FOLKLORE FABLES FESTIVALS

The most remarkable feature about tribal life in the hills of Assam is the fundamentally democratic basis of their social and administrative organizations. With minor exceptions, the land belongs to the community and not to any individual. Although in the Garo Hills the Nokma (the head of a clan or a village), in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills the Siem or the Doloi or the Raja, and in the Lushai Hills, till recently, the Chief was the nominal proprietor of all lands within his jurisdiction, every villager could cultivate his plot of land anywhere as a matter of right. In society, there is no distinction between high and low. Wealth and income do not confer social privileges. The once powerful Lushai Chief and the Khasi Siem, who were regarded by neighboring peoples as Raja or King, were as much commoners as the humblest of the humble. The rich is always ready to help those of their co-villagers who are in need and the strong is similarly inclined to the weak. In fact the Lushai Chief, who wielded enormous authority over his subjects, was the de jure father of the villagers over whom he ruled. In times of scarcity, if the villagers committed robbery of grain from the Chief's granary, they committed no offense.
This democratic spirit was strongly reflected in the indigenous tribal administrative organizations. The Khasi Siems were constitutional monarchs. They can hardly ever give any decision independently. It is his myntries (ministers) who generally decide all matters for him. Although the Lushai Chiefs were more powerful and sometimes autocratic, they could disregard the advice of their upas (village elders) only at their own risk. Thus, in spite of the Chiefs and the Siems being chosen on the hereditary principle their administration was thoroughly democratic. In other areas, such as the North Cachar Hills, both the hereditary and the elective principles are followed side by side by different tribes in choosing the chief or the leader. Disputes are heard in open court where all the male members of the village take part. In some areas even the women are allowed to be present at the trial of cases. The judgment passed on an offender is regarded as a judgment of the whole village and not merely of the chief and his advisers. This system of administration suited the genius of the people and they were happy under it. The British, with their experience of administration over half the world, were wise enough not to interfere with the indigenous administrative machinery. Administration was left almost entirely to the village headmen and the elders, the Deputy Commissioner and the Sub-Divisional Officer merely sitting over them as superintendents and intervening only in serious matters, such as a dispute over the boundary between one village and another, or cases of a seriously criminal or political nature.

RELIGIOUS AFFINITY TO HINDUISM OF NORTHEASTERN INDIAN TRIBES

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:49:00 -0700

It may be stated that the greater number of the Khasis, especially in certain siemships, viz. Cherra, Nongkren and Mylliem, still regard the thlen and the persons who are thought to keep thlens, with the greatest awe and that they will not utter even the names of the latter for fear some ill may befall them. The superstition is probably of very ancient origin, and it is possible that the Khasi sacrifices to the thlen demon may be connected with the primeval serpent god which characterized the religion of the Cambodians, which Forbes says was 'undoubtedly the earliest religion of the Mons.'"
Such extraordinary local variations of religious practices not withstanding, the animistic religion of the hill-tribes have the common feature of having strong affinity to Hinduism. They all believe in a Supreme Being (e.g. the Pathian of the Lushais and Tatara Rabunga of the Garos), subordinate to whom there are numerous gods and spirits who have to be propitiated with sacrifices of animals and birds for warding off evil and calamities. From these beliefs and practices it would be safe to assume that the Tantrik form of Hinduism, which originated in the plains of Assam around the temple of Kamakhya, greatly influenced the tribal religions. To put it in another way, this form of Hinduism contains features which are tribal and which were probably adopted by Brahmin priests for winning over their tribal neighbors, the most characteristic feature of Hinduism having been throughout the ages assimilation rather than conversion. There never was on the part of Hindus any overt effort at any time to convert others to their faith. There is little doubt that but for the advent of the British, and in their wake that of Christian missionaries, all the tribes would have been assimilated into the Assamese Hindu fold like numerous other tribes before them, who came and settled in Assam, the Kacharis and the Ahoms being the most notable examples.

SUPERSTITION BEHIND HUMAN SACRIFICE IN NORTHEASTERN INDIAN TRIBES

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:59:00 -0700

The practice of human sacrifice among the Khasis is an extra ordinary institution. There is a superstition among the Khasis about a gigantic snake called 'U Thlen' which has to be appeased by the sacrifice of human victims. The following account taken from Colonel Gurdon's book will give an idea of this blood-curdling institution:
"The tradition is that there was once in a cave near Cherrapunji a gigantic snake, or thlen, who committed great havoc among men and animals. At last one man, bolder than his fellows, took with him a herd of goats and set himself down by the cave and offered them one by one to the thlen. By degrees the monster became friendly and learnt to open his mouth at a word from the man to receive the lump of flesh which was then thrown in. When confidence was thoroughly established, the man, acting under the advice of a god called U Suid-Noh (who has as his abode a grove near Sohrarim), having heated a lump of iron red-hot in a furnace, induced the snake, at the usual signal, to open his mouth, and then threw in the red-hot lump and so killed him. He proceeded to cut up the body and sent pieces in every direction with orders that the people were to eat them. Wherever the order was obeyed, the country became free of the thlen, but one small piece remained which no one could eat, and from this sprang a multitude of thlens, which infest the residents of Cherra and its neighbourhood. When a thlen takes up its abode in a family there is no means of getting rid of it, though it occasionally leaves of its own accord and often follows family property that is given away or sold. The thlen attaches itself to property and brings prosperity and wealth to the owners, but on the condition that it is supplied with blood. Its craving comes on at uncertain intervals and manifests itself by sickness, by misadventure or by increasing poverty befalling the family that owns the property. It can only be appeased by the murder of a human being. The murderer cuts off the tips of the hair of the victim with silver scissors, also the finger nails, and extracts from the nostril a little blood caught in a bamboo tube, and offers these to the thlen. The murderer, who is called u nongshohnoh, literally 'the beater', before he sets out on his unholy mission, drinks a special kind of liquor called, ka 'iad tang-shi-snem (literally, liquor which has been kept for a year). This liquor, it is thought, gives the murderer courage and the power of selecting suitable victims for the thlen. The nongshohnoh then sets out armed with a short club, with which to slay the victim; hence his name nong-shohnoh i.e. one who beats; for it is forbidden to kill a victim on these occasions with any weapon made of iron, inasmuch as iron was the metal which proved fatal to the thlen. He also takes the pair of silver scissors above mentioned, a silver lancet to pierce the inside of the nostrils of the deceased, and a small bamboo or cylinder to receive the blood drawn there from. The nongshohnoh also provides himself with rice called u khaw tyndep' , i.e. rice mixed with turmeric after certain incantations have taken place. The murderer throws a little of this rice over his intended victim, the effect of which is to stupefy the latter, who then falls an easy prey to the nongshohnoh. It is not, however, always possible to kill the victim outright for various reasons, and then the nongshohnoh resorts to the following subterfuge. He cuts off a little of the hair or the hem on the garments of a victim, and offers these up to the thlen. The effect of cutting off the hair or the hem of the garment of a person by a nongshohnoh to offer up to the thlen is disastrous to the unfortunate victim, who soon falls ill and gradually wastes away and dies. The nongshohnoh also sometimes contents himself with merely throwing stones at the victim or with knocking at the door of his house at night, and then returns home, and, after invoking the thlen, informs the monster that he has tried his best to secure him a prey but has been unsuccessful. This is enough to appease the thlen for a time, but the demon does not remain inactive long and soon manifests his displeasure for the failure of his keeper to supply him with human blood, by causing one of the latter's family to fall sick. The thlen has the power of reducing himself to the size of a thread, which renders it convenient for the nong-ri-thlen, or thlen-keeper, to place him for safety in an earthen pot or in a basket which is kept in some secure place in the house. When the time for making an offering to the thlen comes, an hour is selected generally at dead of night, costly clothes are spread on the floor of the house of the thlen-keeper, all the doors are opened, and a brass plate is laid down on the ground in which is deposited the blood, or the hair, or a piece of the cloth of the victim. All the family then gathers round and an elderly member commences to beat a small drum, and invokes the thlen, saying, 'ko kni ko kpa (Oh, Maternal Uncle Father), come out, here is some food for you: we have done every thing we could to satisfy you and now we have been successful; give us thy blessing that we may attain health and prosperity.' The thlen then crawls out from its hiding-place and commences to expand, and when it has attained its full serpent shape, it comes near the plate and remains expectant. The spirit of the victim then appears and stands on the plate, laughing. The thlen begins to swallow the figure, commencing at its feet, the victim laughing the while. By degrees the whole figure is disposed of by the boa constrictor. If the spirit be that of a person from whom the hair or a piece of his or her cloth has been cut, directly after the thlen has swallowed the spirit, the person expires. Many families in these hills are known, or suspected, to be keepers of a thlen and are dreaded or avoided in consequence. This superstition is deep-rooted amongst these people, and even nowadays, in places like Shillong or Cherrapunji, Khasis are afraid to walk alone after dark for fear of being attacked by a nongshohnoh. In order to drive away the thlen from a house or family, all the money, ornaments and property of that house or family must be thrown away, as is the case with persons possessed by the demon Ka Taroh, in the Jaintia Hills. None dare touch any of the property, for fear that the thlen should follow it. It is believed that a thlen can never enter the Siem's or Chief's clan, or the Siem's house; it follows, therefore, that the property of the thlen keeper can be appropriated by the Siem. A Mohammedan servant, not long ago in Shillong, fell a victim to the charms of a Khasi girl and went to live with her. He told the following story to one of his fellow-servants, which may be set down here to show that the thlen superstition is by no means dying out. 'In the course of his married life he came to know that the mother of his Khasi wife kept in the house what he called a bhut (devil). He asked his wife many many times to allow him to see the bhut, but she was obdurate; after a long time, however, and after extracting many promises from him not to tell, she confided to him the secret and took him to the corner of the house and showed him a little box in which was coiled a tiny snake, like the hair spring of a watch. She passed her hand over it and it grew in size till at last it became a huge cobra with hood erected. The husband, terrified, begged his wife to lay the spirit. She passed her hands down its body and it gradually shrank within its box."

HUMAN SACRIFICE IN TRIBAL CULTURE

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:32:00 -0700

Besides hunting, fishing etc., a popular pastime of the Garos and the Nagas till recent times was head-hunting. Apart from killing human beings in their raids on the plains for sheer fun, human victims were required for sacrificial purposes also. Head-hunting was effectively stopped in the Garo Hills as late as 1876 only. In that year as many as two hundred skulls were surrendered by the Garos to the Deputy Commissioner in his camp at a place called Rongrengiri, a few miles from Tura, the district headquarters.
There is no evidence of head-hunting having been practiced by any of the other tribes except perhaps the Kukis. The Lushais also raided the plains frequently before their land was occupied by the British, but they were satisfied with carrying off captives and were not after heads. Human sacrifices were, however, common in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, especially among the Jaintias who might have borrowed the practice from Tantrik Hindus of the plains. Such sacrifices are known to have been practised in the temple of Kamkhya near Guwahati and particularly by the Hinduised Miris, in the temple of the dread goddess Tamreswari near Sadiya. Colonel Gurdon, however, expresses the opinion that these sacrifices were originally made to the river Kopili, which the Jaintias worshipped as a goddess. The stone on which the victims were decapitated can still be seen on the bank of the Kopili river near Garampani in the Jaintia Hills.

VARIATION OF SOCIAL CUSTOMS IN NORTHEAST INDIAN TRIBES

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Sat, 9 Oct 2010 09:12:00 -0700

Apart from hard work in their fields and seeking relaxation and recreation in zu-drinking, singing, dancing, feasting, hunting and fishing, which are habits common to all, each tribe has peculiarities which mark it out from the others. For example, as a Deputy Commissioner of the Garo Hills aptly observed, "Every Garo's life is spent in giving (or refusing) and demanding dai (compensation). A man's great-grandfather was killed fifty years ago; he demands dai from the heir of the murderer, and if it is not paid his heir will still demand it in turn and so on until it is paid". Although most disputes in the other hill districts also are decided by awarding compensation to the aggrieved party, the system is not carried there to extremes as in the Garo Hills.
Marriage customs, laws of inheritance etc. also differ from tribe to tribe. The most distinctive feature of Garo and Khasi societies is their matriarchate. Descent is claimed from a common ancestress and it goes down through the females. It is the husband who, after marriage, has to go and live in his wife's house and not vice versa. Property is inherited by the youngest daughter. Amongst the Garos, when the son-in-law comes to live in his wife's parents' house, he becomes his father-in-law's nokrom, i.e. to say a kind of representative of the father's clan. After the death of the father-in- law the nokrom marries the widowed mother-in-law, thus becoming the husband of both mother and daughter. This custom is rather extraordinary and there is nothing comparable to it among the other tribes.
All the other hill tribes are patriarchal. The Lushais, Zemi Nagas and Kukis have to buy their wives by paying a marriage price. The price is calculated in terms of a number of mithans (wild bulls or cows). If divorce takes place as a result of a lapse on the wife's part, her father has to return the marriage price. If on the other hand, it is the husband's fault which brings about a divorce, he looses the price. The custom of demanding marriage-price for girls among the partiarchal tribes is easy to appreciate when we take into account the fact that a woman's life in the hills is harder than a man's. While an unmarried buck, except for being compelled to put in his share of work in the field, is allowed to go about freely hunting, fishing, drinking, singing, dancing and making love to his heart's content, a girl has to help her mother from dawn to dusk in running the household and catering to the needs of the menfolk. It is no wonder, therefore, that an unmarried girl is looked upon by the family as a valuable asset which cannot be parted with except for a reasonable price.
Divorce is easy to obtain amongst all the tribes. Among the Garos it is allowed almost automatically on payment of the customary dai of sixty rupees or so. Amongst the Khasis it is even easier. In the presence of witnesses, the husband gives five cowries, or five pice in lieu, to the wife and the wife does the same. The husband then takes all the ten cowries and throws them on the ground and this completes the divorce.
Divorce amongst the Khasis and the Jaintias (Syntengs) are so common an occurrence that children very often do not even know the identity of their fathers. In spite of this laxity in the matter of divorce, it has been justly observed by Colonel Gurdon "that the great drawback attaching to divorces in ordinary communities, i.e. the effect that it has on the lives of the children of the marriage, does not apply to the Khasis, for with them the children always live with their mother and their mother's family, which latter would be bound to maintain them in the event of a divorce."
From the liberal nature of their marriage and divorce laws it would be seen that the hill people have a very scientific and liberal attitude to all matters concerning sex. Unmarried boys and girls are not interfered with in their love-making and even the bearing of children out of wedlock before marriage is not strongly frowned upon. A different standard in sexual matters is, however, expected, particularly of the womenfolk, after marriage. This is especially true of the Zemi-Nagas and all other Naga tribes. Rape of a married woman is considered an offence more heinous than murder. Ursula Grahman Bower in her book The Naga Path gives an interesting account of how a raptor was saved from being speared to death by the youngmen of the village by the prompt intervention of the village elders, who satisfied the sense of public justice by banishing the man from the village.

VARIATION OF PHYSICAL APPEARANCE AND LANGUAGE IN NORTHEAST TRIBES OF INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Sat, 9 Oct 2010 08:49:00 -0700

In physical beauty the Khasi women excel their sisters both in the hills and the plains. Their complexion is a golden yellow and their soft smooth features have a Polynesian touch. As has already been indicated, ethnologically, the Khasis are different from the other hill-tribes of Assam. While the latter are supposed to have migrated from the North-East, the Khasis came from the South East. Their Mon-Khmer speech is still spoken in Cambodia and Pegu and anthropologists have noticed some common customs and habits among the Khasis and Malayasians.

A KHASI GIRL WITH SMOOTH FEATURES

According to their legends, the original habitat of the Garos was Tibet, but legends apart, the Garos belong to the stock called Tibeto-Burman and they have close affinities with the tribal races inhabiting the plains of Assam, North Cachar Hills and parts of Tripura. Grierson, in his Linguistic Survey of India, encadres the languages of all these tribes under a single group called Bodo. The Garos have the strongest resemblances, linguistically and physically, to the Kacharis. In fact the resemblances are so strong that they have led Major Playfair in his monograph on the Garos to conclude that these two peoples originally constituted one, subsequently separating themselves, the Kacharis spreading over the north and the Garos over the south bank of the Brahmaputra.
The origin of the Mikirs is obscure. It is not impossible that they are autocthons. Of the tribes of the North Cachar Hills, the Zemis came from the Naga Hills. They are a sub-tribe of the Kachha-Nagas, who again are a branch of the Angamis, whose men are noted for their physical vigor and manly beauty. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Zemi buck is generally a fine specimen of youthful, masculine attractiveness. The Dimasas are a branch of the Kacharis who ruled over Upper Assam until they were driven out by the Ahoms in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Kukis came to the North-Cachar Hills in two waves from the Mizo Hills from where they were ousted by the more vigorous Lushais, who in their turn had migrated from the Chin Hills of Burma.
As regards their domestic life, customs and beliefs, although a somewhat common pattern runs through all the hill-tribes, there are strong local variations.

GARO LADY

KACHARI MAN

NAGA WOMAN

JAINTIA GIRL

HARD LIFESTYLE OF NORTHEAST INDIAN TRIBES

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Fri, 8 Oct 2010 01:14:00 -0700

As in countries like Scotland life in these hills is hard. One can hardly imagine the difficulty with which a Mizo or a Zemi Naga has to eke a livelihood out of his little patch of land. From before daybreak the womenfolk of a village march in processions, carrying a number of bamboo tubes in a cane or bamboo basket, hundreds of feet down to a spring or a stream to collect water for the day's use. The return journey uphill with the load of water on their back is strenuous. Immediately after their return they have to get busy preparing food for the family before they accompany their husbands to help them in their work in the jhum (cultivation). About half-an-hour is spent at mid-day in eating the pack-lunch (consisting of rice, salt and chillies) they carry with them to the jhum and then work goes on again till sun-down—hoeing, sowing, weeding, whatever work at a particular stage it might be. In the evenings the menfolk snatch a few moments of leisure and relaxation which they devote to zu (rice-beer or spirit) drinking and singing while the women have to carry on with their household chores—cooking and attending to the pigs, the fowl and their own little ones. On special occasions, there is dancing both by men and women in addition to zu-drinking and music. This is, or at least was, till very recently the normal routine of the average tribal's life in the hills which could not perhaps be better described than in the following lines of Thomas Gray composed in a different context:
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life—
They kept the noiseless tenur of their way.
Apropos of zu-drinking, dancing, singing and feasting which are a common feature of all tribal life, one cannot fail to notice that all the hill-people are very musical. The Lushais believe that this has got something to do with the echoes which respond from different directions in the hills to their whistles and songs. It is this nymph or satyr, whichever it may be, echo, that, they believe, bestows on them their musical talents.

NATURAL BEAUTY OF NORTHEAST TRIBAL HILLS OF INDIA

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Fri, 8 Oct 2010 00:58:00 -0700

The first thing that strikes a visitor in any part of these hills is the magnificence of their natural scenery and the attractiveness of the people, because of their simplicity, cheerfulness, honesty, courtesy, hospitality, vitality, colourfulness and a perfectly democractic outlook.
With the exception of Kashmir, hardly anywhere in the whole of India, does one come across such beautiful natural scenery as in the hills of Assam. When one drives from Shillong to Haflong through the undulating grassy plateaus, covered with thick woods of oak and pine, one might easily "imagine himself (as Colonel Gurdon aptly observes in his monograph on the Khasis) in Switzerland, were it not for the absence of the snowy ranges". As one enters the North Cachar Hills, the scenery changes into precipitious mountains and deep ravines. Sitting in the verandah of the Circuit House at Haflong of an evening one can experience an exhilarating sensation viewing range after range of blue hills receding far into the horizon, the glow of the evening sun weaving along the tops of the ridges a magic web of indescribable beauty.
In the Mizo District the scenery is different, rather rugged as compared with that of the Khasi and Jaintia or the North Cachar Hills, but yet it has a sombre grandeur which one could not appreciate better from anywhere else than from the top of the Blue Mountain (7600 ft.) in the south-eastern corner of the district. On a clear day one can have from this spot a view of the sun blazing the waters of the Bay of Bengal miles away.
Our surroundings influence our habits and character. The distinctive characteristics which are regarded as tribal are to a considerable extent shaped by the climate, the nature of the soil, the terrain and the scenery of the land which they inhabit.

TRIBES OF NORTHEAST INDIA – DOWN THE HISTORY --

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Fri, 8 Oct 2010 00:48:00 -0700

From about 2000 B.C. there was a movement of Mongoloid populations from the north to India through Assam and these people along with others who migrated from northern Burma formed from the remote past the bulk of the population of Assam. In ancient Sanskrit texts, such as the two great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and also in the Puranas, the inhabitants of Assam are referred to as Mlecchas, Kiratas and Cinas (Chinese), in other words, as non-Aryan barbarians.

There were apparently wave after wave of these migrations and the invaders belonged to the Indo-Chinese linguistic family, of which the two most important sub-families are the Mon-Khmer and the Tibeto-Burman. The third, Siamese-Chinese, includes Shan, which was spoken by the Ahoms, the last of these invaders. The Mon-Khmer speakers appear to have come earlier than the others. They were apparently driven by subsequent Tibeto-Burman hordes into the Khasi Hills, which is the only part of Assam in which the sub-family now exists. Of the Tibeto-Burman sub-family, there were three groups viz. Naga, Kuki-Chin and Bodo. The Naga and Kuki speakers were driven to the hills and Bodo became the dominant language. It includes all the surviving non-Aryan languages

of the plains, the Garo Hills and the North Cachar Hills. Kachari, Mech, Garo, Dimasa, Tipra, Lalung, Rabha and Chutiya are derivations of Bodo.

About the time the Mongolian hordes were entering Assam through the north-east, the Aryans started spreading over the whole of northern India across the Gangetic plain, driving the indigenous inhabitants to the south. Eventually, some of the Aryans reached Assam in their eastward movement through Bihar and north Bengal. Judging, however, by physiognomy, the strain of Aryan blood in Assam seems very thin. Assamese of pure Aryan stock can perhaps be found only amongst the descendants of Brahmin scholars who were invited by the non-Aryan kings to their courts for their learning and advanced culture. Some others of high and low castes will have also accompanied these Brahmins. For instance the Kalitas (Kayasthas) of Assam are of distinctly Aryan appearance and are supposed by Sir Edward Gait to be "the descendants of the first Aryan immigrants by women of the country".

A very significant fact about Assam is the fusion which took place here of Aryan and Mongolian cultures. We find here an example of how a dominant culture, although supported numerically by few, can absorb and impose itself on weaker cultures. Thus we find in Assam, a people by and large Mongolian, speaking at the present day, Assamese, which is an Aryan Sanskritic language. This happened not merely because of the superiority of an Aryan language over the rude tribal dialects but also because of the absorbing power and influence of Hinduism. The Brahmins from Northern India succeeded in absorbing into Hinduism all the tribal people of the plains including the powerful Ahoms who ruled over Assam for over six hundred years and who in course of time not only adopted the Hindu religion, discarding their own, but also forgot their own Ahom language and adopted Assamese. Ahom is now a dead Language known only perhaps to about half-a-dozen deodhais (Ahom priests). The same thing happened to all the languages of the Bodo group. The complete disappearance of such tongues like Rabha and Kachari, which are still spoken in the interior by old men and the womenfolk, is only a matter of time.

From these facts, it would appear that the bulk of the population of Assam is tribal or at least of tribal origin. Most of these tribal communities through assimilation have lost their tribal characteristics, and similar assimilation of such communities as are called plains tribals is continuing. People who can still be regarded distinctly as tribals can be found now only in the hills.

The hill-tribals of Assam live in the districts of Garo Hills, United Khasi and Jaintia Hills, United Mikir and North Cachar Hills and the Mizo Hills. The North Cachar Hills are inhabited by several tribes such as the Dimasas, the Kukis and the Zemi Nagas.

HOLA MOHALLA

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Thu, 7 Oct 2010 09:43:00 -0700

Holi is celebrated as Hola Mohalla by the Nihang Sikhs. Instead of splashing colour, they observe the day with mock battles, tournaments, military parades and many other exercises. Anandpur, a small town in the Punjab, becomes the hub of all these activities, for it is here that the Khalsa (the 'Pure Ones') was born.
About 280 years ago, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, held a very significant ceremony at Anandpur. He baptised five chosen followers of his and gave them the appellation of Singh ('the Lion'). They were enjoined to carry, on their person five symbols of distinction—kesh (long hair), kanga (comb), kara (iron bracelet), kacha (shorts) and kirpan (sword). He hailed them with a new greeting:
'Wahe Guruji ka Khalsa : Wahe Guruji ki feteh'
(The Khalsa belongs to the Guru; Victory be to Him).
These five followers, called Panj Piyare, then baptised the Guru himself and thousands of other Sikhs. Thus was born the Khalsa, a militant brotherhood of crusaders. The Nihangs — meaning 'crocodiles' in Persian — formed the suicide squads of the Khalsa armies. The Guru ordained that the day after Holi be celebrated as Hola for practising the martial arts.
The above tradition continues to this day. Around the middle of March, Anandpur begins to hum with activity. The Nihangs, who number about 20,000 today, flock to Anandpur for the festival. They can be easily recognised by their blue knee-length tunics and yellow
turbans, rising to more than a metre high, with rings of steel around them. They carry huge spears, daggers, swords, and even bows and arrows. They lead a spartan life, denying themselves the comforts of family life or a fixed home, and are constantly on the move, either on horse-back or on foot.
On Hola day, a procession (Mohalla) is taken out through the streets of Anandpur. The Nihangs form the centre of attraction. Under the influence of bhang and hashish, which they consume in large quantities, these bearded fighters offer an awesome spectacle—galloping their horses at full speed, flashing swords and shouting their war cry, 'Sat Sri Akal'. There are langars (free kitchens) for all visitors, without distinction.

HOLI

noreply@blogger.com (keera) — Thu, 7 Oct 2010 09:33:00 -0700

Holi is the most colorful and popular festival of India. It is celebrated on the full moon day in the month of Phalgun (February-March), when both man and nature cast off their winter gloom. This is the season when some of our most beautiful trees are in flower: the 'flame of the forest', mango, coral and silk cotton. Man too is moved by the spirit of spring, and celebrates this carnival of colors with gusto.
Holi is one of India's oldest festivals, and many legends have come to be associated with it. According to one version, the festival is named after Holika, the sister of a demon-king, Hiranyakashipu. The demon had defeated the gods and had ordered that he be worshipped as a god in his own right. However, his own son Prahlad, who was an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu, refused to do so. This enraged Hiranyakashipu. He asked his sister, Holika, who could not be burnt by fire, to sit on a burning pyre with the prince in her lap. Holika agreed, but by the grace of Lord Vishnu, Prahlad remained unscathed while Holika herself perished in the fire. To mark the death of Holika, people light huge bonfires on the eve of Holi. In Gujarat and Orissa effigies of Holika are also burnt.

On the day of the festival, gay crowds fill the streets, squirting coloured water and smearing each other's faces with coloured powder. Children of course enjoy the festival with gay abandon. They vie with each other in being original and use fast and sticky colours like coal-tar.
Holi still retains its charm in Rabindranath Tagore's Santiniketan where it is celebrated in a unique way. In Bengal the festival is called Dol Jatra or Dol Purnima. Early on Dol
Purnima day, the students of Santiniketan dress up in saffron clothes and wear fragrant garlands. Then they sing and dance before their teachers and guests, who are seated on a colour fully decorated dais. The show concludes with the smearing of dry abeer and gulal (colour powder) on one another's foreheads. Liquid colours are totally forbidden.

To the worshippers of Sri Krishna, Holi is known as the Dole-Leela. It is celebrated with great enthusiasm in most of His temples, but in Mathura and Brindavan it has a special significance. Episodes from Krishna's life, especially his playing Holi with the milk-maids (gopis), are re-enacted in a riot of colour.
Holi as such is not celebrated in the South. In some places, however, it is observed as Kamadahan. It is believed that Lord Shiva reduced Kamadeva, the God of Love, to ashes by directing His third eye on him, because he had tried to distract the Lord from His tapasya (meditation). Later, when Rati, wife of Kamadeva, pleaded with the God to restore her husband, Lord Shiva relented and brought him back to life. This day is therefore held sacred to the God of Love.
In Maharashtra, Holi is called Shimaga or Rangapanchami. The fisherfolk celebrate it with singing, dancing and merrymaking.
At times this gay festival degenerates into noisy brawls and hooliganism, which is a great pity. When celebrated in the traditional manner and in the proper spirit, Holi is one of the gayest and friendliest festivals of India.