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| July 1, 2012 | Frog weddings performed in central and western India to appease rain gods | |
Chhatarpur/ Nagpur: In a ritual aimed at appeasing
Lord Indra, the mythological rain god, residents in central and western India
have been playing host to wedding feasts for frogs. Disappointed at the delay
in the onset of the southwest monsoon and also over the less than favourable predictions
of the weatherman, these people are now seeking divine intervention to give them
respite. In Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh, the residents performed a traditional
Hindu wedding, but the bride and groom were frogs, and not human beings. The wedding
was performed under the supervision of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator
Lalita Yadav. A group of women sat with the frogs during their wedding, singing
songs and dancing while the amphibians were anointed and led through the ceremonies
that aimed to appease Lord Indra, the rain god. Pandit Munna Arjariya said that
the ceremonies had been performed in accordance with the Hindu scriptures. “According
to Hindu rituals, the wedding started with an anointment of vermilion, followed
by a sacred offering, then the solemnisation of the union and a ‘Havan’ (fire
ritual) was performed. The ceremony ended with the departure of the bride,” said
Pandit Arjariya. A similar ceremony was performed at Nagpur , Maharashtra , where
people gathered for a colourful ceremony, raining marigold petals on the frogs
that were married off. The revellers said that rains were essential to the livelihood
of farmers in the region. The officiating priest, Pandit Shivprasad Chaurasiya,
said that the call of a frog brought rains faster, if ancestral lore was to be
believed. “Even our religious scriptures mention that a wedding of frogs accelerates
the onset of rains. Indeed, water is precipitated by a frog’s croaking and our
ancestors have said so,” noted Chaurasiya. In Aurangabad , Muslims offered special
prayers, seeking rains to water their parched fields. A cleric officiating at
the prayers, Maulana Naseem Muftai, said that rain was a divine blessing that
would come only if people acknowledged the divine presence in their lives. Earlier,
the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had mentioned in a recent statement
that monsoon in 2012 would be 96 percent of the long-term average overall, down
from its April forecast of 99 percent. A normal or average monsoon means rainfall
between 96 to 104 percent of a 50-year average of 89 centimetres in total during
the four-month season from June, according to India 's weather office classification.
The monsoon showers are crucial for farm output and economic growth since about
55 percent of the south Asian nation's arable land is rain-fed, and the farm sector
accounts for about 15 percent of a nearly $2-trillion economy, Asia's third-biggest.
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