'Behdienkhlam' literally means to drive away evils (Beh dien) and plague (khlam) and prayers are offered to their native spirits Knia Pyrdong Shonong and Knia Khlam for protection from the onslaught of epidemics! This is a popular festival of the Jaintia tribe, a sub-tribal group of the Khasi tribe of Meghalaya. The festival is celebrated in the month of July for good health, prosperity and bumper harvest, the date this year being 8th July. One must behold the main spectacle of this festival in the town of Jowai, which is about 64 km away from the capital of Shillong.
According to Khasi - Jaintia folklore, Jowai which was once covered by thick forest without any human habitation, was the home of five deities, four stones and a river nymph. The four huge stones can still be seen at the four corners of Jowai town. A wandering Mongolian tribe soon arrived in this forest, as a wish granted to the five deities who prayed to God to send humans to settle in this region. To celebrate this arrival of humans, ‘U-Mokhai’ the eldest of the deities began a ceremonial dance. The tribes upon seeing the thunder and noise from the dance, got scared and began to flee. U-Mokhai then stopped and told them that they are safe and are meant to inhabit this forest.
The festival thus begins with sacrificing a pig to appease the thunder spirit, ‘Knia Pyrthat’ followed by the ‘Wasan’ (Priest) who rings the brass bell along the main road of the town to the point where the forest begins. The ritual then continues with rounded, polished and tall tree trunks brought to the town from the sacred forest with great fanfare, dancing and singing. On the fourth day of the festival, the priest leads the youth of the town to climb over the roof of every house and beat it with a bamboo stick in order to chase away evil spirits. Various artistic skills are also displayed by the people who erect tall bamboo structures decorated with coloured paper and tinsel called ‘rots’, which are then carried to the ‘Aitnar’ a sacred pool around which people gather and where the rots are immersed to bring good fortune. The wooden logs are then thrown into the lake and dancing men rush and try to balance themselves over the rolling and slippery logs. At the end, ‘Dad-Lawakor’, a type of football is played with a wooden ball. The victors of the match are believed to get a bumper crop the next year.
- July