The Indian Ocean may be one of the earliest globalization channels in human history, having facilitated exchanges of tangible and intangible materials in all forms — cultures, goods, races, languages, and religions — across hundreds of thousands of years. Indeed, movement of peoples across the Indian Ocean was one of the major causal agents in the earliest forms of cultural exchange. These ancient cultural exchanges find an echo today in trans-national customs and traditions of the peoples along the Indian Ocean littoral; in their myths and legends passed down from generation to generation over the centuries, cutting across national boundaries, suggesting a common history. The Ōṇam traditions of Kerala, a sliver of land along India’s southwestern coast, are no different. The customs and traditions associated with this festival are not only unique to the region, they also speak to Kerala’s ancient trade relations with distant cultures across the Indian Ocean.
Traditional New Year’s Day in India falls around March — April with the beginning of a new calendar year according to Hindu lunisolar calendars. People in most parts of India celebrate the occasion in various ways depending on the region from where they hail, calling it by corresponding names: Ugadi, Bighu, Ram Navami, Nav Varas, Vaisakhi, Putandu, and so on. Kerala also participates in the national festivities, celebrating its ostensible “New Year” Vishu around the same time. Yet, unlike any other part of India, this is technically not Kerala’s New Year at all, for Vishu falls on the first day of Medam, the ninth month in the Malayalam calendar. Kerala has another, actual New Year Day months later around mid-August, corresponding to the first calendar month of Chingam. It happens to coincide with Kerala’s most important festival Onam, marked by ten days of festivities culminating with the main festival day on the first Tiruonam asterism of Chingam. The natives of Kerala, unlike other Indian communities, thus celebrate two New Year Days.
Strangely, Onam is not celebrated as a New Year Day festival at all. It is not a religious festival either, for it is celebrated by people in diverse religious communities; it is confused nowadays with a harvest festival, which was called Nira and celebrated at the close of the previous calendar month of Karkidakam. The only constant of Onam over the centuries has been its ritual celebration of the return of the fictitious King Mahabali from the netherworld.
According to popular folklore, Mahabali represents a pious native king who once ruled Kerala during a golden age. Although he was sent to the netherworld, so great was his love for his people that he returned every year to see how his subjects were faring, and he continues to do so even now. A great feast is prepared in his honor. The festivities include a man role-playing as the mythical king in a thunderous procession. Around the turn of the nineteenth century CE, exchange of gifts was also a major component of Onam festivities. Clothes gifted on Onam were traditionally of yellow color, or at least a portion had to be yellow; in southern parts of Kerala, blue cloths were also gifted in addition to yellow ones. Tenants, mortgagees, dependents, and other hangers-on of landed nobility presented themselves before their landlord on the day previous to Tiruonam with gifts of produce, such as coconut oil, plantains, bananas, pumpkins, gourds, cucumbers, beans, and brinjals. The landlord reciprocated on the following day with a sumptuous feast prepared using the gifted produce. Village artisans presented the head of wealthy families in their localities with gifts of their personal handiwork; these were graciously received and repaid with presents of cloth and grains.
Another ritual associated with Onam is the worship of elongated pyramidal mud mounds shaped like obelisks called Onattappan, which symbolizes the deity enshrined at Thrikkakkara Temple. The belief is that Onattappan represents the dwarf god Vamana, an avatar of the Hindu Puranic deity Vishnu; yet the dwarf god is not worshipped in such form anywhere else in India. The obelisk shaped mound, which is placed in the center of a flower arrangement during the ten days of Onam, is immersed in water, such as in a stream or the ocean, to mark the end of the festival.
Curiously, the legend of Mahabali and the many festival days of Onam have remarkable parallels in the ancient litany of festivals and myths of pharaonic Egypt. A festival observed by Egyptians celebrated the return of a fictional pharaoh Rhampsinitus, who was believed to have reigned during a golden age of Egypt when the country was rich and prosperous. Egypt was said to be fortunately blessed with peace, justice, and abundance during the reign of this pharaoh. During his lifetime, he ventured into the netherworld, won at draughts against goddess Isis, and returned to earth with a yellow handkerchief presented to him by the goddess. The yellow handkerchief is believed to represent the pharaoh’s nemes headdress, which is typically yellow with blue gores. Rhampsinitus’ return from the underworld was celebrated by the Egyptians with an annual feast every year and some peculiar customs including a priest role-playing as Rhampsinitus in a procession.
Besides, the close of the Egyptian calendar year, which also coincided with the close of the Malayalam calendar, was marked by celebrations called wpt-rnpt. This festival coincided with the five-day intercalary period between the close of the Egyptian 360-day calendar and the start of a new year. During these five intercalary days, no work was done anywhere in Egypt. Following the five-day period of rest, the New Year wpt-rnpt festival was observed again in the first month of Tot, corresponding to Chingam in the Malayalam calendar. Feasting and drinking were a part of this festival, which would last for days, just like Kerala’s Onam. It is not clear whether the festival of the fictitious king Rhampsinitus was celebrated along with wpt-rnpt; however, the parallels between his story and the legend of Mahabali, the gifting of yellow/blue cloth in Kerala and the yellow kerchief of Isis that represented the yellow and blue nemes of a pharaoh, and the role-playing rituals during the festivals are simply too similar and too particular to be mere coincidence.
The word Onam, in Malayalam, Kerala’s native tongue, does not mean anything other than the particular festival. On the other hand, wnm pronounced “onam” in ancient Egyptian meant “festival meal” and “banquet,” both of which match the most important ritual in Kerala associated with Onam, namely feasting. Moreover, the obelisk shaped Onattappan bears similarities to the bnbn, a symbol of the ancient Egyptians’ primordial mound of creation. From the earliest times, the bnbn was worshipped in a pyramidal form, and during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000–1800 BCE), it became a long, thin obelisk, similar to the Onattappan of Kerala. The bnbn was the personification of the deity Tnn (also called Tatenen), who was an earth god associated with all things in the shape of food and viands. Indeed, considering the Egyptian to Malayalam linguistic correspondence of /w/:/o/, /t/:/t/, /b/:/p/ and /n/:/n/, and the importance of feasts in Onam, it could well be that Onattappan (Onam+Tan+Appan) originally referred to wnm-tnn-bnbn, the Egyptian deity Tnn in his form as bnbn ‘obelisk’ on wnm ‘festival banquet.’
And what does all this tell us? Perhaps it suggests that cultural globalization is not that new after all; the people of Kerala traded more than material goods — they traded stories and festivals — with the ancient Egyptians across the Indian Ocean more than a thousand years before Hinduism set foot on Kerala’s soil around 300–500 CE.
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