Rtu-Ritu - Cycle of Life

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RTA-RITU - An Exhibition on Cosmic Order and Cycle of Seasons

There is similarity between the seed cycle and the human cycle of life

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day, runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy, through the dust of earth, in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and death, in ebb and in flow.

Rabindranath Tagore

CYCLE OF LIFE

Forget not that your body contains the whole of existence.

A Baul song

The cosmocentic view of life holds that nature and its rhythms are not simply a setting for man and a backdrop to his life, but integral to the shaping of human life. The seed of human life and the crop-cycle have a common destiny. Both are subject to the self-regulating principle of order intrinsic to nature. The sun as the seed of celestial phenomenon governs the cosmic rhythms, likewise, the seed which is the beginning and the end of a crop-cycle contains the regenreative potential of human livelihood. In traditional ecocentric societies, the seed, soil, crops and seasons give order and structure to the yearly rhythm of human life. There are rituals to celebrate each act of the agricultural cycle. These rituals set the farmers to find harmony with the fields and seasons. So also each phase of human life from birth to death is sanctified in the embrace of nature’s flow. While biological rhythms mark phases of life, rituals that accompany them bring about a symbolic transformation of the individual.

The chief different between the map of the archaic and traditional societies and the man in modern societies ..lies in the fact that the former feels himself indisssolubly connected to the cosmos and cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists he is connected only with history.

Micrea Eliade

Sun symbol

SUN & SEED

By just one single seedf alone that sprouts into the mighty tree That's how world began

Attributed to Turkaram

Seed mandala

Sun and moon symbols (centre) encircled by crop fields strewn with seeds. The mandala shows the symbiosis between the energy of the elements, the fertility of the seed and the nurturing field.

PLOUGHING & SOWING

Auspicious Furrow (Sita), venerate you We pray you, come near us to prosper and bless and bring us abundant harvests.

Rig Veda. IV.57.6

Ploughing and sowing. Warli painting (detail) Maharashtra.

Offering of Votive bulls, Symbolizing the fertilizing power of rain

RAIN MAKING CEREMONIES

The Wind burst forth, the lightnings flash, the plants shoot up, the heavens strems, the sap surges up in every stem, when the Prajnya quickens the earth with his seed.

Rig Veda. V

Roar on, thunder, excite the water-bearer, anoint the earth,

..............let abundant rain come.

Atharva Veda IV. 15.6

Figure used in Rain making ceremony. Dogan tribe, Mati.

Marriage of kansari, the Grain-Goddess. Konkan, Mahmashtra

One of the main goddesses for the Konkan’s of Maharashtra, Kansari is identified with the five-finger millet, the grain which forms the basis of human livelihood. She is venerated during the harvest season on the threshing floor where the grain is cut and stored. The protective gods of the family bear witness to the wedding ceremonies which prefigure her pregnancy, identified with the sowing and ripening of grain.

Figure of Kama moulded in cowdung and clay.

During the spring festival, women re-enact the periodic dying and rising of god Kama, they lament his death, then sing songs of praise to celebrate his resurrection as a sustainer of the procreative energies of the soil.

Brimful of sweetness is the grain,

brimful of sweetness are my words;

when everything is a thousand times sweet, h

ow can I not prosper?

As a spring gushes forth in a hundred, a thousand,

streams, and yet stays inexhaustible,

so in a thousand streams may our corn

flow inexhaustibly!

Reap, you workers, one hundred hands,

garner, you workers, one thousand hands!

Gather in the bounteous corn that is cut

or still waits on the stalk

Three measures I apportion to the Spirits,

four measures to the mistress of the house,

while you I touch with the amplest measure

(of all that the field has yielded).

Reaper and garnerer are your two

distributors, O Lord of creation,

may they convey hither an ample store

of riches never decreasing!

Atharva Veda III. 24.6

Harvest

The harvest season marks the period when the potent Mother-Earth completes her cycle of fertility. Sun-ripened grain and yellow mustared flowers blossom in abundance. It is a time to celebrate the full flowering of the bounties of nature; to offer thanksgiving; to invoke the auspicious, protective and life-giving energies of the sun, soil and the elements.

Two fishes, a sign of Conjugal happiness

In traditional societies it is inconceivable to structure the cycle of life without any reference to the temporal order of nature. Life is never ordered on the arbitrary movements of clock-work time, which is essentially linear, the cycle of life is structured on the most fundamental bio-rhythms of the cosmos -birth, growth and decay.

We live in the boundaries of nature and culture. While biology determines our phases of growth-birth, childhood, maturation and death; culture provides a frame of reference to manipulate these phases in endless ways. In a given socio-cultural matrix, humans assume their cultural identity by rituals and ceremonies they undergo during different phases of growth. All the rites of passage from birth to death involve a paradox, while they facilitate change in life. It also disrupts a continuity and engenders a change and status of a person from one phase to another. The theme of disruption and continuity is central to rites. “Rituals exposes these paradoxes and accentuates them, tension is heightened and resolution is eagerly sought... the familiar ground and safety that ritual provides allow us to experience their truth, and thereby to discover the intractable parameters of our fate as humans. In this way, rites of passage not only accentuate anxiety but alleviate it.”

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