Bonfire (Holika Dahan)

Hello Beautiful People,

I am Riddhi Bhatt. And yes, today I am coming with something interesting   data or information.  This Sunday reading task is assigned by by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).

Today we discuss about Bonfire (Holika Dahan). Also, we see that How many countries celebrate Bonfire? And Why? Then What are the rituals around such celebrations. Story or myth around those celebrations.

We Indians celebrate Holi Festival with full of fun and enjoyment. In this same way every Country has their own myth and way of Bonfire Festival. So let’s discuss various Burnfire and different type of rituals. Before starting with Indian bonfire, I would like to discuss what is the meaning of bonfire?

 

Bonfire:

 According to our Googlebaba Bonfire means ...

ü  A large fire that is made outside to burn unwanted things, or for pleasure.

ü  A large fire built outdoors, as for signalling or in celebration of an event

ü  A large, controlled outdoor fire, as a signal or to celebrate something.

 

How many countries celebrate Bonfire?

There are so many regional views and myths and like stories on bonfire and different countries. So, in many regions of continental Europe, bonfires are made traditionally the solemnity of John the Baptist, as well as on Saturday night before Easter. Bonfires are also a feature of Walpurgis Night in central and northern Europe, and the celebrations on the eve of St. John's Day in Spain. In Finland and Norway bonfires are tradition on Midsummer Eve and to a lesser degree in Easter. In Sweden bonfires are lit on Walpurgis Night celebrations on the last day of April.

Country name	Bonfire name
Alpine and Central Europe ü  Zürich ü  Austria	Osterfeuer Sechseläuten
Australia	Canberra bonfires
Canada	Bonfire night
France	Jean le Baptiste
India ü  Punjab ü  Assam ü  Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu ü  Gujarat	Lohri Bhogali Bihu ( Magh-Bihu) Pongal Holika-Dahan
Iran	Chaharshanbe Suri Sadeh
Iraq	Feast of the Cross bonfire
Ireland ü  Limerick ü  County Cork ü  Northern Ireland	festival of Bealtaine Bonna Night Halloween (Samhain)
Israel	eve of Lag BaOmer
Italy ü  Northeast Italy ü  Tuscany	Panevin Fiaccole
Japan ü  city of Kyoto ü  Fukuoka	Gozan no Okuribi Daizenji Tamataregu Shrine’s “Oniyo”
Nepal	camp-fire
Lithuania	St John's Eve (aka: Rasos (Dew Holiday)
Czech/ Slovak Republic	Phillip-Jakob's Night (Burning of the Witches)
Turkey	Kakava
United Kingdom	Guy Fawkes Night
Scotland	Wickerman Festival
South Korea	Jeongwol Daeboreum Deulbul Festival

 

There are many story or myth around those celebrations. Here we discuss about this stories and after that we see that the myths believed in by Vaishnavites and Shaivites in India. And also In which myth I am believe more than the other one.

Iran- Sadeh:

According to religious beliefs, Jashn-e Sadeh recalls the importance of light, fire and energy; light which comes from God is found in the hearts of his creatures.

Legends have it that King Hushang, the 2nd king of the mythological Pishdadian dynasty (Pishdad means to give the Law), established the Sadeh tradition. It is said that once Hushang was climbing a mountain when all of a sudden, he saw a snake and wanted to hit it with a stone. When he threw the stone, it fell on another stone and since they were both flint stones, fire broke out and the snake escaped. This way he discovered how to light a fire.Hushang cheered up and praised God who revealed to him the secret of lighting a fire. Then he announced: "This is a light from God. So, we must admire it."

The festivities would normally go on for three days. The evenings are spent eating and giving out foods as donations, food that is prepared from slaughtered lambs and is distributed among the poor people.

Sadeh has a complex history and two different days were observed for the festival's veneration. In addition to 50 days (100 days and nights) before the beginning of the new year (or hundredth day after the gahambar of Ayathrima), already noted, the other celebration marked the hundred day before the religious new year (religious new year is not necessarily the same as spring new year). It is not clear why there are two Sadeh Festivals and why different regions have had different dates. Many of Zoroastrian holy days were and are celebrated twice; this is most likely caused by the calendar reform in the 3rd century AD.

Although for the majority of Iranians Sadeh has no religious significance and no specific rituals are involved other than lighting fires at sunset and having a cheerful time, Iranians of all faiths make a collective effort at this day to keep up with their ancient traditions and to celebrate the preciousness of creation.

England - Guy Fawkes Night (Bonfire Night):

Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in the United Kingdom. Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605 O.S., when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London; and months later, the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual                                                                                 public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.

Guy Fawkes Night originates from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed conspiracy by a group of provincial English Catholics to assassinate the Protestant King James I of England and VI of Scotland and replace him with a Catholic head of state. In the immediate aftermath of the 5 November arrest of Guy Fawkes, caught guarding a cache of explosives placed beneath the House of Lords, James's Council allowed the public to celebrate the king's survival with bonfires, so long as they were "without any danger or disorder”. This made 1605 the first year the plot's failure was celebrated.

Japan- Daizenji Tamataregu Shrine’s “Oniyo”:

Daizenji Tamataregu Shrine’s “Oniyo” is a “tsuina” (a ceremony to drive away evil spirits) fire festival. It has been a tradition of the shrine for about 1,600 years and is also one of Japan’s Three Major Fire Festivals! At 9pm on the seventh day that a “devil fire” has been guarded at the temple, it is transferred to six enormous torches measuring one meter in diameter and 15 meters (49 feet) in length. These torches are then carried around the shrine grounds by a crowd of men in loincloths and burn up in the dark. Onlookers are said to be blessed with good luck if some of the embers or ash from the torches falls on them!

Guatemala- Quema del Diablo (Burning of the Devil):

On December 7th, Guatemala celebrates a holiday called La Quema del Diablo, or “Burning the Devil,” a preparatory holiday in anticipation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This tradition, originating in the 18th century, burns away all the bad from the past year, serving to purify the conceiving of Jesus, as he is to be free from all evil.

According to National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel, the tradition began in Antigua during colonial times, when monasteries would burn a figure of the devil and light fireworks on the Day of the Rosary in October. It was later moved to December when there was a push to celebrate Mary’s triumph over evil.

Locals create papier–mâché or wooden devils and collect old trash and goods they no longer needed before gathering in the street amongst street vendors and food carts and volunteer firefighters who ensure the flames don’t get out of control. The devils are doused in gasoline and set ablaze at 6pm sharp as all the bad experiences, negative feelings and jealousies of the year are reduced to ashes.

As the Guatemalan people honor their patron saint and watch their negativity burn away, they vibrantly celebrate through song and dance, celebrating a La Quema del Diablo as the official kick-off to their Christmas season.

India – Holika Dahan:

Holi was originally a spring festival of fertility and harvest. Now it also marks some Hindu legends, which provide some of the ingredients for the celebrations.Holi is an ancient festival which is referred to in the 7th century Sanskrit drama, Ratnaval.

The Legend of Prahalad and Holika

This is the main Holi legend. Holika was a female demon, and the sister of Hiranyakashyap, the demon king. Hiranyakashyap considered himself ruler of the Universe, and higher than all the gods.Prahalad was the king's son. His father hated him because Prahalad was a faithful devotee of the god Vishnu.

One day the king asked him "Who is the greatest, God or I?"

"God is," said the son, "you are only a king."

The king was furious and decided to murder his son.But the king's attempts at murder didn't work too well. Prahalad survived being thrown over a cliff, being trampled by elephants, bitten by snakes, and attacked by soldiers. So the king asked his sister, Holika, to kill the boy.

Holika seized Prahalad and sat in the middle of a fire with the boy on her lap. Holika had been given a magic power by the gods that made her immune to fire, so she thought this was a pretty good plan, and Prahalad would burn to death while she remained cool. But it's never wise to take gods' gifts for granted! Because Holika was using her gift to do something evil, her power vanished and she was burned to ashes. Prahalad stayed true to his God, Vishnu, and sat praying in the lap of his demon aunt. Vishnu protected him, and Prahalad survived.

Shortly afterwards, Vishnu killed King Hiranyakashyap and Prahad ruled as a wise king in his father's place.

Moral of this story:

The moral of the story is that good always wins over evil, and those who seek to torment the faithful will be destroyed. To celebrate the story, large bonfires are burned during Holi. In many parts of India, a dummy of Holika is burned on the fire. 

So here we see that different type of myth or stories about bonfire. Now we see that Vaishnavites and Shaivites in India. And also In which myth I am believe more than the other one. So let’s see…….

 

Vaishnavism and Shaivism:

Vaishnavism:

Vaishnavism is the worship and acceptance of Vishnu (Sanskrit: “The Pervader” or “The Immanent”) or one of his various incarnations (avatars) as the supreme manifestation of the divine. During a long and complex development, many Vaishnava groups emerged with differing beliefs and aims. Some of the major Vaishnava groups include the Shrivaishnavas (also known as Vishishtadvaitins) and Madhvas (also known as Dvaitins) of South India; the followers of the teachings of Vallabha in western India; and several Vaishnava groups in Bengal in eastern India, who follow teachings derived from those of the saint Chaitanya. Most Vaishnava believers, however, draw from various traditions and blend worship of Vishnu with local practices.

In the Vedas and Brahmanas, Vishnu is the god of far-extending motion and pervasiveness who, for humans in distress, penetrates and traverses the entire cosmos to make their existence possible. All beings are said to dwell in his three strides or footsteps (trivikrama): his highest step, or abode, is beyond mortal ken in the realm of heaven. Vishnu is also the god of the pillar of the universe and is identified with the sacrifice. He imparts his all-pervading power to the sacrificer who imitates his strides and identifies himself with the god, thus conquering the universe and attaining “the goal, the safe foundation, the highest light” (Shatapatha Brahmana).

Whatever justification the different Vaishnava groups (such as the Shrivaishnavas of South India or the worshipers of Vishnu Vithoba in Maharashtra) offer for their philosophical position, all of them believe in God as a person with distinctive qualities and worship him through his manifestations and representations.

Vishnu in one of his many local manifestations; the North Indian groups prefer Krishna.

Shaivism:

The character and position of the Vedic god Rudra—called Shiva, “the Auspicious One,” when this aspect of his ambivalent nature is emphasized—remain clearly evident in some of the important features of the great god Shiva, who together with Vishnu came to dominate Hinduism. Major groups such as the Lingayats of southern India and the Kashmiri Shaivas contributed the theological principles of Shaivism, and Shaiva worship became a complex amalgam of pan-Indian Shaiva philosophy and local or folk worship.

Shiva also represents the unpredictability of divinity. He is the hunter who slays and skins his prey and dances a wild dance while covered with its hide. Far from society and the ordered world, he sits on the inaccessible Himalayan plateau of Mount Kailasa, an austere ascetic, averse to love, who burns Kama, the god of love, to ashes with a glance from the third eye—the eye of insight beyond duality—in the middle of his forehead. And at the end of the eon, he will dance the universe to destruction. He is nevertheless invoked as Shiva, Shambhu, Shankara (“Benignant” and “Beneficent”), for the god that can strike down can also spare. Snakes seek his company and twine themselves around his body. He wears a necklace of skulls. He sits in meditation, with his hair braided like a hermit’s, his body smeared white with ashes. These ashes recall the burning pyres on which the sannyasis (renouncers) take leave of the social order of the world and set out on a lonely course toward release, carrying with them a human skull.

Shiva’s consort is Parvati (“Daughter of the Mountain [Himalaya]”), a goddess who is an auspicious and powerful wife. She is also personified as the Goddess (Devi), Mother (Amba), black and destructive (Kali), fierce (Chandika), and inaccessible (Durga). As Shiva’s female counterpart, she inherits some of Shiva’s more fearful aspects. She comes to be regarded as the power (shakti) of Shiva, without which Shiva is helpless. Shakti is in turn personified in the form of many different goddesses, often said to be aspects of her. 

Vaishnavites and Shaivites are mostly important in india. And I believe I Vaishnavites. Vaishnavism is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is the largest Hindu denomination with 67.6% of Hindus being Vaishnavas. It is also called Vishnuism, its followers are called Vaishnavas or Vaishnavites, and it considers Vishnu as the Supreme Lord. It also includes some other sub traditions like Krishnaism and Ramaism, which consider Krishna and Rama as the Supreme being respectively.

Key texts in Vaishnavism include the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Pancaratra (Agama) texts, Naalayira Divya Prabhandham and the Bhagavata Purana.

Vaishnavism theology has developed the concept of avatar (incarnation) around Vishnu as the preserver or sustainer. His avataras, asserts Vaishnavism, descend to empower the good and fight evil, thereby restoring Dharma. This is reflected in the passages of the ancient Bhagavad Gita as:

Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth.

For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil,

and for the establishment of righteousness,

I come into being age after age.

— Bhagavad Gita 4.7–8

 

The Bhagavad Gita is a central text in Vaishnavism, and especially in the context of Krishna.The Bhagavad Gita is an important scripture not only within Vaishnavism, but also to other traditions of Hinduism. It is one of three important texts of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, and has been central to all Vaishnavism sampradayas.

These all things are very briefly here discussed by me. Later one I want to present a very detailly and interesting things about Vaishnavism and Shaivism. I hope you all are satisfy by this my blog and some brief discussion.

Thank you....

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Sunday Reading Task

Hello Beautiful People,

Today we discuss about Arundhati Subramaniam and her Poetry Collection titled as When God is a Traveller got Sahitya Akadami 2021 award in English Language so here we discuss about central theme of this poem and also explain this poem and then What is it that the poet wants to say through this poem?

  This Sunday Reading Task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).

 

Arundhati Subramaniam:

First when we discuss about “WHEN GOD IS A TRAVELLAR “poem main central theme and explain this titular poem I want to give some brief intro about Arundhathi Subramaniam.

Arundhathi Subramaniam's volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women's Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others.

 

As prose writer, her books include The Book of Buddha, a bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru). As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.

Her poetry has been published in various international journals and anthologies, including Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Poets (Penguin India); Sixty Indian Poets (Penguin India), Both Sides of the Sky (National Book Trust, India),We Speak in Changing Languages (Sahitya Akademi), Fulcrum No 4: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics (Fulcrum Poetry Press, US), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (Bloodaxe, UK), Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry[7]( United States ), The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India,[featuring 151 Indian English poets, edited by Vivekanand Jha and published by Hidden Brook Press,Canada. and Atlas: New Writing (Crossword/ Aark Arts) 

She has worked as Head of Dance and Chauraha (an inter-arts forum) at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, and has been Editor of the India domain of the Poetry International Web.

 

About When God is a Traveler: 

When I asked the poet, "What if I called you a modern-day Meera, an agnostic follower of an elusive Krishna?" she laughed, not displeased, but pointed out that her poems also had references to Shiva, Kartikeya and others. Though the poems in When God is a Traveler frequently dwell upon the minute details of everyday life, they also see in those details, hints of a Godhead, an uber-reality. Charmingly elusive avatars of Muruga, Krishna and other divinities appear, composed of the elements of our contemporary reality and occasionally, denied by it. This is also a frank volume of middle age. In 'Epigrams for Life after Forty', Arundhathi Subramaniam eloquently describes how, when life swivels around suddenly, we have to learn to discover profits in our loss.

 This is a theme not unrelated to Meera's: how to lose Earthly kingdoms, but gain the (divine) self. As Subramaniam puts it, "Bhakti (devotion) is very much the spirit of these poems — a passionate, far from anti-carnal or anti-intellectual bhakti. I think we've often turned devotion into an anaemic animal."

This bhakti in her poems also reflects a transition in her life since I was last in touch with her, in the 1990s. "Earlier I thought that my public persona would be about 'the Arts', and my private self would be about 'spirituality'. A near-death experience in 1997 and an encounter with a spiritual guide in 2004 have shaped my life on a very fundamental level."

 Many of the old divides blasted away, and the poems in this volume reflect that. But what about the other divide: that between the poet and the reader? "Some would view you as a high-intellectual. How accessible do you think your poems are?"

 Subramaniam recalls that when she was 13, she stumbled across a volume of TS Eliot's poems. She did not understand all of it, but "I knew I was in the presence of beauty, and mystery." She didn't know who Eliot was. For the 13-year-old, he was her discovery.

"We all want mystery as much as we want clarity. There is beauty — and truth — in the patterning of the two. Hundred-watt radiance is fine for shopping malls, not for poems!" Subramaniam adds that she loves Randall Jarrell's comment, that people haven't stopped reading modern poetry because it's difficult: they find it difficult because they've stopped reading it.

 So, how do the poems in this volume score on accessibility? Very well for poetry-lovers. For other readers, there's ample beauty of clear song here, but also some dark, cob-webbed corners that could do with greater clarity. To give the poet the last word on this, "I've learnt to trust the image and the image is much more intelligent than I am."

 And indeed, Subramaniam produces many striking images:

 ... the sacred plunge into a Cadbury's Five Star bar, Kanchenjunga, kisses bluer than the Adriatic, honeystain of sunlight on temple wall, a moon-lathered Parthenon...

 Other images are more intimate: 

I'm wearing my mother's sari, her blood group, her osteo-arthritic knee.

Or, in 'The Dark Night of Kitchen Sinks':

 ...knives and spoons scattered, like mutilated limbs ...

 A recurring theme that remains throughout is that of spiritual exploration, the repercussions of which can give rise to "a sense of terror and also of authorship".

When God is a Traveller is studded with gems of language. It is not necessary that all the gems will shine at once — or at all. Some may never shine for you (could they be blemished?) Others will reveal themselves in modesty, or in time. But you're likely to find at least one or two that go off like an explosion: an explosion that may help launch you, like:

 ...a tadpole among the stars,

 unafraid to plunge deeper

if it must –only if it must –

 into transit.

 

Titular poem of  When God is a Traveler :

 wondering about Kartikeya/ Muruga/ Subramania, my namesake)

 Trust the god back from his travels, his voice wholegrain (and chamomile),

his wisdom neem, his peacock, sweaty-plumed, drowsing in the shadows.

 Trust him who sits wordless on park benches listening to the cries of children fading into the dusk,

his gaze emptied of vagrancy, his heart of ownership. 

Trust him who has seen enough— revolutions, promises, the desperate light of shopping malls, hospital rooms, manifestos, theologies, the iron taste of blood, the great craters in the middle of love.

Trust him who no longer begrudges his brother his prize, his parents their partisanship.

Trust him whose race is run, whose journey remains, who stands fluid-stemmed knowing he is the tree that bears fruit, festive with sun. 

Trust him who recognizes you— auspicious, abundant, battle-scarred, alive— and knows from where you come.

Trust the god ready to circle the world all over again this time for no reason at all other than to see it through your eyes.

“Trust the god

back from his travels,

his voice wholegrain

    (and chamomile),

his wisdom neem,

his peacock, sweaty-plumed,

drowsing in the shadows.”

That is from the titular poem, When God is a Traveller, and as I saw God sitting “wordless on park benches/listening to the cries of children”, as one “who has seen enough”, someone who knows “he is the tree/that bears fruit, festive/with sun”, I grew fidgety in my curiosity about God’s soiled feet. No, it wasn’t there. How does God travel then?

 Arundhathi Subramaniam, it must be remembered, is the editor of Pilgrim’s India, an anthology of writing devoted to “journeys impelled by the idea of the sacred”, and more recently, of Eating God: A Book of Bhakti Poetry. She has also authored the Book of Buddha and Sadhguru. The knowledge of these signposts is necessary to understand the personality of the “God” in the title of her collection of poems as well as the poems through which “God” travels.

 As a traveller with flat feet who wonders incessantly about footwear and the length of journeys, I found myself reading her poems about shoes. Wearing High Heels, for instance, begins with the recollection of wearing heels “to the Class Eight jam session”, and ends with this near matter-of-fact realisation: “I have grown/too tall for heels”. In the space of that time, travel is the history of changed classmates and a changed self. It is almost as if the shoes, their height, if not their size, have remained the same, like god or his likeness, but all else have changed. In this, the shoes become a transferred epithet for travel. It is a pattern that runs through her poems — the everyday object is moved from its familiar position, and the poem, almost like an epiphany, places it on an altar.

Do pilgrims and worshippers take off their shoes in places of worship because God doesn’t wear shoes? (Behind this recurrent question in my mind is a classmate singing ‘Put on the dancing shoe’ every time our Bangla teacher explained Shiva’s tandava nritya to us.) And if gods wear shoes, what might those shoe boxes look like? 

   Here is A Shoebox Reminisces: “I renounced shape/a long time ago,/chose/bagginess,/endless/recess—/ivity,/but there are days/when the longing/returns/and I cannot abide/the sterile cynicism/of the Anti Couples Club,/the smug peddlers/of Uni-sole Advaita./I know it means/the saga of/two old shoes/all over again,/their grubby leather unions,/tales of childhood,/prejudice, toe jam, politics,/laces in a perpetual snarl/of knots,/footprints,/footprints. …” Note how the word “footprint” occurs twice, like footprints actually do, and you are suddenly made aware, again, of Subramaniam’s faith in language as a loyal mirror of experience.

 The poems that will continue to walk with me are those about middle age, not as ailment as it is represented in contemporary discourse, but age as scripture:

 

“When yesterday’s scripts

strike back,

coil,

clingfilm the body.

When you spring up again,

temple builder, house builder, empire builder,

thickly spreading the pores of that old need …

the need

to consume,

belong, be loved.” (And Here’s Middle Age Again)

This relation between the accumulations of years that might aid and abet religion’s travel itinerary marks Subramaniam’s new poems. In them, wisdom comes as it must — without knocking or intimation of its travel plans. “There are fewer capital letters/than we supposed” (Epigrams of Life after Forty).

What gives Subramaniam’s poems their surplus, therefore, is their parallel lives — how the poems are different things on different levels, taut like starched cotton and also with “holes” (for holes are also “matter”, as the last poem in this collection will tell us). Soul and sole, union and unions, spirit and spirits — everydayness turned into a religion, the best there is. 

In a television interview, when asked why she turned to the spiritual, Subramaniam said that she needed “something deeper than poetry”. This is a rich record of those experiments and accidents, one we are grateful to her for making public.

Worth watching video.....

Thank you so much for this reading this blog ......

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