domba, Domaka, Dombara and Dombari, are castes, or groups, scattered across India. The Doma/Dom were a caste of drummers. According to Tantra scriptures, the Dom were engaged in the occupations of singing and playing music. Historically, they were considered one of the untouchable castes, known as Dalits, and their traditional occupation was the disposal and cremation of dead bodies. The Doma were formerly classified as a criminal tribe under the 1870s Criminal Tribes Acts of the British Raj. They are in the list of Scheduled Castes for Reservation in India in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir.
Etymology
Individuals who live by singing and music were referred to as Doma in Tantric scriptures. According to historian M.P. Joshi, the word Duma is connected to the sound of a drum. Its presumed root, ḍom, which is connected with drumming, is linked to damara and damaru, Sanskrit terms for "drum" and the Sanskrit verbal root डम् ḍam- 'to sound (as a drum)', perhaps a loan from Dravidian, e.g. Kannada ḍamāra 'a pair of kettle-drums', and Telugu ṭamaṭama 'a drum, tomtom'.
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This entry incorporates text from “Doma (caste)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.