The Munda people are an Austroasiatic speaking ethnic group of the Indian subcontinent. They predominantly speak the Mundari language as their native language, which belongs to the Munda subgroup of Austroasiatic languages. The Munda are found mainly concentrated in the south and East Chhotanagpur Plateau region of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. The Munda also reside in adjacent areas of Madhya Pradesh as well as in portions of Bangladesh, Nepal, and the state of Tripura. They are one of India's largest scheduled tribes. Munda people in Tripura are also known as Mura. Etymology Munda means headman of village in Munda-Makni system to govern villages in South-east Chotanagpur. They call themselves hodoko or horo means men. Robert Parkin notes that the term "Munda" did not belong to the Austroasiatic lexis and is of Sanskrit origin. According to R. R. Prasad, the name "Munda" is a Sanskrit word means "headman". It is an honorific name given by Hindus and hence became a tribal name. According to Standing (1976), It was under British rule, the term Munda started to used for the tribal group. History According to linguist Paul Sidwell, Munda languages arrived on the coast of Odisha from Southeast Asia about 4000–3500 years ago. The Munda people initially spread from Southeast Asia, but mixed extensively with local Indian populations. They are genetically closely related to Mah Meri and Temuan people of Malaysia. According to historian R. S. Sharma, tribals who spoke the Munda language occupied the eastern region of ancient India. Many Munda terms occur in Vedic texts that were written between 1500 BCE and 500 BCE. Their presence in texts compiled in the upper Gangetic basin late in that period suggests that Munda speakers were there at the time. According to Barbara A. West, the Mundas claim origin in Uttar Pradesh, and a steady flow eastward in history as other groups moved into their original homeland; she suggests they inhabited a much larger territory in ancient India. Recent study suggest that Munda languages spread as far as Eastern Uttar Pradesh but not beyond that and impacted Eastern Indo-Aryan languages as some group such as Musahar have munda genetic lineage. The claim of Munda presence in Upper gangetic plain have no linguistic and genetic basis. In the late 1800s, during the British Raj, the Mundas were forced to pay rents and work as bonded labourers to the zamindars. During Kol uprising in