Wedding Rituals: India
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Oddball Indian wedding rituals
Anwesha Mittra
The most common perception of a Hindu wedding is the lighting up of the Vedic fire around which the bride and groom walk seven times while the priest chants mantras. Assumingly for the sake of brevity, almost all television series or cinema dealing with a Hindu wedding conjures up an image similar to this. Then what about the many awkward and flamboyant rituals that precede or succeed it, rituals that are unique to every culture, rituals that are perhaps relevant no more but lovingly adhered to.
With the wedding season upon us, let's vet some truly obscure Indian wedding traditions that evoke emotions ranging from laughter, grimace, scorn, tears, to sheer amusement.
Bengali weddings: That the mother of the bride is not supposed to see the wedding is common knowledge. But did you know that on the day of the wedding, married women from the bride's family rise at the break of dawn and arrange a plate of aarti complete with sweets, twigs and incense, and go over to invite the Ganges to the wedding of their daughter. The holy river is believed to bless the girl in her future life.
Bihari weddings: This could be a rather curious post-wedding ritual performed by any groom's-side-of-the-family on bringing the bride home. Here an eager, expectant bride suddenly finds herself grappling with a huge earthen pot set on her head by her mother-in-law. Without losing time, few more pots are added to the pile while she is expected to bow down and touch the elders' feet. As the dramatic scene is played out, all and sundry gather to see how many pots the new bride actually balances, which is ostensibly an indicator of her skills at striking a balance in the family.
Tribal wedding in UP: Sarsaul, a small town in Kanpur district has given a new dimension to wedding hospitality. In keeping with the tradition, the baaratis here are not greeted with flowers and rose water spray, instead tomatoes and potatoes are hurled at them followed by a round of choicest abuses. Your sides might hurt imaging such a welcome, but the tradition takes root in the belief that a relationship that doesn't begin on a not-so-happy note always culminates in love.
Rabha weddings in Assam: The weddings of the Rabha tribes of Assam is an aesthetic affair. Performed as per Gandharva marriage tradition, the ceremony involves a simple exchange of garlands - no pheras around the fire, and a lavish feast to round it up with. An extremely patriarchal ritual, the newly wed on their first day together at the boy's family home is expected to give a hand in cooking the afternoon meal and serve only to the male, elderly members of the family. For the rest, food is served in subsequent batches by the helpers.
Malayalee weddings: How much the rest of the world frets about keeping the auspicious time for the wedding, tell this to the Nairs of Kerala and you'll manage a wry smile out of them. For them, the auspicious time is when they set out from their homes to marry in a temple or the ancestral home of the girl, and not the actual muhurat of the wedding. Like all Malayalee weddings, this too happens at daytime. A serene white wedding with a generous flash of gold jewellery, the bride and groom walk around the mandapam thrice - not seven times.
Kumaoni weddings: The use of flags in the marriage ceremony sets Himachali weddings apart. Traditionally, a white flag called 'Nishan' leads the marriage procession representing the bridegroom, followed by drummers, pipers and a white palanquin carrying the groom. The last man of the procession carries another flag, of red colour, representing the bride. When the marriage party returns from the girl's home after completing all ceremonies, the red flag takes the lead followed by a red palanquin of the bride, succeeded by the white palanquin of the groom, and the white flag at the tail end of the procession.
Tamil Brahmin weddings: At an Iyer wedding, just as the groom is about to step into the mandapam for the actual wedding ceremony, he has a change of mind and decides to pursue 'sanyaasam' (asceticism). An age-old Brahmin tradition 'Kasi Yaatrai' this, the bride's father too plays his part of a distressed father by reaching out to the groom and convincing him to take up 'Grahastham' (family life) with his daughter who would in turn support him in his spiritual pursuit. Umbrella, Bhagwad Gita, hand fan and sandals are the props used by the bride's father to win his would-be-son-in-law back.
Tamil weddings
In the Tamil language
The Times of India, March 22, 2016
MT Saju in Tracking Indian Communities
Citing Agamas, priest conducts weddings in Tamil
When he first started conducting ceremonies and rituals in Tamil, there was stiff opposition from those who have been doing it in Sanskrit. M P Sathiyavel Murugan was not against Sanskrit or any other language. What he wanted was to experiment with the possibilities of conducting rituals in Tamil, which according to him, were ancient practices.
It has been a long journey for Murugan who has conducted more than 1,500 temple consecration ceremonies and 4,500 marriages without using Sanskrit despite being a Saivite. According to him many Agamas were written in Tamil Grantha script and it shows Tamil worship was prevalent much before the ‘brahminic’ Sanskrit took over.
“History shows that the Pallavas are Aryans and their mother tongue was Sanskrit. During their rule, they introduced Sanskrit in temples as the language of worship,” Murugan said.
It was by merging the ideologies of his uncles, one a purist and another a reformist, that Murugan invented a new form to conduct ceremonies and rituals in Tamil. But it took years of research for him to place his theory in the right perspective. Interestingly, when he first tried to enter the French Institute of Pondicherry to check the copies of the Saiva Agamas, he was denied permission.
“It was the French who first translated some Saiva Agamas from the Tamil Grantha script to French. It shows that all rituals and ceremonies were conducted in Tamil before Sanskrit replaced it,“ said Murugan, who worked as assistant executive engineer with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board.
Except for the language, Murugan didn’t make many changes to the rituals and ceremonies. “One has to first understand the deity that one is praying to. If you don’t know, then there is no point,“ said Murugan, who has published more than 50 books. Among them ‘Vandamizhil Vaazhviyal Sadanggugal’ (Life rituals in Tamil) has been translated into English.
To promote his ideas, Murugan, formed Tamil Vazhipattu Payirchi Mayyan through which he trained at least 2,000 people on how to conduct ceremonies in Tamil. He also conducts a diploma course for training people in temple worship in Tamil with the support of SRM University .
At 67, this non-Brahmin priest is planning to conduct a series of lectures to create awareness among people about the real meaning of spiritualism across Tamil Nadu. “I am happy that I could trace the roots of our rituals and ceremonies. I see a lot of people who are in search of `spiritualism’ on the wrong foot. They are blindly following what priests say . It should be changed,” said Murugan, who has also brought out a Tamil calender with contents and components of the almanac entirely in Tamil.
