They worship heavenly bodies, breed carp in rice fields, sacrifice bulls for the prosperity of the tribe, trust shamans more than doctors … Which does not prevent their children from studying at universities.
My Apatani people came from the north, where the great Subansiri River begins. This happened many centuries ago, when the Ziro Valley was a continuous swamp. My grandmother told me about borax - giant lizards with a small head that were found in these places.
Apatani have always been the best farmers in Arunachala. We are the only sedentary tribe here. We take care of our valley. Taking what nature gives us, we pay it with gratitude. We do not cut down a pine forest without planting new trees. Unlike the neighboring tribes of the niche or adi, we do not abandon the land when it has dried up, but we irrigate it with water. Our ancestors dug canals in the valley several centuries ago. In the flooded rice paddies, we breed fish: when the harvest is complete, we release the carp into the water so that they grow by eating the remains of straw and insects.
Since ancient times, we have been growing cucumbers, spinach, tobacco and millet on the banks of the river. We use reeds and other plants to make tapio, our salt that we add to food. Only we know the recipe for tapio.
Polygamous nomads from the Niche tribe in ancient times got in the habit of stealing our women right from the fields that were far from the villages. They needed wives as a labor force, and the niche did not want to pay the ransom for a new bride. Apatani women have always been the most beautiful in Arunachala. And in the hope that they would stop stealing, they began to disfigure themselves - to tattoo their face with soot and insert black rattan plugs into their nose. Once upon a time all girls from 10-12 years old went through this. At first, small slots were made for thin sticks, gradually the size of the plugs increased. We lost this tradition half a century ago, when our youth began to study at the Universities of Assam and Delhi: many of them began to be ashamed of their appearance because of ridicule, and Apatani stopped inserting plugs in their nose. The tradition we were proud of will die with usthe last old women with plugs in their noses.
On the faces of older women, you can still see the traditional tattoo: from the forehead to the tip of the nose and five lines on the chin.
I was a child, but I well remember how in the 40s of the last century the Austrian traveler Führer-Heimendorf came to our village with an expedition. Then my family and I saw a white person for the first time in our life. The Apatani were glad to the newcomer and warmly greeted him - they danced all night.
Like neighboring tribes, we believe in spirits. Doñi polo is our worship of the Sun, Moon and other forces of nature. Any illness or disease is the machinations of evil spirits. A shaman is capable of appeasing them, who sacrifices chickens, chickens or a dog, and then the spirits will have mercy. We are increasingly turning to doctors, but if something serious happens, we go to a shaman.
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The ritual pillar of babo apatani is installed at the house as a sign of the birth of the heir
On weekends, we meet at the temple. Previously, the Apatani did not have their own temples. When, in the middle of the last century, Christian missionaries began to lure our neighbors with beautiful churches and chants, the Apatani also began to build temples that would unite the people of our faith. We have kept traditions and are proud of it. We raise a white flag with a red sun in front of our homes as a symbol of our belief that we have no other faith than dona polo.
Houses in villages are built from bamboo on pine piles
We don't have a special wedding ceremony. The most important event, which is certainly celebrated, is the payment by the husband of the ransom for his wife. This can happen on the wedding day, but most often after. My husband gave half a dozen bulls for me several years after the beginning of our life together.
Apatani build houses from bamboo and only piles are made from wood. Putting up a house is not a difficult task, it is more troublesome to collect the necessary material. It takes months to prepare it. The construction itself is always well organized, with the participation of men from all over the village: starting early in the morning, they finish work by sunset. And we women prepare food for them.
We ourselves live in a long house on stilts, and our animals live under the house. Often, several families coexist in the same house, each with its own hearth, where everyone meets in the evenings after field work and drinks rice beer. In the back corner is the pride of any family, a sacred collection of skulls of Mithun bulls. It is an important buffalo-like sacrificial animal. Mithun never survives in captivity, so every time we go to the jungle to find the half-wild bull and bring him to the village.
Apatani do not drink the milk of the Mithuns or the cows they keep. We do not breed pigs. We just buy little pigs from the market and raise them for meat. In general, my people are unpretentious in food: in addition to our favorite chickens and eggs, we eat dogs, cats and rats.
Most Apatani children go to school
We have electricity in our homes, our children wear modern clothes, but we honor the traditions of our ancestors. In any village, you will see babo - ritual pillars carved from solid pine trees. During my youth, acrobats performed on the babos: the most daring men of the tribe surprised us so much that it took our breath away. Now you can't see it … We erect baboos during the Myoko festival, when Apatani walk all March for the sake of friendship and prosperity of the people. Each family installs a babo near the house as a sign of the birth of an heir, and at the porch - an agyan woven of bamboo and reed, protecting from evil spirits. Each spirit has its own ahyan. We know how to make about a hundred of these amulets!
Children of the tribe wear modern clothes, but honor the traditions of their ancestors
Next to the babo, the whole clan is building a lapang - a large wooden platform. On it, the shaman performs a ritual, sacrificing mitkhun during another festival - Murung, which takes place in January. Well-being will surely come to the house of the family that donated the bull.
Nothing unites us like religion and traditions.
Photos: Alexey and Christina Kolbovs / vokrugsveta.ru