Festivals of Spring and our common roots

Holi  - Feb. 28, 2010 (day of the Full Moon)

Charshamba Suri - Wednesday, March 17

Easter - April 4, 2010

Lohri - January 13, 2010

The descendents of the people who originally dispersed from central Asia are today spread over large swathes of the globe.  They are spread over India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Tazikistan, Turkey Armenia and most of Europe. 

Since the original settlements sprang up in the Turkey / Armenia region and the dispersion began around 13,000 BC, religions have sprung up over time and have painted these descendents in various hues of religious belief.  Changes over time, interaction with new cultures and diverging lingual branches have made it very difficult for these descendents to see the common thread that runs through them.  After all, what can be common between an Armenian Christian, an Indian Sikh, an Iranian Muslim and an Indian Hindu?!  It seems there is a lot common among them than each realizes.

The Hindus have done celebrating Holi a few weeks ago, the Muslims and Christians are going to be celebrating Nau Roz and Easter soon.  The Sikhs have done celebrating Lohri in January. Now is there a common thread here?  Yes!  There is!

As the Hunter gatherers of Central Aisa settled down and took up agriculture, and as their numbers increased from  groups of  8-10 (at the time they were hunters) to the few hundred in a village, there was a need for each family unit to have their own hearth.  Instead of each family having to start fires to cook everyday, it was found convenient to have a communal fire that was kept burning round the clock.  Every evening the inhabitants of the village would bring the fire from this communal fire to their hearths to cook their food.

The fire was the savior. It cooked their food, provided them security at night.  When the sun went down, the fire was there as its ambassador to provide light and warmth.  The darkness was the evil unknown. It was fear and death.  The fire was light.  It was enlightenment. It cut the darkness and allowed people to see.  It was only natural for them to hold the fire with the sentiment of reverence.  Many descendents of these people miss out on the reason for their ancestors’ reverence for fire and use terms like “fire worshippers”, “Atesh parast” etc. in demonstration both, of their lack of knowledge and biases ingrained by their religious edicts.

Coming Wednesday (March 17) marks the festival of ‘Charshamba Suri’.  It is a festival that is observed in Iran and Afghanistan, to the detriment of the Mullahs and the fanatics who still seek Arab dominance over their Persian Heritage.

Charshamba Suri, is probably the original festival from which Holi of the Hindus and Easter of the Christians spun off from.  Charshamba means Wednesday in Farsi. Suri means Sun. In Sanskrit, Sun is called Surya. Suri is a widely found last name in India as well.  Celebrated by both the Muslims and the Zoroastrians, Charshamba Suri is the Sun festival that is celebrated on the Wednesday before the Vernal Equinox.  In essence, it is a Spring festival that rejoices the end of winter and the arrival of the ‘growing season’.  Bonfires are lit (probably a tradition rooted in the fact that there was a lot of farm waste that needed to be burned off at the beginning of spring).  People jump over the bonfires and shout, “Give me your redness of health, oh fire; and take away my paleness of ill health”

Charshamba Suri marks the beginning of ‘New Year’ called Noruz.  The celebrations last a couple of weeks.  Every family lays out a spread with dry fruits and munchies on it.  People visit friends and relatives and partake of these munchies.  This festival is observed in Iran and Afghanistan.

Image of Mithra (symbolizing the Sun) slaying the bull

Roman tablet.

In India, the  original prople brought the reverence to the sun with them – and it shows in the frequent mention of ‘Mithra’or 'the sun' in the Rig Veda. This is the oldest of the four Vedas and is believed to have been written a few generations after the  settlers crossed the Khyber. To this day, last names like Mishra, Mehra, Mitra - all variants of Mithra are widely found in India.  We will talk about the prevalence of Mithraism in ancient Rome a little bit later. 

The Aryan settlers who came into the Indian subcontinent saw the indigenous people (possibly the descendents of the first evolutionary migration through India) worshiping fierce looking figures and called them ‘div’ – their word for a malevolent supernatural being that was revered and feared.  Later as they adopted these deities as their own, the reverence to Mithra dropped away in favor to these deities  (primarily Shiva) and “div” became “deva”  - a term that had, by then, lost its original malevolent connotations.  Somehow, in all this mixing, the celebration of  Spring remained intact. 

The concept of throwing colored water on each other during Holi is a variant of the festival of Vartavar / Verdevar in Armenia where people throw rose water on one another. During the day of Vardevar, people of all ages are allowed to douse strangers with water. It is common to see people pouring buckets of water from balconies on unsuspecting people walking below them. The festival is very popular among children as it is one day where they can get away with pulling pranks. This is so remarkably similar to the festivities during Holi!

Water Festival (Vardevar) in Aremnia

The festival of Holi in India

The concept of the bonfire has remained with us till today.  Till a few years ago, people would get the fire from the bonfire to cook a symbolic meals like their ancestors did millennia ago on the  plains of  Armenia and Turkey.  Akin to Charshamba suri, Holi is a festival of social flurry.  Sweets, and munchies are served to visiting family and friends. The Sikhs of India have a big bonfire for Lohri as well, and each person has to walk up to the fire and reveal something to all assembled with fire as the witness to the person's assertion.

The Romans, much like their Indian brethren who had crossed the Khyber Pass into India also celebrated Mithra.  In fact, the Romans had the most elaborate Mithraic temples.  The Roman empire stayed steadfast in its endorsement of Mithraism until, towards its decline, when Emperor Constantin adopted Christianity as his official state religion and the Mithraic priests - who ironically live in the Vatican today, simply made substitutions in their books, replacing Mithra with Jesus, and started calling themselves Christians. Most the Christian traditions, easter, the decorated tree, the resurrection etc. are, in essence, Mithraic.  Mithra lived on in Jesus. 

In Armenia, the Christian priests could not prevent the people from celebrating the Spring with bonfires.  Unable to control this tradition, they invited the people to light their bonfires inside the church-yards.  Over time, the lighting of Bonfires was replaced by lighting of candles - inside the Church.  Even today some traditional Christians from Armenia light candles at church on Easter and carry the flame home to cook their meals and bless their dwellings.

The PIE (Proto Indo-Eruopean) language tree
Startling linguistic evidence of common origins
(Click on image to enlarge)

If national boundaries and religious differences are ignored, a lot of people in this world are bound together in the culture of a common tribe of the PIE tree.  These are the people whose languages can be found on the Proto Indo European Language (PIE) Tree (figure above).  It is one big tribe that should bridge language barriers, ignore the holy men,  and learn about one another.

(The illustrations and graphics accompanying this article are from external sources. Author does not claim credit for these works)