August Festival

Bandapan porbo in August is the most important festival of the rainy season. It begins with sacrifices at shrines outside the village,^[1] includes hundi puja on the festival day, and ends with a ritual called dalgada. Despite a structure similar to that of chait porbo, this festival is fundamentally different from that of the hot season. First of all, sacrifices are performed not for pat kanda, but for jakor and bag puja, and it is pigs and cattle, not goats and sheep, that are sacrificed. The rituals focus on the dry fields, the gardens, and the forest (along with the village and its houses). In this festival, the rice paddies are not an object of attention. Correspondingly, it is the produce of the gardens and the forest that is permitted to be consumed and brought into the village only after the rituals. As in chait porbo, there is a prohibition on millet (from the festival day to dalga- da), but the village is not closed off, nor are conflicts punished, making the function of the dandia likewise unnecessary. Finally, there is no hunting; instead, competitions, games, and songs set the mood of the times in which rituals and sharing food are not at the forefront of attention. In what follows, the sacrifices will not be described in detail, since the actions are the same as in chait, but divergences and particularities will be noted in each case.

• [1] Opinions varied on whether the sacrifices for jakor and bag puja were already part ofbandapan porbo (just as in the case of diali porbo).