Within Santal religious life, oral traditions, songs, and dance function as a kind of living scripture, in which theology, ritual practice, and ethical vision are carried not by books but by memory, voice, and body. Sacred narratives and myths—especially those concerning creation, the spirit-world (bonga), and the role of Marang Buru—are recited and retold, shaping an understanding of how humans, nature, and spirits are interwoven. These stories also carry moral teachings and clan histories, including genealogies that link families to ancestral spirits, so that spiritual knowledge is inseparable from social identity. Ritual formulas, prayers, and incantations are carefully memorized and transmitted by religious specialists such as the naike and ojha, yet they are heard and absorbed by the wider community, ensuring that no single person is the sole guardian of the sacred.

Songs deepen and refine this oral inheritance by giving it rhythm, melody, and emotional resonance. Ritual and festival songs associated with celebrations such as Sohrai and Baha encode the names and attributes of deities, the proper order of offerings, and the meaning of life‑cycle rites. Through their lyrics, they narrate encounters with spirits, reflect on life, death, and the afterlife, and recall significant events in the community’s past. Distinct song cycles are tied to particular seasons and ceremonies, and their musical patterns are believed to help invoke and communicate with spirits, turning performance into an act of prayer. In this way, spiritual concepts, sacred places, and ritual conduct are remembered not only with the mind but also through the affective power of song.

Dance completes this triad by embodying what the stories and songs proclaim. Performed collectively during major festivals and ceremonies, Santal dances express mythological events and relationships between humans, ancestors, and nature spirits through patterned movement. Steps, formations, and gestures often mirror elements of the natural and agricultural world, so that the body moves in sympathy with the land on which the community depends. These dances transmit knowledge of agricultural cycles and their spiritual significance, and they preserve symbolic meanings related to fertility, protection, and harmony between visible and invisible realms. Because they are repeated at key moments in the ritual calendar and in communal life, dance, song, and story continually renew spiritual memory, allowing Santal religious knowledge to remain both stable in essence and alive in practice.