The Sia tribes live in the plains. The Donguria Kunt live at the top of the mountain, and the Kutiya down the hill. In the jungles. Kutiya says holes. They use pointed bones and ink to make their faces more beautiful. They draw the tattoos on the faces and hands and feet of young girls, and even if they struggle, they hold them by force. One of the old women who remembered her childhood told us that it was very painful, that they grabbed her by force and gave her the tattoos, because without the tattoos no one would marry her, no one would know that she was a member of the tribe.
Some said they did it to make them more beautiful, others said it was to disfigure them, because the Muslims who came to India in the seventh century as traders would kidnap the beautiful girls. The Gond tribe also tattoo themselves, and they say it is the only piece of jewelry they will take with them to the next world. Today's young people no longer tattoo their faces.
They do most of the work by hand. They plow with oxen and a wooden plow, harvest with a sickle. It is rare to see a tractor or agricultural equipment here. They say that the government is not introducing any development measures into the villages - for agriculture, construction, education, because there will be no employment for everyone and as long as they do not complain, the situation will probably not change. If they are promoted, say those in the know, they will no longer want to engage in simple work. There will be no one to build and do, and at the same time there will be unemployment among professionals and educated people, which will lead to violence and drunkenness, and the destruction of the tribes. At the same time, there is affirmative action discrimination in universities and the admission requirements for young people from the tribes are much easier than those of city dwellers.
The tribal people are the craftsmen. The tribe in the village of Noa Patna is engaged in spinning, dyeing silk and cotton threads, and weaving. In the processes of tying and dyeing, they manage to write on the cloth sacred Hindu verses from the Ramayana, the book of the stories of the god Rama. Sadai Birini is the village of the Santal tribe, the metalsmiths. There, works of art are made using ancient methods. They sculpt with clay, wrap black wax threads around the clay and decorate them, wrap more clay and then metals on top of it with a special tool.
This package is put into the fire. The wax melts, and the metal melts and becomes liquid, entering and taking the place of the wax. When the clay cools, it is broken and the shape is revealed. The metalwork and other pottery work is done with stones and simple tools, hand-made stones and skilled hands. In this way, jugs, bowls, and magnificent sacred and ornamental statues are created. Other tribes create jugs and vessels in clay, vessels for offerings for the temples and containers for storing food. Some specialize in making mud building blocks, and others collect cashew, mango, and jackfruit fruits from the jungles. Each tribe has its own specialization, and all the families in the tribe are involved in this field. Once a week, they descend from the mountains to the market.
The tribes are divided into those who live on the top of the mountain, those on the mountainside, and those on the ground at the foot of the mountain. Legend has it that many years ago, during one of the severe drought years, the chief dreamed that three girls had come to the mountain. The girls asked the chief why he was worried, and he told them that they were all hungry because the monsoon rains had not come. He asked the girls who they were? They told him we are the girls of the sky. One of the mountain, one of the jungle on the mountainside, and one of the earth at the bottom of the mountain. What will you ask for to give us fertility? The chief asked, and the girls replied: The girl at the top of the mountain asked that they protect the mountain and their souls and then they would receive fertility. The girl of the jungle on the mountainside asked that they protect the jungle and then they would enjoy the cows and animals. The girl of the earth asked for blood to give fruit.
Since then, the tribes at the top of the mountain are wary of strangers and do not allow them to be photographed so that they do not steal their souls. The people of the mountainside, who have been blessed with fruits from the jungles, pick and sell the cows in the markets and on the sides of the roads and hunt the birds for food. The people at the bottom of the mountain, who believe that the earth asked them for blood to give fertility, sacrificed children and grew turmeric, which is reddish in color, and rice in areas where there is water, until the British who conquered the area forbade them from human sacrifice and convinced them to sacrifice buffalo instead. Buffalo sacrifice is an especially cruel process in which the buffalo is stabbed and its blood is collected until it dies, and then the blood is sprinkled on the ground. Our guide says that the government is very careful to prevent human sacrifice, especially in the bad years, so there is a chance that the tribes will do it again.
In preparation for the journey, we prepared gifts for the children, some candy and especially pencil cases with paints and stickers, markers and drawing sheets, because we hoped to reach the tribal school. We arrived there on the day that new 6-year-old students joined the school. The mothers dressed them in colorful saris for the celebration, and the boys in school uniforms drummed drums in their honor. The street was filled with dancing and celebrations, and there was great joy. The adults everywhere we passed also asked to be treated to candy. It seems that the whole candy thing is magical to them. Everywhere we passed, they asked to take pictures with us. The guides said that the young tribal members, the ones with the smartphones, feel like people from the big world when they meet a Westerner, and that's why they take pictures with us. When they show the pictures to their friends later, they can get excited again.
Wherever we are told Namaste, we understand that we are facing Hindus. Animists do not say Namaste. Sometimes they shake hands, sometimes they just look. Even though we are not Hindus, we stuck to Namaste. It is nice. Namaste is a kind of greeting, hi, goodbye and bye. A gesture of hands and a word. You get used to it quickly. Touch the heart area with your left thumb and press your palms together, and with a gentle smile and a slight bow say Namaste. The literal meaning is "I recognize - bow - to the holiness in you." It is used as a greeting when arriving and when leaving, in the Hindu world. It is a gesture that says that everyone has goodness and light and a broad heart, and recognizing this allows positive energy between people to connect.
Hinduism is the most widespread religion in India. Hinduism divides people into classes – castes – that consist of four varnas and what is below them. The top varna is called white, and it belongs to the Brahmins who practice sacred things. Today, less people practice sacred things, but they still maintain family supremacy. In one of the hotels we met a guy who wore a light-colored cloth ribbon, which symbolizes that he is a Brahmin. He was an electrical engineer by profession, and his wife was also from a Brahmin family, of course, because marriages are organized according to class. The second varna, red, belongs to kings and warriors. The third is brown, for merchants, farmers, and craftsmen, and the fourth is black, and belongs to the class of servants and slaves.
Below are the impure, forbidden to touch, called "Dalit" and have no color. They are the ones who deal with cremation and burial of the dead. Hindus believe in reincarnation and believe that after the process of reincarnation leads a person from a low place to a high place until he becomes a Brahman. The manifestations of God in Hinduism are processes of construction, existence and destruction. Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, who maintains, organizes and preserves, and Shiva the destroyer who allows rebirth. In addition, there is the mother goddess Mahadvi Durga, who came to expression through Kali, Parvati, Lakshmi, and others who express different faces of the mother goddess. According to Hindu belief, most animals are sacred, chief among them the cow.
We visited quite a few temples. Each one is different from the other, and in all of them you have to take off your shoes and enter barefoot and modestly. The faithful sometimes prostrate themselves before the altar and others kiss the feet of the monks. There is something that moves me about entering a place that is considered sacred to someone. Maybe it is the energy of all the believers who have already been there and left their good intentions, or maybe there really is some frequency that resonates and makes places special and purer than others.
The characteristic of an animist temple is the horse statues at the entrance and inside the Lord Jagannath, a figure without arms or legs, like a dark ballet with big eye markings. There is also a Mother Nature for animists, Dalkai, and she loves the leaves of the sal tree, so the believers bring branches and leaves to the temples. The saying is that God cannot come to you because He has no legs. He cannot hold you because He has no hands, and He cannot speak to you because He has no mouth. But He has eyes and He sees you, sees your inner self, your truth. If you want God in your life, you have to come to Him, cleanse and purify your inner self, your heart, and then you will receive His blessing. Do you want happiness? No one will make you happy unless you choose to be happy. Smile, open your heart, be welcoming to every person.
The Hindu temples are more magnificent. The god Shiva is represented by a prominent stone, the lingam. The word lingam means a sign, a light pole, or a male organ, and it symbolizes Shiva. Along the way, we discovered that in many places where there was a prominent stone that was previously attributed to the god of the jungle or the earth by animists, it became a "Shiva Lingam," and a pilgrimage site for believers. In the temples, the "lingam" appears in a complete unit together with the symbol of the "yoni," which looks like the opening of a lock and symbolizes the female genitalia. The perfection of male and female. According to belief, when the world was created, a giant snake came, held by its tail by demons and by its head by God. The whole world was divided between good and evil, and the role of the gods was to protect from evil.
Shiva, who wanted to do good to humans, sacrificed himself, drank the snake's venom, and has had a blue neck ever since. Shiva's bull is called Nandi. Near Shiva temples, there is usually a statue of a bull, and believers to this day whisper their wishes into the bull's ear, so that it will tell Shiva and recommend that the wishes be fulfilled. Other temples are dedicated to Hanuman, the beloved peace-loving monkey god, who connects the devotees of Shiva with the devotees of Vishnu.
In Konark, 35 kilometers north of Puri, stands a temple to the sun god. It is built as a huge chariot with 24 rims that remain intact while the many horse statues are mostly broken. To tell the truth, if it weren't for our guide Sanathan, we would have enjoyed the spectacle but we couldn't understand the secrets of what goes on there. So here it is: On the walls of the temple there are chariot wheels that symbolize the seasons - each pair of chariot wheels symbolizes one of the 12 months of the year according to the Hindu calendar, and each wheel is also a sundial.
They say they are accurate to the minute. On the walls are the stories of the world, among them decorations of scenes from the Kama Sutra, which is considered a sacred path. The Western eye looks on with smiling curiosity, but in India it is part of the understanding of the circle of life. The construction is oriented towards the sunrise. The chariots are carried by 7 horses, symbolizing the seven scales of ancient Indian poetry. The temple, built in 1250 AD, stood at the mouth of the Chandrabhaga River, but the waterline has receded and there are no longer any signs of the river in the place. A large part of the temple has been destroyed. The sunrise and sunset are visible through the high walls, and it is very impressive. Like us, tourists from all over the world and many from India itself, come to the area and visit this special site.
Lovely, thank you and have a blessed Shabbat ⚘️
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