Ethnomedicine of Santal Tribe Living Around Susunia Hill of Bankura District, West Bengal, India: the Quantitative Approach
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Journal of Applied Pharmaceutical Science Vol. 5 (02), pp. 127-136, February, 2015 Available online at http://www.japsonline.com DOI: 10.7324/JAPS.2015.50219 ISSN 2231-3354 Ethnomedicine of Santal tribe living around Susunia hill of Bankura district, West Bengal, India: The quantitative approach Chowdhury Habibur Rahaman*, Suman Karmakar Department of Botany, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan- 731235, West Bengal, India. ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Article history: The present paper deals with the observations on ethnomedicinal uses of wild plants by the Santal tribal people of Received on: 27/10/2014 villages surrounding the Susunia hill of Bankura district, West Bengal. Data were collected by interviewing Santal Revised on: 22/11/2014 medicine men and knowledgeable persons with the help of semi-structured and open-ended questionnaire. The Accepted on: 04/01/2015 data have been analyzed employing suitable statistical tools like Informant Consensus value for Plant Part (CPP), Available online: 27/02/2015 Consensus Factor (Fic), Fidelity Level (FL%), Preference ranking exercise, Importance value (IVs) and Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC). Altogether 25 plants have been recorded which are used by the Santal people in Key words: formulation of 40 ethnomedicinal preparations for curing 27 types of diseases. Leaves secured the highest CPP Susunia hill, ethnomedicine, value (0.33). Circulatory system disorder, Nervous System disorder and Birth/Puerperium disorder secured the Informant consensus, highest F ic value (1). Abrus precatorius L., Ampelocissus latifolia (Roxb.) Planch., etc. secured the highest FL factor, Fidelity level, value(100%). Curcuma longa L. has been identified as most preferred species by preference ranking exercise. The Preference ranking exercise. highest score of IVs observed in Borassus flabellifer L., Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.,etc. The PCC between IVs and FL was 0.679 showing moderate positive significant association. Bioassay of these ethnomedicinal remedies has to be carried out further for their scientific validation. INTRODUCTION research work in the field of ethnobotany. The information about prescription, pharmacology, attitude towards diseases, diagnosis, Ethnomedicine has been playing very important role in etc. of the age-old tribal medicine system are still lying unclaimed human health care since time immemorial. This practice of health in different parts of the district Bankura. A perusal of literature care is based on belief and experience of the ethnic people, which shows that documentation of ethnobotanical works from this district is a part of their tradition and culture. There has been an has been made by different workers (Acharya and Mukherjee, increased demand of herbal drug in international trade because 2010a, b; Banerjee et al., 2013; Basu, 2003; Choudhuri et al., 1982; herbal medicines are cheap, more effective, easily available and Ghosh et al., 1996; Ghosh, 1999, 2002, 2003a, b, 2006, 2008; Kar, supposed to have no side effects. This branch of ethnobotany is 1999; Mallick and Mallick, 2012; Mallick et al., 2012; Mondal and now getting more importance in the field of pharmacognosy for Biswas, 2012; Mukherjee and Namhata, 1988; Namhata and its basic information regarding medicinal plants, their various Mukherjee, 1988, 1989, 1992; Namhata and Ghosh, 1993; Pal et traditional uses, way of preparations, doses, and mode of al.,1989; Paul, 2004; Paul and Verma, 2004; Sinhababu and administration of crude drugs. In our national agenda, Banerjee, 2013). No ethnobotanical work including its quantitative documentation, conservation, preparation of database of analysis has been carried out from the Susunia hill of Bankura medicinal plants and their cultivation are now priority issues. district. In this context, present study has been designed to Number of medicinal plants is steadily being increased in the document and conserve the traditional herbal knowledge of Santal traditional pharmacopoeias of our country through extensive tribe living around Susunia hill. Bankura is one of the seven districts of Burdwan Division in the Indian state of West Bengal. It * Corresponding Author lies between N 22°46′ and N 23°38′ and between E 86°36′ and E Dr. Chowdhury Habibur Rahaman ,Associate Professor, Department of 87°46′. The district has an area of 6881.24 sq km and total forest Botany, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan- 731235 ,West Bengal, India. E-mail: [email protected] area of 1404 sq km. © 2015 Chowdhury Habibur Rahaman and Suman Karmakar. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License -NonCommercial-ShareAlikeUnported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). 128 Rahaman and Karmakar / Journal of Applied Pharmaceutical Science 5 (02); 2015: 127-136 Fig. 1: map of Bankura district showing the study sites. Rahaman and Karmakar / Journal of Applied Pharmaceutical Science 5 (02); 2015: 127-136 129 The Biharinath and Susunia are two remarkable hills of availability of traditional healers (Figure-1). The villages were this district. Susunia hill (around N 23.39693°and E 86.98527°) is visited in different seasons (summer, monsoon and winter) to avail situated in the north-west of Bankura district, in the Chhotanagpur most of the plant resources in their flowering condition. Twenty gneissic plateau of West Bengal and rises to 439.5 m above sea Santal key medicine men and five knowledgeable persons were level (Figure-1). selected as informants using purposive sampling method (Dolores It is a very small hill and runs for a length of about 3 km. and Tongco, 2007) (Table-1 and Figure-2). Most of the informants Like other forest areas in the district, forest of the Susunia hill is belong to an age between 50 and 80 years. The key informants also tropical dry deciduous type dominated by Sal tree (Shorea selected from each sampled villages were the most knowledgeable robusta Gaertn. f.). The hill is very rich in its plant resources ones as suggested by the tribal elders of respective villages. Before including medicinal plants. The district Bankura is inhabited by interview, Prior Informed Consent (PIC) was taken from each many tribal communities such as Santals, Oraons, Koras, Bhumij, informant. The data have been collected by interviewing the Mech, Mahali, Bedia and Mundas. Santals represent the largest informants through semi-structured and open-ended questionnaire. indigenous tribal community in the district and the villages The Santal name of the plant, parts used, preparation and mode of surrounding the Susunia hill are dominated by this tribe. The tribal administration of the crude drug, disease cured, etc. were recorded villages selected for this study are located within 10 km radius in detail. Interviews were conducted in the local languages i.e. around the hill. Santali and Bengali. The plant specimens were collected and identified with the help of different Floras (Prain, 1903; Sanyal, MATERIALS AND METHODS 1994; Saxena and Brahmam, 1994; Varma, 1981). Correct and Valid scientific names for the recorded plant species have been Data collection used here following The International Plant Names Index (IPNI). Ethnomedicinal data were collected between March Collected plant specimens have been preserved as herbarium 2011–February 2013 following the standard methods (Jain, 1987; specimen following conventional techniques (Jain and Rao, 1977) Jain and Mudgal, 1999) from 14 tribal villages that were selected and kept in Visva-Bharati Herbarium, Department of Botany, with the help of aged persons in the villages on basis of the Visva -Bharati, Santiniketan for future references. Fig. 2: A. An interview with Rabindranath Hembrame (a key medicine man); B. Rasamoy Murmu showing his medicinal collection; C. Kartik Murmu giving medicine to a patient; D. Mohan Hansda performing some rituals as part of his ethnomedicinal practice and patients waiting for him. 130 Rahaman and Karmakar / Journal of Applied Pharmaceutical Science 5 (02); 2015: 127-136 Quantitative ethnomedicinal data analysis RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Here in this study, different quantitative tools like The result has been presented in tabular form. The Consensus value for Plant Part [CPP](Monteiro et al., 2006), species are arranged in alphabetical order of their scientific names Informant Consensus Factor [F ](Trotter and Logan, 1986), ic with family name and voucher number, followed by the Santal Fidelity Level [FL%](Friedman et al., 1986), Preference ranking name, plant parts used, mode of administration, diseases cured exercise (Martin, 1995), Importance value [IV ] (Byg and Balsev, s FL% and IV (Table- 2). 2001) and Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) were employed s to analyze the collected data. Consensus value for Plant Part (CPP) measures the Medicinal plants reported degree of agreement among informants concerning the plant part Altogether 25 ethnomedicinal plants have been recorded from the district. These 25 recorded taxa spread over 22 species, used and is calculated as CPP = Px / Pt , where Px = number of 22 genera, 14 families of dicotyledons and 3 species, 3 genera, 3 times a given plant part was cited; Pt = total number of citation of all parts. families of monocotyledons. The family Fabaceae was represented by the highest number of species (4 species, 16%) Fic has been determined to identify the most potential medicinal plant species used in the culture of Santal people of the followed by Asteraceae (3 species, 12%), Euphorbiaceae,