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Published: April 19th 2009
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Jhamu Ceremony
High priests outside of Temple getting ready for ceremony The $64,000 question: When is the Hindu New Year? As with most things in India, it depends where you are and which calendar you are following. There is no one Indian New Year’s day. The numerous cultures that are part of Hinduism follow independent calendars (about 30) and the New Year Day in these calendars is based on seasons and the agrarian economy of the region. As a result of these cultural variations, festivals are celebrated at different times and in different ways. We happen to be in Orissa so the Hindu New Year fell on April 14 but there are about 30 different dates throughout India. Since Orissa has one of the largest tribal communities in India, the ceremony around New Years is very much steeped in the tribal cultures and traditions.
We were privileged to see the Jhamu ceremony, which is performed on the eve of the Hindu New Year in the rural village of Kankha, district of Cuttack. This is a ritual of Hindu devotional ordeals, which is characterized by a series of self-inflicted pain trials in honor of the monkey god. Ecstatic dances are performed all through the holy celebration with the accompaniment of musicians
Jhamu Ceremony
Row of men lying flat on ground as part of ceremony and itinerant drummers. Dances and songs alternate with self-mortification practices such as rolling on the ground with an entwined body, being buried below a mass of human bodies, climbing a pole and hanging down, and having dirt thrown on the head. This is all performed by a group of men who have fasted for 21 days leading up to the last day of the solar lunar year.
A most important part of this ritual performed in Orissa involves bodily pain self-inflicted through contact with sharp objects such walking on a sword and rolling on top of sharp thorny bushes. Remarkably not one of the men suffered any outward wounds from all these ordeals. In fact, the main person who is orchestrating this ceremony and is the victim of many of these practices is a shaman or diviner. By publicly practising self-torture and, above all, by coming out of it unharmed, the shaman shows everybody that the divine entity that is believed to descend upon him during the possession or the trance, has the faculty to make him insensitive to the stimuli of pain.
This was a very intense experience and was watched by the entire village
of women, children, and men who were supporting the ordeals with auspicious 'Hulahuli' (a shrill sound made by wagging the tongue inside the mouth) and 'Hari Bol' cheers of men. We were the only non-Indians at the ritual and, by the looks of the villagers towards us, we were probably as foreign to them as the ritual was to us.
And now for something entirely different in this same rural village- Passbooks and Birth Certificates. Before the ceremony, Stan, I and other members of our NGO, were handing out bank passbooks and birth certificates to the villagers. The NGO’s rural office has a project helping the tribal villagers get access to some 21st century devices that might help them survive in their changing environment. The villagers never had a bank account and were thus not able to get governmental assistance, which is directly deposited into a bank account. The NGO helped them set up zero deposit bank accounts. Other villagers, many grown men and women, were getting a birth certificate for the first time in their life- again this will help them to access services in between harvests. As with many tribal communities, they are going through changes- trying
to exist in the 21st century while holding onto the practices and customs that have sustained them for countless centuries in the past.
Lastly, a trip back to the caves of Udayagiri and Khandagiri which are about 16 km from Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa. We visited these beautiful caves carved into the sides of two mountainsides which housed kings, women warriors, and Janist meditating monks at one time or another during the last 2,000 years. There are rock-like shelters chiseled out for Jain ascetics in the 1st century BC. In another area of the mountain, there are some interesting caves with stories carved into the walls about the ruling King and his exploits as well as a giant throne carved on the precipice of one of the cliffs. At the top of one mountain are some Jain temples from the 18th century. Most interesting was one side of the mountain which had meditation ledges carved on the side of the mountain where students would sit and mediate for hours as their master sat in the middle of the grouping. These stone mountains have many stories to tell over the centuries leaving their tales forever carved into the rocks
Jhamu Ceremony
Women & Children watching ceremony of the mountain.
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Jen White
non-member comment
Fascinating
Thanks again for another fascinating installment. It's wonderful to be enjoying your adventure so vicariously. Margaret, I see you've embraced the local wardrobe. Stan? What about you? That western dress you're wearing looks mightily out of place. Will we soon see a photo of you in a dhoti or a lungi?