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COSMOVISIONS IN HEALTH AND AGRICULTURE IN INDIA
Prabha Mahale and Hay Sore

There are two major cosmovision traditions in India. The ‘Great Tradition‘, which represents the Sanskrit or classical tradition described in the Vedas and the ‘Folk Tradition‘, representing popular Hindu tradition and the tradition of the tribal peoples.

The rituals and practices of the Hindu tradition, both classical and folk, is a continuing history. They both represent a living cult that is deeply ingrained in social, religious and cultural traditions, both in the orthodox and the popular sense. Generally they converge, occasionally they diverge. There is also the indigenous system of the original inhabitants, the tribal people who have another history and knowledge base.
The Vedas are a collection of hymns, mantras and prayers written in Sanskrit, that communicate the sacred knowledge of the cosmic order visioned by the rishis or seers.

Thus, rishis are exalted beings who manifest divine wisdom and include the visionary sages of ancient India to whom the Vedas were intuitively revealed.

A rishi or seer has a perfectly subjective and objective mind, because it is free from the six prejudices: lust,anger, greed, intoxication, delusion, jealousy. Because of this he is able to make full use of the five senses and his mental capacity.

The senses naturally move out to see, hear, touch, smell and taste, where as the mind can move outward with the senses and move inward and experience an inner non-sensory world. For a seer, the way to understanding nature is to become one with it.

Vedas cover diverse branches of learning, such as astrology, medicine, law, economics, agriculture and government. The Vedic tradition is the root of cosmology and knowledge for the vastu majority of Indians, Hindus and Jains.

In India’s traditional thought, there is no distinction between the sacred and the profane: everything is sacred. The essence of this tradition is to live in partnership with, rather than to exploit nature. The most complete holistic perspective of the universe was evolved by Vedic culture about 6000 to 8000 years ago, and has been sustained by Indian civilisation throughout the millennia.

The Vedas have played a major role in bringing together mankind and faith in nature and have guided man through Rta, the cosmic morality. The cosmology, the total worldview, had the relationship between the Human and Nature as its core. All life is believed to be interrelated and interwoven.

According to Hindu mythology Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the conserver and Shiva the destroyer of the universe.
The basic theory of cosmovision is known as Siddhanta. The Sarva Tantra Siddhantas cut across all areas of traditional Indian science.

The following elements are important for health and agriculture:
· Understanding the composition of all material, animate as well as inanimate, in terms of the five primordial elements, the Pancha Mahabhutas: vayu (air), jala (water), prithvi (earth), agni (fire) and akasha (ether, sky or space).

· Understanding the properties and action of human beings, animals and plants, in terms of three biological factors: vaata, pitta and kapha. Vaata: slender, light and averse to sunlight. Pitta: medium size, abundancy and fond of sunlight. Kapha: stout and bulky, abundant flowers and fr uits, housing many creepers.

· Understanding the fundamental existential principles of dravya (matter), guna (quality) and karma (action).

· All living beings are born and evolve from the five Mahabhutas earth, water, fire, air and space.

In death they go back to them. The Mahabhutas are the primary natural resources essential for all life forms. Through myths and rituals mankind is ever reminded of his duty (dharma) to sustain these elements.

Gods and Goddesses from the Great Tradition

The cosmovision of ancient India can be illustrated by a quotation from an Ayurvedic text:

‘The basic aim of the concepts and fundamental principles of all the sciences is to establish happiness in all living beings. But a correct and thorough knowledge of the basic principles of the universe and the (human) body leads to the correct path to happiness, while deceptive knowledge leads to the wrong path.‘

The cosmic forces were personified in the form of various gods and goddesses, whose influence or failure to maintain cosmic morality was considered the main cause of an imbalance in health. They play a role in healing and thus it was the responsibility of every individual to observe the prescribed rules.

Most of the Vedic rituals are institutionalised in Hindu Dharma and are a part of the day-to-day life of the people.
Varuna is the God of waters and all the rivers. Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati and Kaveri are deities of the vast water cosmogony. No ceremony of birth, death or marriage is complete without the ritual purification of water. Vegetative and animal life forms such as lotus, coconut, mango, snake, tiger and cow are central in Hindu myths. Cows, which are a symbolical representation of the earth, have traditionally been objects of great worship and reverence. The killing of the cow is listed as one of the major sins in Hinduism: ‘All that kill, eat and permit the slaughter of the cow will rot in hell for as
many years as there were hairs on the body of the cow.‘ [Artha Shastra of Kautilya].

The teachings in ancient scripts such as the Upanishads, emphasise the importance of trees. Reverence for trees is expressed in the various tree worships related to the Ficus species. Trees have also been linked with penance, education and religious activities.

Prithvi, the Mother Earth, is the divine mother who sustains plant and animal life. She is perceived to be a powerful Goddess for the world as a whole.

The cosmos itself is seen as a great being, a cosmic organism. Different parts of the world are identified as parts of her body. The earth is called her loins, the oceans her bowels, the mountains her
bones, the rivers her veins, the trees her body hair, the Sun and Moon her eyes and the lower worlds her hips, legs and feet. Vayu (air) in the Vedic pantheon is associated with Indra, the God of the firmament, the personified atmosphere.

He is prana, the pure breath of life. Finally the sun, the great ball of fire is the energiser, the life giver.
The Goddesses too illustrate important ideas in Hindu philosophy. For example, Prakriti denotes physical reality. It is nature in all its complexity, orderliness and intensity. The Goddess Sri, or Lakshmi, is today one of the most popular and widely venerated deities.

In early Vedic literature she was invoked to bring prosperity and abundance. In the Sri- Sukta (an appendix to the Rig Veda dating from pre-Buddhist times) she is described as moist in cow dung. Clearly, Sri is associated with growth and the fecundity of moist, rich soil. Villagers, particularly women, worship Sri in the form of cow dung on certain occasions. Lakshmi is associated with the lotus (symbolising vegetative growth) and the elephant (whose power brings fertilising rains). Together they represent the blossoming of life. Durga is one of the most formidable Goddesses of the Hin du Pantheon. Her primary mythological function is to combat the demons who threaten the stability of the
cosmos.

Deities of villagers
In the villages, these goddesses are worshipped by upper caste Hindus. The ‘Great Gods and Goddesses‘, though acknowledge d to be in charge of distant, cosmic rhythms, are only of limited interest to most village people. Every village has its own village deities.
They often share the names or epithets of deities in the Sanskrit pantheon but they do not necessarily have any similarity with ‘the Great Tradition‘ Goddesses. Unlike the ‘Great Gods‘ whose worship is often restricted to certain castes, these deities are the goddesses of the whole village. All over southern India, these village deities are almost exclusively female. They are not usually represented by anthropomorphic images but by uncarved natural stones, trees or small shrines. The village and its immediate surroundings, therefore, represent for the villagers a more or less complete cosmos.

The central divine power impinging on, or underlying this cosmos is the village goddess. The extent to which order and fertility dominate the village cosmos is determined by the relationship between the goddess and the villagers.

Their relationship is localised and aims not so much at individual welfare but at securing the welfare of the village as a whole. In return for their worship, the goddess ensures that the villagers have good crops, timely rain, fertility and protection from diseases, spirits and untimely death.
The entire ritual complex built around agricultural operations involves protective, prohibitive and promotional values. For example, the villagers in Pachara (West Bengal) propitiate Lakshmi and Manasa a number of times each year. While Manasa is worshipped generally during the cultivation season, Lakshmi is worshipped during preharvest or post-harvest periods.

Furthermore, many of the rituals performed for living human are also being extended to Mother Earth. The Adi Perukku agricultural festival is celebrated in Tamil Nadu. On the eighteenth day of the Tamil month of Adi (between mid-July and mid-August) this festival hails the arrival of the monsoon. Reverence is paid to the River Goddess and farmers are encouraged to sow seeds.

An important aspect of this festival is the sowing of nine varieties of seeds: wheat, paddy, toordal, green gram, groundnut, bean, sesame, black gram and horse gram (Navadanya) in a pot.
It is called Mulaipari and is a forerunner of the present germination test. Apart from the festivals of the village goddess, there are a number of ritual performances that directly or indirectly relate to the various stages of managing agriculture production and consumption. These are observed by individual families and by particular caste communities. These rituals vary from region to region and from community to community.

But the ultimate goal is the same: the worship of deities,implements, bullocks, and spirits in the fields to ensure a good harvest. (Erntedankfest) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erntedankfest

Classical Indian Agricultural Science – In the Vedas, particularly Rig Veda and Atharva Veda a great deal of attention is paid to agriculture, implements, cattle and other animals, and the rains and harvests.

Ancient texts relating to agriculture are the Vrkshayurveda (Ayurveda of plants) and the Krshisastra (science of agriculture) and Mrgayurveda (animal science).

They provide a wealth of knowledge on such subjects as the collection and selection of seeds, germination, seed treatment, soil testing and preparation, methods of cultivating plants, pest control and crop protection, the rearing of cows and the care of draught cattle, for example.

Outbreaks of disease and pest attacks on plants are viewed as being based on the same principles as the epidemics that affect the human and animal species. The basic understanding is that epidemics occur because of imbalances in the ecosystem. One of the major causes of such inbalance is human error or living in the wrong way which leads to an incorrect intervention in natural processes. The main protection against epide mics is a thorough knowledge of nature which makes it possible to avoid causing serious imbalances in the ecosystem.

Vrkshayurveda – the science of plant health – was accorded a prime position in the history of agriculture in India. The three major ancie nt texts that provide the basis for Vrkshayurveda were compiled by Varahamihira, Chavundarya and Sarangadhara. These texts provide indications of an integrated approach to controlling crop pests and diseases through soil, seed, plant and environmental treatment.

These different methods have several characteristics in common and can be used to launch a multi-pronged attack on pests and diseases; to improve plant health and increase resistance; to enrich the soil with nutrients and increase useful microbial activity, and finally to ensure a broad spectrum effect on pests and diseases.

Folk knowledge – Farmers‘ perception and understanding of ecology, crops, land, labour, livestock and agricultural implements has a profound bearing on the strategy they adopt in their day to day agricultural operations.

Their ideas about climate, crops, the optimum climatic conditions required for cultivation and beliefs relating to crops and fruits are the results of the knowledge they received from their ancestors and their own long experiences in the natural laboratory of their fields. Farmers have the ability to identify various types of seeds and seedlings and this is often based on morphological characteristics. By looking at the nature of the flowers on a plant, an estimation of the yield can be made (Bauernkalender).

The technically useful items of indigenous agricultural practices are often documented without reference to the symbolic or ritual matrix in which they occur. It is a debatable point whether, by looking at these practices from a mere scientific and rational perspective does not devalue them. Despite the fact that farmers have been subject to external influences, they still continue to experiment and make innovations, sometimes adapting external knowledge to indigenous knowledge and sometimes revitalising their own knowledge.

There are indigenous institutions that regulate community administration, decisionmaking, elements of farming and the rites and rituals related to cosmovison. In the villages, religious functionaries such as Brahmin priests, and in the tribal communities of the Eastern Ghats traditional functionaries such as the Naiks and Disaris play an important role.

The functioning and strength of the institutions that kept the environment protected, depends on how successfully future citizens are introduced to the heritage that generates respect for these institutions. Knowledge systems cannot grow if traditional cultural anchors are not properly located.

Culture provides a ‘grammar‘, while technology provides new words. The meaning of life can only be discovered if both are blended together.