This is big. It’s really huge,” Thota Selu says, scanning a huge granite arch, which has scenes of the movement of drummers and dancers on one side and a group of cultural symbols on the other – a bird, a cow, a lizard and a swastika.
The square arch, made up of just three massive slabs, more than 50 feet high, opens into a series of eight smaller arches beyond it, setting the tone for an arrival that feels bigger than ritual.
Sailu, a 40-year-old farmer, has traveled about 150 km from Khammam to Medaram, a forest village in Mulugu district. He drags a reluctant lamb towards the center of the Samakka-Saralamma Jatara, Telangana’s biennial tribal communal festival held on the banks of the Godavari River inside the forests of Dandakaranya. This festival, for hundreds of years, has attracted millions of tribals from across the state as well as neighboring Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. It will start on January 28 this year.
Medaram, one of the world’s largest indigenous communities still rooted in animist beliefs, is now in the midst of a profound change. The spiritual core of the festival resembles a construction site: cranes hover over the trees, welders and masons clear paths, and the shrill sound of drills pierces the forest air. The ancient heart of the Jatra is being reshaped by the modern Telangana state, and nothing about the gathering anymore looks the same. “Earlier, only a few people could perform the puja at a time. If 100 people filled the circle, the queue would be stopped to allow them to complete their rituals before another batch was sent in. This changes everything, where a large number of people can perform the puja and proceed in an orderly manner,” says Dabbagatla Tagore, chief priest of the Govinda Raju clan.
At the center of the Medaram Jatara lies the invocation of a family rather than a distant cosmic deity: Samakka, the mother, her husband, Pagididda Raju, their daughter, Saralamma, and her son-in-law, Govinda Raju. This close-knit, kinship-based theology shapes every aspect of the three-day festival, which is the largest tribal gathering in central India, attracting tribals from the plains and hills of four states.
ocean of devotees
The festival reaches its peak, three days after the sighting of the full moon in the Hindu month of Magha. Pilgrims enter through zig-zag queues carrying blocks of jaggery, chickens or lambs. In the warm glow of the winter sun and the glare of LED lights, devotees circle the platform marked by bamboo totems wrapped in sarees, bangles and thick layers of clothing. kumkum (Vermilion). Tons of jaggery loaded onto the site turns the ground into a sweet-smelling, deceptively slippery mud.
On auspicious days, the rush of devotees becomes so intense that coconuts and prasad are thrown towards the stage, forcing the priests to wear helmets and be alert to objects being thrown here and there.
The spiritual center of the Jatara has four platforms dedicated to Sammakka, Saralamma, Pagididda Raju and Govinda Raju. Two trees – Peddegi (Pterocarpus marsupium) and Tuniki (Diospyros melanoxylon) – stand within the rectangular space representing Sammakka and Saralamma. What was once a compact space of about 2,940 square metres, with images of deities over an entrance arch, has been expanded to almost double the size at 5,816 square meters to accommodate more devotees at a time. The single arch with a prominent image of the goddess has given way to a series of nine arches and 32 pillars, without a prominent image. Instead, approximately 7,000 images describing the clan’s history are carved into the structures that now outline the central area.
“All the Koya tribe people who come for Jatra bring with them Dalgudda Or Padige (The triangular flag), which has the entire history of the clan,” says Tholem Kalyan, one of only two flag makers for the Koyas. ”Storytellers use the flag to describe history. gotram. It includes the kings of other Gotras and their lifestyle along with the objects, animals and trees that they consider sacred. There are at least 90 pictures to tell the complete story of each flag Gattu Or clan.”
As well as creation myths, including the origin of the earth and sky from an egg, the flags also contain humor: a fisherman catching a pig, a two-headed cow. “These stories are told by Arthi Kalakarlu (The storyteller). Each of these families has a head and is the leader of the group. Thalapathi. They object to major changes,” says Kalyan.
Nageswara Rao says, “It would have been better if we were taken into confidence about the changes. But it has been done unilaterally. Our faith cannot be changed where the deity is with us only for three days. There is no need for any structure for the worship.” Thalapathi Of Koya.
Medaram Jatara, also known as Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara, has its origin from a historical-mythological past, starting with the discovery of a girl in a forest full of tigers. “Don’t go inside. Don’t even go that way. There are tigers on the hill,” warned Raju, painting the outer wall of the hill known as Chilakalagutta. “Only during the three days of Jatra people climb the hill, fire weapons and play drums to keep away the tigers and bring the goddess pits (platform).”
According to legend, the child was to grow up and marry Pagididda Raju, the nephew of the king who had rescued her. His daughter Saralamma was born before a four-year famine struck the country. When a tribal elder refused to pay taxes to the Kakatiya ruler, an army was sent into the forests, killing every member of the ruling family. Sammakka, injured but alive, disappeared into the forest, leaving only bangles and a pot of kumkum.
It is from Chilakalagutta that Sammakka, Siddiboina’s family goes to a cave to bring the goddess, symbolized by bangles and an ornament. kumkum bharina (A small box of vermilion).
bring the ladies home
Every two years, the Koya tribe remembers the sacrifice of four family members, praying for fulfillment of wishes and protection from disease. And they do not do this by climbing a hill to worship. Instead, they bring the gods and goddesses home – on their thrones – to live among their people for three days.
Abhishekam stage of Sammakka and Saralamma during Medaram Jatara in 1986 Photo Courtesy: The Hindu Archives
“Earlier the space was small, which caused problems in crowd management which at times became dangerous. What we did, with the consent of the priests and tribal elders, was to rearrange all four pits (Platforms) in a row, thereby reducing the possibility of accidents. “The floor is now granite, because the clay floor used to become slippery due to the offering of jaggery to the deities,” says architect Yashwant Ramamurthy, who helped design the reconstruction of the sacred complex. “There is a masterplan, and only a part of it has been implemented. Once the entire process is completed, devotees will experience a safe and authentic pilgrimage.
For the Koya tribe, Medaram Jatara is a time when family gods and goddesses come to live among the people. Tribal pilgrims begin arriving about a month before the main festival, making the forest settlement a place of communal gathering and shared celebration.
The relationship with the gods is extremely familial. At a short distance from the main temple is Jampanna Vagu, a dry stream of the Godavari, where Jampanna, son of Koya Senapati and Sammakka, is believed to have fallen from wounds inflicted by the Kakatiya army. It is here that women enter trance half-submerged in water and invoke the spirits to glimpse the future and past of the families who seek their guidance.
Dancing in ecstasy, with guttural glee, hands raised, and wet hair slicked back, the women speak as divine characters. Trance exposed the most intimate family truths – a wayward son, a troubled marriage, the suffering of a daughter-in-law. Later, when families sit down to eat together, their joys are also shared with the gods and goddesses: wine flows, spicy food is served, and the air is filled with excited conversation.
The platform with the symbol of the presiding deity Sammakka at the Medaram Jatara site. | Photo Courtesy: The Hindu Archives
The PhD dissertation of Chandra Mahesh, a scholar at Suravaram Pratap Reddy Telugu University, concludes, “Spiritually, the Koyas practice animism consisting of Hindu elements, celebrating a cycle of festivals that reflect their agricultural rhythms and mythology. The Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara, in particular, symbolizes their collective memory, resistance, and cultural pride.”
Changes in beliefs and practices
However, both belief and practice have changed over the centuries. This festival, once limited to the Koya tribe, now attracts people from non-tribal communities as well. Coconuts, which do not grow in the forests of central India, have become a major offering, with kiosks inside the sacred complex offering them to devotees. Wippa Sara, a wine made from the mahua fruit (Madhuca longifolia) and recorded as a ritual libation by anthropologists such as Edgar Thurston, has been largely replaced by bottled wine sold in grocery stores. A 1992 study on the Koya tribe states, “Cattle and buffalo are slaughtered to offer feasts to the guests and relatives gathered on the occasion of the ceremony. The preferred alcoholic beverage is Mohua wine, which they prepare regularly and drink in abundance.”
“Many belief systems have disappeared. The Koya people practiced slash-and-burn farming, and they had no formless gods and goddesses; they prayed to formless deities. But now, photocopies of other gods and goddesses are being superimposed and circulated within the community. This is an erasure of a culture,” says Jayadhir Tirumala Rao, who has studied tribal life, collected manuscripts and documented indigenous belief systems. Is.
Medaram’s nine grand arches seem to present an unexpected historical irony. The Kakatiya rulers, who had once fought the Koya tribes to establish their authority and almost wiped them out, were themselves displaced in 1323. The Kirti Toranas (victory arches) that he built at the center of his kingdom in Warangal now stand alone, in their old glory, visited by tourists on a large scale. On the contrary, the arches built for the Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara will soon see a huge tide of humanity flowing through them, symbolizing the arrival of the Goddess among her people.
As Sailu leads the lamb away from the sacred site, across the row lines and into the harvested paddy fields, his family waits in a rented vehicle. “We eat what we sacrifice” Offering. We cannot perform sacrifices there, so we do it in this open space,” he says, while other families nearby are preparing their festive food.
In a matter of hours, for Sailu’s family and countless others who have come to Medaram to receive the goddess, the mood will change to joy as her presence has settled over Medaram.Big, really, really big.
