Harvest Folk Dances

More than 80% of Indians have been engaged in cultivation for centuries. Since the Hindu dharma is not a religion but a way of life, various agricultural operations are associated with rituals and festivals (utsava). Dancing is a part of the ritual or of the utsava. Right from the time of preparing the field for sowing seeds to the end of harvesting, during each stage of agricultural operations, various kinds of dances are performed.

Although industrial civilization is increasingly influencing the life style of the people living in urban areas, Indian civilization is basically agricultural. People living in rural areas are still retaining it. Indian civilization holds food in a very high esteem because it is not something that merely fills the stomach. Eating is considered as an act of yajna. There is a custom of reciting a prayer before eating. In Orissa the prayer has a line that says, " Udara-bharana nuhen ate ye yajna karma", which means this is not filling the stomach but a performance of yajna. To fully appreciate Indian civilization it is a must to understand what is Yajna. It is just not pouring clarified butter (ghee) on burning fire. There is a deep symbolism behind it. The ritual is associated with a powerful myth that explains the concept of performing yajna.

A Vedic work named Shatapatha Brahmana narrates the myth as follows: Prajapati, the originator of this universe, disintegrated his body into countless parts and scattered them in space. They formed the universe that is like a jigsaw puzzle,. The main aim of yajna is to mentally reconstruct the scattered body of the Prajapati so that the performer of the yajna rightly comprehends the relationship among the myriad different parts of the universe and the basic unity in the mind-boggling diversity.

The ritual of pouring ghee on burning file is a highly symbolic activity. The Vedas regard Agni, the fire god, as the leader of all gods (devata). There is also a symbolic reason behind this concept. Fire is the only thing in this world that goes upward acting against the gravitation. Some gaseous things may go up but they all leave the plane of their origin. Fire, on the other hand, although goes upward, never leaves the plane where it is ignited. The definition of Agni is : angati urdham ya, meaning that which goes upward. Besides, it is luminous, for which it is devata par excellence. In the yajna ritual the fire symbolizes the brighter aspects of human beings that aspire to go upward, but not leaving the earthly level of existence, aiming at an experience much higher than life. Ghee symbolizes the clarified awareness. In Indian mythology, milk is the symbol of consciousness. According to mythology, Vishnu, the divinity who sustains the woild, reclines on the kshira-sagara (ocean of milk). It means that the divinity exists in the vast realm of our consciousness beyond the experience of the senses The sagara manthana (churning of the ocean of milk) episode describes how the churning produced both beautiful and beneficial things like amrita, the elixir of immortality, and also the halahala, meaning deadly poison. It happens also today. For example; churning of the human consciousness and knowledge has produced many a life saving medicine as also the killer nuclear weapons, which can be compared respectively to amrita and halahala.

Churning of milk first produces butter which is the symbol of love in Indian mythology. That is why Krishna, being the incarnation of total love, has such an abiding fascination for butter. When the butter is heated over fire it is clarified to produce ghee. In Sanskrit tapas literally means heat. From this word is derived tapasya that means extremely rigorous meditation for clarifying the consciousness. Thus the ritual of pouring ghee on burning fire symbolizes the offering of clarified human consciousness to the aspiration of going to a much higher state of awareness for reconstructing mentally the unified body of the infinitely diversified universe. Now, of course, yajna has lost its deeper symbolism and is performed merely as a religious ritual, because the Indian civilization has been very much eroded under the influence of alien cultures.

Because eating is regarded as a performance of yajna, the food grains are also held in high esteem. In many a land of pooja (worship) uncooked rice grains are used as ritual material. An Upanishada says, "anna hi brahma" which means the rice is Brahman, the ultimate divinity. Food grains are regarded as the symbols of Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty and prosperity. In many parts of India food grains are worshiped after the harvesting is over. It is but natural for an agricultural civilization to hold harvesting and other farming operations in high esteem and to consider them as occasions for celebration in the form of utsavas. As said earlier, dancing forms an integral part of an utsava.

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