Pongal
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A harvest festival
SATHYA NARAYANAN, November 24, 2015: The Times of India
Why Is Pongal Called A Harvest Festival
Pongal is the version of Sankranti festival celebrated in Tamilnadu. Typically occurring on January 14-15 every year, this event is heralded as harvest festival with a special focus on the agricultural and farming life of the society. Especially in Tamilnadu, agriculture is the predominant occupation of people in the villages. Agriculture is in fact the most vibrant aspect of Tamil culture and is best reflected during Pongal.
What is Pongal
Pongal is actually the name of the dish that is made chiefly of rice during this festival. However, this name has become a symbol of prosperity and growth. The literal meaning of pongal is overflowing. For instance, pongal is typically cooked by boiling milk first, letting it overflow a bit upon full boil as a symbol of prosperity and then putting in it newly grown rice to boil till cooked. The event is therefore named after this dish that indicates prosperity.
When is Pongal celebrated
Pongal marks the beginning of the month of Thai in Tamil calendar (mid January). The crops sown three months or six months before this date come to harvest just before pongal. Therefore, this becomes an event of thanks giving to all the factors that helped in agriculture including the sun god, the bullocks used for ploughing and other farm animals. The homes overflow with the new produce and the hearts of farmers overflow with happiness and therefore, the name pongal (overflow) is appropriate for this event.
Preparing for the grand event of the year
Pongal is perhaps the most important festival among all. Before pongal, the houses, farms and offices are cleaned, painted and decorated. The day before pongal is called Bhogi. On this day, people pile up the old clothes and belongings that need to be cleared off and burn them. They stand around the bonfire to sing songs and beat drums.
Thanking sun god
Farmers have special reason to pay their gratitude to sun for the crops they received. At the same time, all people participate in thanking sun god since food is the basis of life and sun god is the chief cause of the food they receive. The first day of pongal is dedicated to worshipping sun god. People prepare the dish of pongal in open place amidst decorations and rangolis. When it boils, people shout in ecstasy, “Pongalo Pongal” heralding prosperity.
Thanking the bullocks and cows
The second day of the festival is dedicated to thanking the bullocks and cows. Bullocks help in ploughing. Cows give milk and therefore, they are worshipped on this day. They are decorated and offered nice dishes, fruits and raw rice. In the evening, processions in bullock carts are popular in villages.
Seeking the blessings of elders and enjoying
The third day of pongal is to dress up in new clothes and seek the blessings of elders and teachers. The elders give some money and gift to those touching their feet as a mark of honour. After this, all the people in home gather together to visit places of interest and sightseeing. Thus, the day is meant for celebrations. Thus, the entire concept of pongal is focused on agriculture and therefore this is a harvest festival.
History, cuisine, cattle
Editorial by Renuka Narayanan, January 15, 2020: The Speaking Tree
The festival of Pongal affirms the enduring charm of religious culture. Even rationalist Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy, called Periyar, knew that. One year he reportedly won the Tamil Nadu government prize for best temple maintenance. This was for his services to Lord Vishnu, the presiding deity of his hometown, Erode, at the 10th century Chola temple of Kasturi Ranganatha Perumal.
A temple inscription attests to the paving of the parikrama with Cudappa stone by Chinnathayammal, wife of Mandi E Venkata Naicker. They were Periyar’s parents. Not only did his mother pay for paving the temple parikrama, but also, his father adorned the image of Vishnu in the sanctum with a silver crown and outsized silver feet. Whatever else he said, Periyar kept the family link with God.
In that spirit, the common people of Tamil Nadu have kept their gods, like how Soviet Russia, while doing away with the Tsar, kept the ballet, the art and the palaces as expressions of the Russian soul.
Pongal, dedicated to Surya, corresponds to the harvest festival of Makara Sankranti observed across India. Pongal literally means ‘boiling over’ in Tamil, from the ritual of letting milk boil over in a new pot as an augur of abundance. The milk ritual gives the festival its name and the festival gives the prasad its name while the prasad has two versions, sweet and salted. In sum there are four things called Pongal. (The festival itself is four days long, each day with its own Pongal name, but we’ll leave it there). All five ecological zones of Tamil Nadu observe Pongal. These zones, celebrated in Tamil poetry as far back as two thousand years ago, are Kurinji, the mountainous region; Mullai, the pastoral region; Marutham, the river valleys; Neydhal, the coast, and Paalai, the scrubland. Together they form the Ai-Vagai or five zones of the Tamil land.
While the food of these regions may vary from fish curry on the coast to goat curry inland, and the flowers vary from pink waterlilies in the Neydhal to the kurinji flower that mists the Nilgiris in soft blue every twelve years, an insouciant cultural unity boils over in Pongal pots across regions.
This year, as ever, a drive around the state will yield common Pongal sightings since 87.5 percent of Tamil Nadu is Hindu per the 2011 Census. For one, most homes will display elaborate kolam, mandala-style patterns of rice flour outside the door. This is as true for rural huts and urban slums as for the palatial bungalows of Chennai.
Secondly, cattle in Tamil Nadu have their horns brightly painted and brass bells tied on as party dress for Pongal, in which they and the crops are thanked along with the Sun. Thirdly, if lucky, you’ll catch a glimpse of jallikattu or bull-hugging – think of the Minoans of ancient Crete – in which the likely lads of the countryside hurl themselves at charging bulls weighing close to half a ton each. Many pampered prize bulls are like godlings to their owners and to society in general. The contenders who manage to hang on to a bull between thirty to sixty seconds are feted as the season’s heroes.
To crown matters, the sweet prasad of coconut and jaggery-flavoured pongal, and the salted pongal - a khichri of moong dal and rice drizzled with ghee, speckled with cashews and peppercorns - make Pongal a festival of glad promise to start the new cycle with.
Details
An Amorous Pongal Story In The Hills
Narayani Ganesh
Murugan is invoked as ‘hill god’, lord of Kurinji mountains, popular among Tamils of western and eastern ghats of India, and Tamils in Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia. Kodaikanal’s Kurinji Andavar Temple takes its name from Kurinji, the mountainous ecology of the region – one of the five Tamil ecological landscapes classified in Tamil Sangam literature.
Celebration of Pongal festival at Kurinji Andavar Temple finds its roots in a puranic story that narrates the meeting of Valli, a tribal woman living in Kurinji region, and Murugan, the second son of Shiv. An ardent devotee of Murugan, Valli loved him dearly. One day when she and her friends were working in the fields, harvesting millet grain, Murugan came in the guise of a hunter and declared his love for Valli. Annoyed, she turned him away. Next, the god comes as an old man and asks for food, saying he is very hungry. The kind Valli gives him thinai arisi maavu, foxtail millet flour, mixed with honey. Having eaten the food, the old man confides to Valli that he loves her and wishes to marry her. An angry Valli asks him to leave but now the man says he is thirsty and requests her to give him some water.
When Valli goes to get him some water, Murugan begs his brother, elephantgod Ganesh to help out. So his brother comes in the form of a wild elephant and charges towards Valli, who, alarmed, runs to the old man and asks him to save her. The man extracts a promise from the terrified Valli that she would agree to marry him if he protects her from the elephant. When the elephant leaves them, both Ganesh and Murugan appear before Valli in their true forms and Valli marries her love, Murugan. This love story is the reason why devotees in Kurinji region offer naivedyam prasadam, sacred offering, of pongal made of millet instead of rice to Murugan on Pongal day that celebrates the harvest season. The sweetener is kalkandu, large sugar crystals or rock candy, that will make the pongal dish rise as the crystals melt and boil over. Pongal means to ‘boil over’ – indicating plenty and prosperity. On Pongal day, the temple is cleaned thoroughly and during the morning abhishekam, the deity is bathed with fragrant ingredients, dressed in special garments and garlanded with flowers. It’s called Raja Alankaram, dressed like a king.
Murugan has six special abodes and one among them is Palani. The temple here on a hill faces west towards Kerala, as does the deity in Kurinji Andavar, which is a replica of the god as Thandayuthapani, the renunciate with a staff. The puranic story is that as a child, the second son of Shiv left home in a huff and took up residence in Palani after shaving his head and wearing just a loincloth, holding a staff. He was angry that his brother Ganesh won the prize of a special mango that Narad brought to the cosmic couple Shiv and Parvati. Since Valli was a tribal, and she met and married Murugan in Palani Hills, Murugan is the preferred deity among tribals and other communities of Tamil Nadu and the Tamil diaspora in southeast Asia.
January 15 is Pongal
