“Festival Day”

In 2000, the festival day (porbo din) took place a week later, on the day before the full moon. As far as the sacrifices are concerned, it differs in only a few points from the ritual activities of this day in chait. As in that month, the festival day begins with the sacrifice for the village goddess and within this framework also for the Great House. However, neither the boys of the “earth people” nor the adults gather at the village goddess’s shrine to share tsoru. Following the sacrifice, the randan cooks a small amount of tsoru for the earth goddess and performs betisong. Subsequently, he and the pujari eat some of the same food, but the rest will be prepared only in the evening, in the pujari’s house.

Throughout the day, it is primarily the women who are busy with preparations in the individual houses. The inner room is painted, the tsoru rice is washed in the river, and the women fetch water from there in a new clay pot. The mango garlands that are a striking element of the festival day in chait are absent in ban- dapan porbo. The house's implements are likewise not purified in the river.

In the afternoon, each man performs the sacrifice for doron deli, in which only a red-brown rooster is ritually killed. Since there is no sacrifice for the seeds, an additional black rooster is not needed. The goat sacrifice that a house performs every other year in chait is also absent in bandapan. After the sacrifice, in the inner room, the woman of the house cooks the tsoru, this time also including the rooster's head, which is not left to lie overnight in front of doron deli as in chait. Before the tsoru is consumed by all members of the house, the women provide the dead with lakka’* food (rice and meat), unhulled rice, and beer at the cremation site. It was already possible to distribute bulani rice on the preceding evening (nita bat), and the women give it away again on the evening of the festival day (as “festival rice,” porbo bat). In the evening, the barik summons representatives of all groups to the pujari’s house, where the Four Brothers eat the tsoru from the hundi sacrifice, and the affines eat lakka’* rice, previously prepared by the pujari's wife.