Hinduism among tribes

Hinduism Among Tribes
(General Article)
Many tribal groups are described in religious texts as religious groups who were
associated with Hinduism in many respects. The generally accepted view of the Hindu
religion, or society, used to regard it as originating in Aryan invaders of about 1500 B.C.
who came in with a higher civilization and a fairer skin to find the great peninsula
inhabited by dark-skinned barbarians who imposed the religion of the vedas. This view
can no longer be maintained, and the doubts cast on it appears to be confirmed by
discoveries including that of a figure of Shiva among the remains at Mohenjodaro. These
discoveries show that the pre-Aryan religion of the Indus valley involved the cult of the
bull, and of the snake (typical Mediterranean cults, to be found in Crete). Also phallic
symbols, including ring and baetylic stones, which are probably all part of the soulfertility
cult which is associated throughout India with menhirs, dolmens and a megalithic
culture.
It has been pointed out with some aptness that in modern Hinduism only those elements
of vedic rites have survived which are essentially social, such as the marriage
ceremonies. The argument being that though the society was or aimed at being Aryan, its
religion is older than that of the so-called Aryan invasion. The god of the Rigvedic Indo-
Europeans is Indra, the thunder god, who fills in later developments an entirely minor
role, apparently being absorbed into the Hindu pantheon, just as the minor gods of
primitive tribes have been. However his personal identity is not lost by virtue of a social
prestige or privilege, which other tribal gods have lost in the process of assimilation. The
historical Hindu religion first appears not in the Punjab (which is the area most
completely occupied by the Indo-European invaders), but to the east of it in the
Brahmarshidesha, where the stable fusion between the invaders and the previous
inhabitants took place.
The cult of snakes, and the worship of a mother goddess, were probably brought in by
early invaders of Mediterranean or of Armenoid race, speaking no doubt a Dravidian
language, whose religion must also be associated with fertility cults, phallic symbolism,
the devdasi cult, and probably human sacrifice.
Sun worship appears to be less important in the Rigveda than at a later date, when the
Bhavishya Purana is largely devoted to a cult of the sun. It is doubtless significant that
sacrifice of the cattle was detested by the public though enjoined by the earlier vedas, the
inference from which is that the reverence paid to the cattle predates the Rigvedic
invasion. Buddism and Jainism, the latter of which contains extremely ancient ceremonial
survivals, may represent a reaction towards the pre-vedic religion to which the majority
of the inhabitants of northern India were attached and which were modified but not
destroyed by contact with the invaders. Indra, moreover appears as the author of sacrifice
and in the Yajurveda it seems still to be Indra and Varuna, who are the principal
recipients of sacrificed cattle. Vishnu, Shiva and Kali, the great gods of Hinduism, are not
Rigvedic deities at. Sakti is probably a cult derived from the Great Mother goddess of
Asia Minor, and the cult of Shiva is probably significant with it, the two being bound up
with the phallic religion of southern Asia and of the eastern Mediterranean. Vishnu,
apparently a psot-Rigvedic god, is perhaps the fruit of the reaction of the reaction of what
we may call proto-Hinduism to the Rigvedic invaders, as also the present ascendancy of
male over female conceptions of the deity.
Death Ceremony
The tribal religions, represent as it were, surplus material not yet built into the temple of
Hinduism. The similarity of this can be noticed to start with, in the cults of the dead. The
Hindu rites of the shradh provide for the creation of a new body to house the soul of the
deceased, and, though theoretically every year to maintain it, they are usually as a matter
of fact abandoned with the lapse of time. In the tribal religions, this cult of the dead is
seen in a precisely parallel form, but at a very much more matter-of-fact and materialistic
stage of the development of the idea. Thus in Mysore, the Hasala caste redeem the soul
with a pig from the magician who caused the death and domicile it in a pot, where it is
supplied with food and water. The Nicobarese and some Naga tribes fashion wooden
figures on which the skull of the deceased is placed in order that the soul may leave it and
enter the wooden figure. It is for a time kept supplied with all worldly necessities. A
similar practice must formerly have obtained among the Garo of Assam, but it has
disappeared, and in the wooden figures now used the pegs that held the skull in place
have become unrecognizable, surviving apparently as a sort of a pair of ornamental
horns.
Farther west and south, the Sawara of the Ganjam Agency tracts use a similar but more
conventionalized wooden figure to accommodate the soul of their cremated dead. During
the interval between death and cremation and the time for the erection of a stone or stones
for the souls of the dead during the year past, which is done annually about the time of
the transplantation of the crop. In the north the statues of the dead made by the
headhunting Kafirs of the western Himalayas had probably a similar purpose. In the very
south of India the Mala-Aryan of Travancore make a metal effigy of their dead, which is
kept in a miniature stone cist covered with a capstone (like the tattooed skull of a Konyak
Naga in the north-east) and erected on high ground. The image is brought out annually
and feasted and worshipped with tulsi on its head.
The Aryan invaders may have brought in cremation, and if so, thay gave it a social
cachet, which is still leading to its gradual adoption by tribes, which have previously
practiced burial or exposure. But it seems much more likely that the Rigveda Aryans
buried the dead and adopted cremation from the inhabitants whom they conquered. The
tenth hymn of the Rigveda clearly refers to cremation. Cremation also seems definitely to
have been the practice in the Indus valley of the Mohenjodaro period, and therefore the
more likely one of the two have been adopted as an alternative by the Rigvedic Aryans at
their period of fusion with pre-existing population.
The collective disposal of the village’s dead at the time of sowing is clearly associated in
some Naga tribes with the aspect as crop fertilizers, while the Oraons of Chota Nagpur
again, if the paddy has sprouted, inter their dead temporarily to cremate them the
following year before it sprouts. The connection between the souls of the dead and the
fertilization of the ground is reflected again in their very frequent association with water.
It is hardly necessary to call to mind the value set by the Hindus the immersion of thei
dead in the Ganges. But there are a number of parallel beliefs in more or less primitive
tribes, which do not seem to owe their existence to the to Hindu influence but rather share
their origin with the ingredients of that religious system. Thus the Meithei parctice of
disposing the frontal bone of the deceased in the Ganges appears in the first sight, to the
result of their Hinduization. No doubt their choice of the Ganges is such a result, but their
neighbours the Kacharis, when yet un-Hinduized, used to do the same in the Kopili river
after the harvest. While the Rengma Naga make a pool for water at the grave of any
notable man that the rain and rice may be plentiful and at least one other Naga tribe pours
water on a grave to cause rain.
The wooden statutes of the dead put up by the Angani Nagas of Assam are in some
villages destroyed after the harvest and the others have a small stone erected behind them
to do the duty, when they have perished. As instances the Lhota Naga of Assam, the
Kami and Bhuiya of Bengal may all be quoted as watching for an insect after a person’s
death. The Ahir of Gujarat who go to a river and bring back an insect or fish as
containing the soul and sometimes, in the case of the Gond at least, eat it to ensure its
rebirth.
In the case of persons killed by wild beasts, it is believed that the wild animal absorbs the
soul-stuff of the dead and this is illustrated by the widespread belief that the soul of the
dead rides on the tiger, as told for instance by the Baigas of Central India. Among the
Bhuiya every child is regarded as an incarnation of some deceased relative, while the
Mikir, believe in reincarnation except for the souls of those who have been killed by
tigers. Among the Lushei the reincarnated soul sometimes appears as a hornet, sometimes
as dew, and in the later form is hardly distinguishable from the Karen theory of lifesubstance.
It is a common practice with the tribes mentioned that while a dead
grandfather’s name or that of another ancestor must be given to a child, the name of a
living ancestor shall not be given, as, if it were, either he or the new-born child would
die. The practice was perhaps similar in ancient Indian society, as in old list of kings it is
common to find a grandson named after the grandfather. This practice seems, however, to
have changed, as the name of any ancestor living or dead is reported now avoided by
Hindus.
Magic
Magic, when limited to purely imitative or sympathetic magic, is rather nearer the
domain of science than of religion. There is nothing religious at all about the effort of an
Aao Naga to influence the rice by planting a root or two in earth put in the hollow top of
a bamboo, and so raised above the rest of the field, which is thus induced to grow high.
Also in the rather inconsiderate Kuki plan of putting a bug into the bundle of the
deaprting guest in order that the rest of the vermin may leave the house likewise. In the
custom of giving a Prabhu bride a grindstone to hold, which she gives to her husband,
saying ‘take the baby’. A belief in magic that both white and black pervades all the more
ignorant classes in India and is frequently responsible for serious crime. It not is always
eliminated by culture and education, as witness the comparatively educated persons
frequently victimized by rogues who profess to be able to double currency notes
miraculously.
Personal magic, however, is not only form in which magic appears. Tribal magic, in
which the community combines, usually at some festival, in rites or dances intended to
secure fertility or prosperity, is a normal feature of tribal religion. Such festivals or rites
are usually associated with the agricultural year and may involve sexual license, which is
probably intended to have a magical effect on the fertility of the crop and of the
community itself. There is no better instance of such a festival can quoted than the Holi,
which has survived as a Hindu festival throughout India.