Agricultural Rituals

Dr. Ansar Madni

Research Data

Agricultural Rituals

Description

My name is Ansar Madani and for a long time I have been working on the culture of Gilgit-Baltistan, its history and customs and I have not merely read about them from books rather I visited those places and gained local knowledge. The real Gilgit Baltistan is a place in the middle of the [Karakoram] mountains where our elders used to work. They used to settle these pastures in the search of a halal livelihood. As it is very cold in the pasture areas, people would seasonally migrate there in summers. [In the valleys] they would grow wheat and for this purpose soften the land before sowing. They also would use cattle dung as part of many other organic practices. At sowing, also rituals were applied by intellectual elderly person who had the relevant knowledge. An [old] man would pick up the soil and determine whether seeds could be grown there or not. Thereafter, he would advise about whether further tilling was necessary before sowing. There also was a ritual for the seeds as well. People used to bring cooked food from their homes to share it with others so that there would be a bountiful harvest. After that when the wheat was ripe and harvested, they would pile it in a round circle. As they did not have a modern thresher, they used cows tied to each other at some distance by a large stick. One person kept a pot behind the cow to avoid that the cow urinated on the wheat. Before any cow would defecate she would indicate this by raising her tail. The collected dung would be thrown outside the field, behind the cow. People would hit the cow with a wooden stick and would go around and around until the wheat was separated from the husks. An elder would watch and at some point remove the cows from the threshing place, gather the grain, examine the spirit of the wind and winnow it. The elders were watching over the entire process to make sure that things happened right.

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