God

CRITICAL: Isor (a regional loanword ultimately from Sanskrit-derived Ishwar, attested in Christian usage across several Munda and Adivasi-language Bible translations) is used here provisionally rather than the indigenous high-god candidates Marang Buru or Sing Bonga, to avoid presenting the biblical God as simply an existing bonga under a new name. This is a genuinely live and contested missiological question — Bible translators working in other animist-background Munda and tribal languages have sometimes chosen to adapt an indigenous high-god term instead of a loanword — and this choice should be revisited with a Santali-speaking theologian rather than treated as settled, consistent with this language’s thinner translation tradition.