WISDOM AMONG THE HO ADIVASIS
OF JHARKHAND
Introduction
Wisdom is multifaceted yet universal in
perspective. Wisdom in its various forms of expressions is found in all
culture, nation and religion. Being a human phenomenon, it is universal. In
wisdom literature we see a lot of common points with other religions. This universal
nature of wisdom enables us to find a common ground in the other which is
appropriate for dialogue. In this paper, I would like to look into two aspects
of the adivasi life of the Hos in Jharkhand; the first is the
expression of wisdom among them in its theoretical sense and the application of
the same for a Sarna[1]
-Christian dialogue.
Can we find a well established sapiential
tradition among the Hos as we find in
the ancient Israel ?
I would say a big yes that the Hos do
have their own expression of a well established sapiential tradition. However
they remained only in oral forms passed on from one generation to the other by
means of myths and songs. The Hos possess
three important myths which are very authentic expression of their
understanding of wisdom. These myths are; the creation myth, the asur myth and the karam myth. These myths basically touch upon the truth that all
humans have their origin in the supreme creative-liberative act of the God of
love.[2]
Ho Adivasis:
World View, Beliefs and Practices
‘Adivasis’
is a collective name used for the many indigenous and tribal peoples of India .
The term derives from the Sanskrit words adi,
which means ‘of the earliest times’ and vāsi
meaning ‘inhabitant’ or ‘resident’. Officially, they are termed as ‘Scheduled
Tribes’. According to the 1981 census, there are about 84 million adivasis,
constituting 8% of the Indian population. About 30 percent adivasis are illiterate though literacy among adivasi women is a mere 18 percent. Hos are one of the major tribes of Jharkhand; the others are being Mundas, Santals, Kharias and Uraons.
Adivasi
World View: The worldview of Ho adivasis
comprises a hierarchy of beings: God, spirits, man, and animals and material
creation. Spirit can be further divided into nature spirits, benevolent
spirits, malevolent spirits and ancestral spirits. God-spirit-man-nature
combine is not a set of fragmented elements, but there is a wholeness and harmony,
unity and togetherness. God is considered to be the source of all good. The
tribal creation myths clearly point out that God created spirits, humans, and
nature and whole universe. He is the Creator, the Father. He is called as Dharmes, Sing Bonga, Ponomesor, Chando Baba
etc. He made the earth (land) and gave to the human beings (the adivasis). God Himself taught the adivasis how to erect the embankments
around the fields and to cultivate them; he gave them the plough, the cattle
and the seeds to sow. He taught them to prepare rice-beer and to worship Him;
He Himself imparted to them the art of procreation. In this sense a tribal
community, the land, forests and rivers owned by it, its rights and rituals,
everything is a gift of God and thus has sacredness attached to it. "Land
is the greatest asset for the adivasis."
Children, crops and the cattle are most prized by the adivasis: the tribe continues with the children; crops are the
produce of the land and are the basic means of livelihood; the cattle are the
indispensable means for agricultural work.
Adivasi
Beliefs: Adivasis believe in one
Divine Being, their Creator and Sustainer, and they regularly worship and offer
sacrifices to Him. By performing ritual sacrifices, they desire to remain
radically religious and fundamentally community-centred; for they believe that
their existence and that of the community to which they belong is essentially
connected with the spirit world of their ancestors whom the living members
would like to join after this life of sweat and struggle. Veneration of
ancestral spirits and good spirits, propitiating the neutral spirits and
warding off the evil spirits are very important in their belief system. The
strength, security, success and morality of tribal life depend on their sense
of belonging to the community.
Adivasi
Practices: Adivasi practices are
based on three principles; the sense of the Divine or the Supreme God, the
understanding of the presence of various spirits and the community life. They
perceive the presence of God in everything and they invoke the blessings of God
at various occasions in their life especially at the rites of passages namely,
birth, marriage and death. There are numerous rites and rituals associated with
the rites of passages to invoke the divine. Tribal rites and rituals are rich
in symbolic and these symbols help them to make the transcendent visible and
tangible.
Adivasis
do possess an efficient administration system. The village is headed by the
head of the village with the assistance of panches.
All the disputes are settled in the village itself and punishments are also
given by them. Various rules and regulations are practised without any external
force. Moral life of the Adivasis
depend on the welfare of their community life.
Seasonal feasts play very vital role in the life of adivasis.
Adivasis
being indigenous or original means being nature-born or nature-evolved people, which
means being close to nature – being so close to nature that they can easily be
termed as imitators of nature. The life-style of the Adivasis resembling the life-style of nature would mean being
transparent, being true to oneself, which further would mean being simple,
sincere, truthful, honest, etc. in other words being without crookedness or
shrewdness of mind. So also life-style resembling nature would mean being
generous (having the sense of sharing), being hospitable (having the attitude
of welcoming and openness), being non-hoarding and non-calculating in view of
the future, having common ownership, just fulfilling one’s immediate needs,
beings direct democratic with egalitarian outlook, being together as a
community, being ever joyful and content, being traditional, changeless, etc.
all such tribal characteristics resemble the life-style of nature.
The
Ho Myth by Which They Live
For the Hos, Asur Myth plays a very
important role as it depicts their life situation very aptly. The myth is as
follows.[3]
Once the Asur tribe, smelting iron
day and night, generated an excessive heat, causing immense suffering to all living
beings. As a delegate of the suffering, a heifer went to complain to Singbonga about the Asur. Singbonga sent many
bird-messengers, asking the latter to give up working day and night but to work
either during the day or at night. The Asurs
disregarded His command.
Finally, Singbonga himself, disguised as an itch-covered boy, Toro Kora,
became servant of an old childless couple. Misfortune overtook the Asur when they ran short of iron. They
requested the itch-covered boy to divine for them by means of rice grains. He
did divine and suggested to them a remedy – sacrifice of white fowl. Sacrifice,
however, did not solve their problem definitively since they ran short of iron
time and again. The last remedy suggested by the boy was sacrifice of a man. Since
the Asur were unable to find a man to
be sacrificed, the itch-covered boy volunteered to be sacrificed. The old
couple was reluctant to part with him, but he assured them that they would be
well looked after even after his departure.
Then the Asur sacrificed the itch-covered boy in a newly made smelting
furnace, and according to his instructions battered it open after three days.
To the great surprise of all, the boy emerged from the furnace like the rising
sun, covered with silver, gold and other jewels.
Assured that they would find more gold and
silver in the furnace, all Asur men
–young and old- agreed to be sacrificed like the itch-covered boy. Women
plastered all the apertures, set the furnace afire and worked the bellows. On
breaking open the furnace, however, they found nothing but charred bones. The Asur women felt tricked and began
bewailing. Toro Kora said you did not
heed the warnings of my messengers and ascended upward by means of a thread.
Then he caught hold of their hair and threw them over the land and they became
the spirits. This myth presents the liberative action of Sing Bonga who saves the Hos
from the clutches of the Asurs.
Having seen the essential traits of the Hos life and belief system, let us now
see the wisdom elements that are present in them.
Wisdom
Elements in the Life of Hos
Wisdom as Communion: The Ho Wisdom is understood as communion of
the following elements; God, spirit, man and nature. Many of their rituals are
based on this communion. They always would like to nurture this communion. If
they find anything happening adverse in their life, they immediately attribute
that the communion with one of the elements is at stake. So they do ritual
sacrifices to appease them. This will often be attributed to the spirits.
Propitiating the spirits is very important to maintain communion among the Hos.
Wisdom as Harmony: The purpose and
essence of communion is harmony. Hos
are very peace loving people. Harmony with nature, with the spirits especially
of their ancestors and with God plays important role in their life. The asur myth clearly shows this element.
When the asurs overworked to produce
more iron due to greed, the harmony of the community was destroyed. There was
more heat generated, the plants dried, the animals thirsted, etc. It in a way
showed that the whole system was affected and the harmony was lost. Singbonga makes lots of appeals to the asurs, but in vain. Finally he himself
appears to restore this harmony.
Wisdom as Community Moral Order: Wisdom
in this context is not an abstract ideal but a personal unity, calling
individual Hos to submit to the
created order. The created order calls for a harmonious society where rights of
all are guarded. Since Singbonga is
the maker and creator, all are accountable to him for their treatment of each
other. This calls for a community moral order. This moral order of the Hos are characterised by diligence in
labour, respect for parents, elders, ancestors and guests, truthfulness,
hospitality and justice. If one goes against this he will be taken to the
village court and fined. The fine is often used for a rice-beer party for the
entire village.
Wisdom as Order of Nature (Nature
Wisdom): The Hos have learnt from
their experience that in order to survive humans must co-exist with the natural
world. Observation of the world and its movement has resulted in the
recognition of a certain amount of regularity within its operations and
similarity among the characteristics of natural phenomenon. The Hos have a very efficient agricultural
system which closely associated with nature and the weather patterns. They have
an inborn idea of the weather patterns and they act accordingly. Their
festivals are also associated with nature. The major festivals are mage porob, baa porob (festival of flowers) and karam porob (karam festival). They often have a submissive attitude
to the nature and never try to master over it as nature is the habitat of many bongas (spirits).
Wisdom as Agrarian Know-How: Every
adult Ho is expected to know the
various aspects of agriculture. He is expected to know the types of seeds,
planting, transplanting, making the plough, ploughing, taming the buffaloes,
harvesting, collecting them into specially made barns. The women are forbidden
to touch a plough. This agrarian know-how is passed on from generation to
generation.
Wisdom as Interpreting the Omens:
There are also various unwritten rules and regulations which all the adult Hos are supposed to know. These rules
are at times the interpreting the omens at various stages of their daily
activities and agricultural works. Many of their agricultural activities are
observed based on the omens. There are good omens and bad omens. So
interpreting the omens are also part of their wisdom.
Ho
Wisdom and Retribution Theory: At this juncture it is good to analyse how
the retribution theory which often becomes the centre stage of Wisdom books is
understood and expressed by the Hos.
I have already mentioned that the Hos
believe in and strive for communion. However, the struggles of life, death of
child or cattle, destruction of agriculture, suicides, snake-bites are always a
concern and a question to their otherwise very peaceful existence. In such
situations they never blame Singbonga.
But attribute all those things to the other; which could be an evil eye from
the neighbours, or that the ancestral and others spirits may be unhappy not
satisfied. This is the area when the Hos
resort to ritual sacrifices. Such ritual sacrifices are often comes under the domain
of the pahan, the village priest, who
can exploit the simple faith of the Hos.
Depending on the graveness of the problem, the sacrificial objects vary from
chicken to a goat. So propitiating the spirits through sacrifices is the only
way the Hos understand the theory of
retribution. They never question or doubt Singbonga
under any circumstances. For them Singbonga
is always benevolent, loving and caring.
Elements
of Ho Wisdom as Tool for Dialogue
The wisdom elements in the asur myth show the Singbonga both as a creator and a liberator. Every religion has
this element of God as creator and liberator. Today, when the Christian- Sarna division is rather strong in
Jharkhand, this could be a tool or common space for dialogue. The asur myth has many elements which we
Christians have; that God has created us and has liberated us from the bondage
of sin and oppression. The messengers of Singbonga
are like the prophets and the appearance of Singbonga
as a suffering boy has the message of Incarnation.
Today, the actual enemy of the harmony and
communion of the Ho adivasis is Globalisation and
Fundamentalism; the former is the result of greed and the later of pride, which
were the two elements of oppression of the Hos
by the asurs. They were greedy for
iron and they were proud of the knowledge they possessed in making iron. Today,
the wisdom elements of both Christian and Sarna
tradition should come forward in dialogue to bring integral liberation. Thus
the creation, which is evolving and not complete, will unfold maintaining the
‘ORDER’ that the creator has already put into the system, and also maintain the
harmony and communion the Hos aspire
for.
Conclusion
Today, when we look at the human society,
wisdom is almost equated with technical knowledge and skills. Earning more has
become the aim of life. Here individual satisfaction takes priority over
community satisfaction, communion in the family takes priority over that of the
society and enjoyment takes lead of contentment. In this situation, the wisdom
tradition of the Hos gives us
challenging, emulative and inspiring thoughts. Wisdom should help us to build
the Kingdom where peace, happiness, love, justice and fellowship prevail. This
is the message Jesus, the Wisdom of God, proclaimed while he was on the earth.
This is what the harmony and communion of the Hos all about !
Bibliography
1.
Crenshaw James L. 1981. Old Testament Wisdom. Atlanta
2.
Emmanuel Horo. “Mundari Eucharist: A
Pastoral reflection” in East Asian Pastoral Review. Vol XIX, 1982. P. 20-21
3.
Fr I Raj, Class Notes on Wisdom, Vidyajyoti,
2008.
4.
Mundu John. 2003. The Ho Christian Community. Delhi
