Celebration of Important Occasions in Personal Life and Festivals
17.4.1 Naming Ceremony
In the Bonda community, the naming of an infant is done after ten days of its birth. A rooster is sacrificed. The maternal uncle holds the leg of the sacrificed rooster.
If the infant clenches its fist as if to hold the blood dripping leg at the mention of the name of a particular ancestor from the recitation of a series of ancestral names, then the infant is named after that particular ancestor as it is believed to be the reincarnation of that ancestor. Otherwise, the men and women are named after the day of their birth. A man is named Soma if he is born on a Monday and a woman as Sanki if she is born on a Saturday. The barik (barber) from the Domb community holds the baby to avert evil befalling the baby. In some of the Hindu sects too, the baby is given a name on the 11th day, and most often, it is named after the paternal grandfather or grandmother, depending on the gender.17.4.2 Marriage
The young Bonda women sleep in the selani dingo (female dormitory) and are visited by men from neighbouring villages. It is there that the Bonda children above five come along with their seniors to look for suitable partners. Men of the same village do not visit the selani dingo in their own village. The young men and women within a particular village partake of the same sacrificial food offered to Patkhanda Mahapru and hence they are considered brothers and sisters, soru bhai, to each other and so cannot marry between themselves. B. B. Mohanty in his chapter on ‘Marriage’, among the Bondas, also validates this practice of sacramental brotherhood (see Mohanty 2009:38).
Even when the girls and boys in a village belong to different kudas (clans), i.e., though they are the descendants of different mythical ancestors, they cannot marry among themselves because they are attached to the same sindbore (where the god of sindbore is believed to dwell).
Though Ray in the latter part of the novel says that it is in the selani dingo where the young learnt their life lessons and now receive the education, whenever Ray pictures the selani dingos, they tinkle with the Bondunis’ bracelets and laughter and heave with the sound of the dhangras and dhangris turning around. As Sarat Kumar Jena states in his essay, “The representation of the selani dingo (the female dormitory) is... evidence of judgemental puritanism. The selani dingo in every Bonda Village is a cultural marker and bears a traditional value for Bonda society but in the narrative it appears reductively as a habitation of flesh and desire, stripped of its cultural significance” ( Jena 2019:135).
The Bonda custom dictates a Bonda boy marry a woman 10 or 15 years older than him. Ray raises a query with regard to this. She ruminates:
It has always been thus among the Bondas: when a boy is ten years old, he is married to a bride of twenty. Why have the Bondas adopted this strange custom? The age of the female is the age of Bundi Mahadei while the age of the male that of her prepubscent son. They are more mother and son than wife and man. And so the woman looks after everything while the man roams free.
Does the purus take shelter in the arms of his wife-mother because he can trust no one, because he is haunted by the shadow of death? Is the story of Bundi Mahadei and her defenceless son repeated in every Bonda life?
(Ray 2001:11)
Ray in fact begins the novel with a description of the locale of the Bonda country and a description of their character, and as already quoted, says that “The history of the Bonda is linked not to birth but to death. His story begins with death” (Ray 2001:3). Immediately after, she wonders, “Who knows when the Raja of Chitrakot died” (Ray 2001:3)? Then she goes on to narrate the legend of Bundi Mahadei who came to the Bonda country and stayed there after the murder of her husband, the king of Bastar, to save her son from death.
Thus, she connects the Bundi Mahadei legend with Bonda history and customs. It is said that the Bondas became suspicious of outsiders as they were suspicious of the four soldiers who accompanied the queen. They felt if a minister could betray the royalty, the ordinary soldiers were well capable of it. She also further conjectures: “The germ of suspicion has grown in Bonda minds. Who knows when treachery, passed on through the blood of the four warriors, will raise its hood? The Bonda suspects everyone except himself: everywhere he sees an enemy waiting to pounce. Is that why the Bonda has turned violent, a terror to all” (Ray 2001:5-6)? But she does not stop with that but throws open whatever she has said so far: “Is the story true? Is this the real history of Bonda suspicion and violence? Who knows” (Ray 2001:6)? In another context also, Ray asserts that “The system of marriage is a safeguard against death” (Ray 2001:51), and a Bonda makes provision against death in every way. The father of the boy, given the proneness of Bondas’ violence, aware of imminent death, wants someone strong to take care of his son so that his progeny will not suffer.Once the bride is found, from the selani dingo, there is the ritual of dance around the sindbore. Prior to the wedding, the dhangras (young men) and dhangris (young women) dance and sing to the beat of the drums around the buffalos to be sacrificed. Soma Muduli’s wedding to Sombari represents the customs followed in a Bonda marriage. For Soma Muduli’s wedding, his father’s kinsmen bring three buffalos. The whole village contribute rice and liquor. The buffalos to be sacrificed are led to the villages where invites have been sent and they are slaughtered and sacrificed once the Dombs and the relatives who accompany the sacrificial buffaloes return to the village. Thus, when Soma Muduli weds Mangli after the death of his first wife Sombari, too, “Sacrifices were made to appease gods, spirits and witches; [and] the disari who performed the rituals went away satisfied” (Ray 2001:49).
There is no offering to the agni or havan during the marriage. The relatives of the bridegroom go to bring the bride to her in laws’ house on an auspicious day chosen by the disari. Once she comes to the groom’s house, she is blessed by the village priest and shaman (disari) who are present there (Mohanty 2009:47). Any important occasion like birth and death in the family is accompanied by “public feasting” (Ray 2001:71) ordained by the gods. Similarly, as soon as the bride brings a pot of water from the stream soon after her arrival at her in-laws’ house, which signals the completion of wedding, the wedding feast begins in the selani dingo. After the wedding, the family deity is worshipped to the chanting of mantras by the disari, and the newly-weds enter their new home. B.B. Mohanty says that marriage “is a kind of indissoluble bond between husbanded [sic] and wife backed by supernatural sanction which does not break ordinarily, as only death of either of the partners can break such a tie” (Mohanty 2009:38).During the house warming and the ritual of two persons becoming maitarbais (blood/ adopted brothers), mango leaves and rice mixed with turmeric are used along with other things to denote the auspiciousness of the occasion. Patra also confirms this when he says that traditionally “the Bonda houses are built in accordance with the Vaastu Shastra of Hindu tradition. While making the Griha Prabesha (first entering to a new house) Puja is performed by hanging a string stitched with mango leaves on the door” (Patra 2013:51).
For building a house, the disari performs a worship of mother Earth and chooses an auspicious place where the house is built. No house is built without a central wooden pillar as the Bondas believe that their dead ancestors live there and guard them, and punish them when they commit sins. That is why the Bondas refuse to help build the Indira Awas row houses built by the Sarkar without consulting the disari and without the central pillars.
Initially they are afraid to occupy those houses. Finally, it looks as if their fears turn into reality when the poorly built house collapses; and Sanki, Katu’s pregnant daughter, is caught under the weight of the debris and dies.17.4.3 Festivals
Festivals are a part of a Bonda’s life. The author notes, “The Bonda’s festivals are as selfassured as death, returning in their appointed time. They wait for no one... festival arrives in the village-as inexorable as the cycle of day and night” (Ray 2001:93).
In the month of Aswin (September-October), Dussera is celebrated. The disari invokes the Patkhanda Mahapru. The women weave new ringas (short skirts worn by women) and ghusis (loin-cloths worn by males) for men as illustrated by Budei Toki who weaves a new ringa for herself and a ghusi (loincloth worn by men) for her husband Bagha Bindu in jail. There is heavy drinking by men and women but no dancing and singing (Ray 2001:93-94).
In the month of Magh (February-March), the Magh festival is celebrated. The dhangras dance in a circle surrounding which the dhangris dance. There is also the raving sound of musical instruments like tomkas, dungudungas, and bugles. On the first Monday, the disari prays for a good harvest after the sacrifice of a black rooster. But the important part of the festival is measuring out, in a bamboo mana (a unit of measurement), the blood-soaked seed from the common pool, after completing the prayers to Mahapru (Ray 2001:157-158).
Once the mandia and suan are ready for harvest, the Bondas do a biru in honour of the goddess Lakshmi. Crabs are used for the ritual on this occasion.
The Chaitra (March-April) festival reverberates with the dhangris singing songs of hunting, taunting the dhangras “for failing to kill a single antlered deer” (Ray 2001:97). This is also the festival when the Bonda offer their first yield of mangoes to the Mahapru before they taste them (Ray 2001:96). After the festival, the dhangra gets drunk, hunts animals (the author adds “and equally men”), and also “cuts down towering trees” (Ray 2001:148).
The undergrowth, shrubs, and creepers are also slashed, burnt, and the new tender plants springing from the ash are also cut and left to rot in the rain so that the soil becomes fertile again.There is no dearth of festivals in Bonda country. The Pusa festival arrives after the harvest during January and February. The festival lasts for seven days. Rice, suan, fruits, and tubers are in plenty. The backyard gardens’ vines are laden with broad simba beans. The important part of the festival is the eating of “the first tender pods of simba” (Ray 2001:143). This festival again is about offering the produce to god before humans eat them. Harvest festival is celebrated across India by different names as Makar Sankaranthi, Pongal, Lohri, and Magh Bihu, to name a few. Like the Bondas, the Tamilians also cook tubers, legumes, freshly harvested vegetables, and rice on different days of the four-day Pongal festival.
During the second day of the festival, the ritual of ‘beating with brooms’ takes place. First the young boys and then the older dhangras lash each other in their age group, with the dried salap branches. The Bondunis bring pithas (cakes) made of freshly pounded grain. They also take oil and turmeric to apply on the bleeding wounds of their sons and husbands. No child or dhangra cries out when beaten by brooms. It is a test of their manliness. But once the whipping is over, each pair embraces each other in a show of friendship. However, any time the violence can spill into life threatening situation. Hence, the author remarks, “The Pusa festival arrived bringing showers of joy but frequently left a trail of grief and death” (Ray 2001:145).
The Bonda’s life is filled with festivals. They are not to be missed at any rate. Even when the near and dear ones are in jail or dead, the festivals do not stop. “The Bonda’s life and his festivals are intertwined, like the Bonduni’s beads” (Ray 2001:93). Thus, we see Budei Toki joining the celebration of Dassera along with other selanis. This is different from the Hindu code followed in a Brahmin household. There, the son who loses his father or mother observes mourning for a year and does not celebrate any festival during that period. With regard to the Bondas, Elwin feels, “Every ceremony, festival, wedding, funeral is... drawn out in tedious monotony, yet the Bondos seem to enjoy it - it gives them a lot of leisure and it makes things sure”.(Elwin 1950:164).
17.5