When It Comes To Makar Sankranti, Clear Vedic Roots Of Tamil Celebrations Do Indeed Make The Culture 'Exceptional'

In Tamil Nadu, Makara Sankranti is celebrated as 'Pongal'. The day after Pongal, livestock are honoured. They are worshiped. That is ‘Mattu Pongal’.

Often this is projected as Tamil exceptionalism. Most people point out that Makara Sankranti is a pan-Indian festival - celebrated in various forms in various parts of India.

But what if the claim of Tamil exceptionalism has a deeper truth to it?

Let us look into specific elements of Pongal and related festivities which are unique to Tamil Nadu and find out if the claims regarding exceptionalism are genuine.

Let us look at the larger context in Tamil Nadu.

Margazhi Mandala

One should remember that the month Thai (the month when Pongal is celebrated) is preceded by Margazhi. In Tamil Nadu this month (Margazhi) is marked by the singing of Thiruppaavai, the songs by woman mystic-poetess Aandal.

If one goes through these hymns, they will discover a strong emphasis on cows and the plenteousness they provide. However, in most discussions on the Thiruppavai, the focus has largely been on the bridal mysticism evident in Aandal’s verses, as well as the bold, body-centric expressions that appeal more to the physical than the spiritual. Amidst all of this, one significant layer of symbolism has often been overlooked.

In Her 23^rd verse, Aandal describes Narayana as a majestic lion resting in a mountain cave during the rainy season, awakening with fierce energy and erupting in a powerful, awe-inspiring movement in all directions.

Aandal is but a small girl. The Lion is terrifying. Yet the poetess is not afraid. She extols Him to take His seat in the lion-throne and grant the wishes.

In Rig Veda, Kavi Deerghatamas, supposedly blind, praises Vishnu as the mountainous lion. Vishnu is terrifying and fierce. He is strong and wild (I.154.2).

The lion or lioness in its mountainous abode is also seen in the Shakta tradition. She is the mountain lioness in the cave of Hreem says Sri Lalitha Trisati.

While comparing a Deity to the majestic lion of human imagination, the specific imagery of the wild mountainous lion draws from Vedic tradition, offering room for mystic interpretation and expansion. Vishnu and the Goddess are synonymous in the pan-Indian spiritual traditions.     

Encoding of Vedic symbolism into the verses of Thiruppaavai does not stop with this alone.

Aandal constantly speaks of the cows and the abundance of milk from them. Also, there is the imagery of water cycle well known to every little child in Tamil Nadu who has memorised the Thiruppavai.

Verse three speaks of how their water adoration of the Goddess would effect three times rain in their land and would make the farm fields fertile with fishes and would make the cows fill their pots with milk.

Verse four speaks of the water cycle where the clouds becoming dark with the water drawn to them are akin to the dark body of Vishnu during cosmic deluge. Yet such a potentially devastating rain would, with His grace, transform into life-giving rain.

Elsewhere too, she sing of the fertile cows giving milk in abundance. The hymns powerfully connect the poetess as a cowherd girl and the dawn. Awakened, She awakens others and leads them to the Supreme Godhead who is also a Divine cowherd.

Deerghatamas connects all these elements in his Rig Vedic suktam called the ‘riddle of the universe’ or Asya Vamasya Suktam (I.164).

Sun is the solar bird. The sun rays are the cows. Lower rays are the feet of the cows through which they drink the water which when cycled back become the nourishing rain—the milk of the cows (1.164.7).

In the same sukta, the movement of the Sun is related to the year: ‘The twelve-spoked wheel, of the true (sun) revolves round the heavens, and never (tends) to decay; seven hundred and twenty children in pairs, Agni, abide in it.’ (I.164.11).

Many verses in the Sukta symbolise the birth of a year as a calf. Earth becomes the mother. Sky becomes the father. Dawn is the cow. Both the water cycle and the year cycle come together with the cow symbolism.

Where is then the cowherd? Sure enough, the sukta (I.164.31) speaks of the ‘Cowherd of the world’ and His shining garment gathering light and He moves around the world in light and shadow. There is even the suggestion of this Cowherd of the world being born of one and being in another (‘Enclosed within His mother’s womb he Has entered Nirrti’1.164.32).

Perhaps here may be the Vedic seed to the later Puranic narrative of Krishna being born to Devaki and later becoming the son of Yashoda.

The appearance of the Goddess in Her fierce form to Kamsa in the Purana also gets hinted at by the association of Nirrti here. Incidentally, Aandal speaks of this aspect of Krishna in Thiruppavai (25) – ‘Born to one woman and in one night came to nurtured by another woman...’: the mention of night in Thiruppavai in this verse seems to connect it to Nirrti in the Vedic hymn. Of course, this is tentative but if the Divine Cowherd of the world is indeed the seed of later Divine Cowherd imagery, then this is quite a possible association.

In Aandal who presents Herself as a cowherd girl awakening other girls, there is a possible relation to Vedic imagery. Ushus as Gomati ‘creates light for all the world and opens out the darkness as the pen of the Cow’ (I.92.4). Here Aandal does the work of Gomati.

She is knocking the door of everyone who is sleeping and wakes them up into the sacred Dawn. Here it is pertinent to relate the name of Aandal which is 'Godhai' or 'Godha Devi' because She manifested on the earth. ‘Go’ has many meanings through the literary evolution: higher light, divine knowledge, inspired word of revelation and earth as the cow. One finds all these meanings finding a fulfilment in 'Godha Devi - Aandal'.  

In other words, in the poetic mandala of Thiruppaavai, Aandal enshrines the divine vision of the Vedic kavi-rishi. She accomplished this in layers of poetry and depths of meaning, which take the language beyond its human limits. Thus, we see in Margazhi traditions of Tamil Nadu a democratised manifestation of a deep Vedic spirituality.

Kolam Mandalas of Thai

It is this association of the cattle and the sun that finds its full expression in Pongal. In fact, Thai and Margazhi are also related by kolams.

Kolams are beautiful mathematics-embedded patterns of the sacred that women put in front of their houses. Kolams were simultaneously associated with Yajna-Vedi and also with the sun.

According to Vijaya Nagarajan, a scholar of religious studies, kolams may be ‘a parallel to the male yogic positions of the Surya asana’.

In this respect what famous Indologist Stella Kramrisch (1896-1993) states is quite important.

One of the finest true scholars of Hindu Dharma and who belonged to Ananda Coomaraswamy-Tagore school, her insights and in-depth knowledge have helped to build an indigenous body of knowledge rooted in Indian culture and spirituality. Yet, even she was not immune to the dominant Vedic vs. non-Vedic binary.

What she wrote about ritual drawings has been quoted by many scholars including Vijaya Nagarajan and has set the framework to study kolams:

However, looking into the reference she had given for this claim of ritual painting on the floor to greet Sun God being outside the Vedic pale, one finds that she had come to the conclusion that the practice was non-Vedic because according to commentary of Haradatta on Gautamasutra, such practices of sun worship ‘though not expressly founded upon a passage of the Veda, are to be observed if they are not against the principles of the sacred writings.’ Then she proceeds to say:

That is not only a far cry from the claim that ‘the practice was not sanctioned by the Vedas’ but on the contrary it shows that the practice was already involuted in the Vedic literature.

Vijaya Nagarajan records how Saroja, an elderly woman from a village by the banks of river Kaveri, told her to see the connection between the depletion of natural resources and the decline in the practice of kolam. Saroja said :

This is exactly what Vedic Yajna is about. To give each other. Krishna explicitly restates this Vedic principle in Bhagavad Gita 3:11 ‘parasparam bhaavayantaḥ shreyaḥ param avaapsyatha’: It is by mutual nourishing that humanity prospers.

Thus the kolams made before the Pongal are an aesthetic expression of a Vedic principle. Pongal brick structure for the cooking-fire becomes a Yajna proper. And all these are conducted by women. This is indeed the most powerful 'Brahminisation' of an everyday 'secular' activity - Brahminisation here meaning infusing the movement towards Brahman in day-to-day life and occupation.

Mitra Mandala of Jallikattu

Finally, we come to Jallikattu itself. It has been pointed out that Krishna tamed the bulls to marry one of His eight wives. Seals showing bull-taming had been found in Harappan civilisation. However bull-taming as well as sacrifice related to sun and zodiacal calendar could well have another Vedic origin.

In Avestan civilisation, the Sun God is Mitra. In Rig Veda the God Mitra is indeed identified with Sun too (3.59). Sayana in his commentary states that Mitra being the sun ‘is measured or appreciated (miyate) by all, and preserves (traayate) the world, by bestowing rain.’ He is the supporter of all Gods’ and ‘all the five classes of humans appeal to Him for protective guidance.’

In the verse in praise of 'Savitr', the sun before the dawn, He is praised because of His helpful friendly nature as 'Mitra' (3.81.4).   

If Sun God in Vedic religion is primarily associated with cows through spiritual symbolism, in Avesta the Solar God Mitra got associated with the taming of the bull and bull sacrifice.

Mitra is often shown in sculptures in a scene called ‘tauroctony’ where the God is shown taming and slaying a bull. Spiritually or psychologically this is considered as the conquering of the unconscious. This is no doubt a branching of the Vedic association of sun and the livestock. In a way this is a devolution with the slaying of the bull.

However, in Tamil Nadu the Vedic connection is preserved in a civilised form and it is on the occasion of the festival of Sun that the taming of bulls happens without slaying them.

Now with all these facts in the mind one comes to the claims of Tamil exceptionalism through Pongal and Mattu Pongal.

There cannot be any denial that there is indeed a Tamil exceptionalism. Mostly everywhere in India Makar Sankranti and related festivals have vague relation to their Vedic roots. They are there. But they are faint. In Tamil Nadu alone, the Vedic elements are so brightly and so aesthetically manifested in a democratised way.  

Tamil Nadu is indeed exceptional as the thilakam or the auspicious fragrant vermillion mark of Mother Bharati. That thilakam is Veda Mata in Her spiritually profoundest meaning.

References used:

--The article is based on the vision unveiled by Sri Aurobindo in his 'The Secret of the Veda'. This work forms the foundational basis of this article. Apart from this primary source the others used are:

-Antonio T. de Nicolas, Four-Dimensional Man: Meditations Through the Rg Veda, Nicolas Hays, 1976

-Vijaya Nagarajan. Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India- An Exploration of the Kolam, Oxford University Press, 2019