Goddesses of the Kalasha [part 1]
One of the last peoples of western Asia to retain their aboriginal culture is the Kalasha of upper Pakistan. They speak an ancient Indo-Iranian language, Dardic, which conserves very ancient features. They took refuge in the mountains of Chitral a long time ago, surviving many waves of invaders. One of the last of these named them Kafir Kalash, “Black Pagans,” after the black robes of the women, and their refusal to convert to Islam. The individual tribes call themselves by older names: Kati, Kom, Vasi, Presun.
A neighboring group of Kalash people speak a different Indo-Iranian language but shared many cultural ideas and deities. [Witzel, 2] They live in the northwestern region of Afghanistan, which Muslims dubbed Kafiristan, Land of Pagans. In 1895-96, the Afghan emir Abdur Rahman Khan led an attack on the country, declaring “that either the Kafirs would be converted to Islam or be wiped off the face of the earth… Even the names of their villages were Islamized.” [Zaidi, online]
The emir’s armies forcibly converted the Kalasha, and destroyed their temples and icons. “Altars were burned, priests murdered, boys kidnapped and conscripted to military school in Kabul. Only several hundred Kati Kafirs (the Red Kafirs of the Bashgal Valley) managed to flee across the border.” [Witek, online] The conqueror renamed the region Nuristan, “Land of Light,” symbolizing what he saw as their rescue from pagan darkness.
On the Pakistani side, the Chitrali Kalash have lived under steady pressure to convert to Islam, and about half the remaining populations have done so, to date. Three valleys, with about 3500 inhabitants, hold on to their ancient culture. [Mohammed Bugi, personal communication, June 5, 2013] They are like a besieged island, trying to survive surrounded by the dominant, highly conservative Pakistani society, with the added pressures of poverty and tourist bombardments.
By their own telling, the cultural distinctness of the Kalash goes beyond their pagan beliefs. They have a saying, “Our women are free” (homa istrizia azat asan), and they assert that Kalasha women have “choice” (chit). Wynne Maggi’s fine book, Our Women Are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush, gives a detailed portrait of the culture. She explores the contradictions between that affirmation and the patriarchal aspects of the culture, which are considerable. (For example, Maggi says that “The concept of women’s freedom is entirely without connotations of women’s solidarity.” I won’t attempt to summarize her contributions, which would be a much longer article. Instead, this article concentrates on the Kalasha goddesses.
A key source on Kalash religion is The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush (1896) by George Scott Robertson, who traveled in Kafiristan five years before the forced conversions began. He listed 16 principal deities, writing “The gods are worshipped by sacrifices, by dances, by singing hymns (Lálu Kunda) and by uttering invocations (Namach Kunda)…” (I’ll be quoting extensively from this source.)
Richard Strand recorded testimony from a Vasi man named Zaman Xan: “In pre-Islamic times they had this quality, right? They were the god-callers; they would call the gods. They recited history… History like, ‘We came from such-and-such a place. Imro’s praise is this. Mone’s praise should be this.’ A person’s — uh, what was her name? – ‘Disañi’s praise is this type.’ They would shout it out. Yes.”
[http://nuristan.info/Nuristani/Vasi/VasiCulture/Zaman16.html
Gullam Ullah told Strand, “There was Křumâi – they used to call it Mercy-Pleading Křumâi’s [place], right? That woman’s — she was a holy woman. Křumâi, a woman, Křumâi. Another — she [Křumâi] was lower, right? — like, higher, divine, important woman, a holy woman, was Disaňi. One of our peoples’ gods was Disaňi; she was a woman. The rest were males, for instance, Gish and Mone, and whoever else. You know them all; you’ve written them down, right?” [History of the Kom,”
http://nuristan.info/Nuristani/Kamkata/Kom/KomTexts/KomHist.html
The Kalasha spoke of a male creator, Imrá, who had numerous shrines. He endowed other gods such as Moni, Gish, Satarám with life from his breath; “but Dizane sprang into existence from his right breast. Placing her in the palm of his hand, Imrá threw her violently upwards. She alighted in a lake, and was there concealed and released…” [Robertson, 381] The goddess is conceived of as an emanation from a male creator, but also as coming into being independently. By other accounts, she is his sister.
Dizane
Dizane is the great Mother Goddess of the Kalasha. Variants on her name are Disani, Disni, and she is also called Dezalik (“sister of Dezau,” another name for the creator god). This sister-brother pairing is a deep matriarchal pattern in many cultures around the world. Disani “is important; she is the goddess of the hearth and of life force; she protects children and birth giving women…” [Witzel, 5; he derives her name from the same root as the goddess Jeshtak (or in her Hindu form, Jyeshtaa.]
Robertson noted, “Dizane is a popular goddess, and is worshipped wherever I have been in Kafiristan. The Giché, or new year festival, is entirely in her honor, and she also has special observances during the Dizanedu holiday.” That the goddess presides over the new year—as Auset/Isis did in Egypt—is testimony to her great importance. Hers was the greatest festival of the Kalasha, which Muslims described as “the Kafir Eid.”
“In the evening and throughout the night there were feasting and rejoicings in most houses at Kámdesh. At the first glimpse of dawn on the morning of the 17th, in spite of a heavy snowstorm, men and women issued from every house carrying torches of pine-wood, and marched up the hill crying, ‘Súch, súch,’ and deposited their brands in a heap in front of Dizane’s shrine. The blaze was increased by ghee being thrown on the fire. The Debilála chanted the praises of the goddess, the people joining in the refrain at regular intervals.” [Robertson, 583]
“Dizane takes care of the wheat crop, and to propitiate her, or to increase the produce of wheat-fields, simple offerings are made unaccompanied by the slaughter of an animal.” More patriarchally, the men of Giché offer a goat to Dizane every time a son is born (although she presides over all births). [Robertson, 410]
Several hymns to Disni recorded in Shtiwe, Nuristan, celebrate her as a giver of life-force. This one, sung in early spring when the flocks are taken up to the mountain pastures, calls to mind Avestan paeans to the milk-giving Iranian goddess Anahita:
O Disni, you are the protector of the gates of God
and moreover you have eighteen grades:
Keeper of the temple
Giver of milk to human beings,
Protector of infants,
Well-wisher of man-kind [sic],
Bearer of welfare from God,
You keep the door of milk flowing,
You bring sensuality to mankind,
You increase what is created,
You are the one who receives permits from God,
And you are the keeper of the nine gates of mercy.
[Edelberg, 10]
One important tradition shows Dizane as the Sacred Tree. Robertson had collected a “good story” about this tree, “but the record of this story was lost in a mountain torrent.” [385] He remembered bits of it: “Dizane the trunk of the fabulous tree whose roots were the goddess Nirmali, while the branches were seven families of brothers, each seven in number. Some Kafirs affirmed that Dizane was the daughter of Satarám. She may have been originally the goddess of fruitfulness. She usually shares a shrine with other deities, but at Kámdesh she has the pretty little temple… all to herself. There, at the Munzilo festival, those Kanesh who live in the upper village have to sleep in the open.” [Robertson, 411] The emphasis on outdoor shrines in Nature is pervasive in Kalasha culture.
Another story told by a Kám priest reveals more about what became of Dizane after Imrá threw her up in the air and she alighted in the waters: “In a distant land, unknown to living men, a large tree grew in the middle of a lake. The tree was so big, that if any one had attempted to climb it, he would have taken nine years to accomplish the feat; while the spread of the branches was so great that it would occupy eighteen years to travel from one side of it to other.
Satarám became enamoured of the tree, and journeyed toward it. On his near approach he was suddenly seized with a mighty trembling, and the huge tree burst asunder, disclosing the goddess Disane in the center of its trunk. Satarám had, however, seen enough; he turned round and fled in consternation.” [Robertson, 382-83]
“Dizane began to milk goats…. While she was engaged in this occupation, a devil observed her. He had four eyes, two in front and two behind. Rushing forward, he seized Dizane, while she bent her head to her knees, quaking with terror. The fiend tried to reassure her, saying, ‘It is for you I have come.’ She afterwards wandered into the Presungul, and stepping into the swift-flowing river, gave birth to an infant, who at once, unaided, stepped ashore, the turbulent waters becoming quiet, and piling themselves upon either hand, to allow the child to do so.” The people were amazed at this, and at his starting down the river by himself. He took the name Baghisht, given him by a man who asked for his name. This son of Dizane was one of the Kalash gods.
In Chitral, Kalasha women invoke Dezalik in the bashali, the women’s house where they go to menstruate and give birth. If a birth is difficult, they offering walnuts to her, praying, “Oh, my Dezalik of the bashali, make her deliver quickly, bring the new flower into her arms, don’t make things difficult; your eating and drinking.” And again: “Oh, my Dezalik of the bashali, one has come under your care. Bring health, set the flower in her arms, you’re eating and drinking,” as the women throw more walnuts to the goddess. [Maggi, 145]
The goddess Disni plays a key role in another story. The gods wanted to get control of the House of the Sun, inhabited by a wealthy demon. His death will mean the healing of the world. The god Mandi gathers a company of the gods, including the goddess Disni, and leads them up the hill. They find the house, and an old woman is there. Mandi goes to ask her about it. “It is a house between up and down; inside there are seven brothers (called Dizano, cf. Dezâlik of the Kalash) who have many things: the sun and moon, gold, silver, water, fields where they show.”
The Old Woman instructs Mandi on how to make visible the rope that suspends the house between heaven and earth. But when he goes back to relate this to the gods, he forgets what she told him. This happens three times. Another god has to follow him and report back her instructions. The gods’ first attempt, by shooting arrows, fails because the house is made of iron and the cords holding it up are invisible.
“They ask Disni to sow seeds, which ripen quickly, and are threshed. The chaff attaches itself to the thread and it is visible in white.” Then Mara is able to shoots arrow through the cords, bringing down the house. But its door will not open. Disni tells Mandi to look at her white, full thighs. He becomes excited and is able to jump against the door with enough force to break it. He kills the seven demons. [Witzel, 5. The seven brothers are called Dizano, which seems to relate them to Disane and the seven branches of her tree in the earlier story; though here they are demonized, and Disni works against her sons.]
Dizane is also remembered as a builder. In Presungul is “a great irrigation channel” “which it is affirmed that Dizane herself constructed. There is also a good bridge in the same district called by her name.” [Robertson, 410] This recalls European fairy stories of Melusine as a builder of bridges or castles, or the Basque lamiñaku, as well as Indigenous traditions of ancestral female shamans in Yunnan. But a much closer parallel exists among the Dards of Ladakh, where the goddess Gan-si Lha-mo “is especially associated with irrigation and the building of water canals.” The Darnishi (fairies) also aid people in these tasks. [“Religion of the Dards in Ladakh,”
http://texts.00.gs/Religion_of_the_Dards_in_Ladakh.htm, with a truncated cite of fn. 202: “Snoy 1975:51 & 175]
“When the men of a tribe are away raiding, and the women collect in the villages to dance day and night to propitiate the gods and sing their praises, Dizane is one of the chief deities they supplicate for help. Her hymn goes something like this: ‘Send my man home safe and unwounded’…” But they call on the god Gish to bring plunder. [Robertson, 410] These women’s dances must have been something to see.
Kati women wore horned headdresses, with four horns made of human hair. (The birth of a four-horned goat was considered a very auspicious omen of divine favor.) Robertson witnessed one of these women’s dances at Lutdeh in Kafiristan. He wrote that while the men were away on a raid, the women leave off their field work and gather in the village. For most of the day and all night long they do nothing but dance and feast.
“They have elected three Mírs, the chief of whom is Kan Jannah’s wife. These three persons direct the revels, and contribute greatly to the feasting. Kan Jannah’s wife is carried from one place to another as a ‘flying angel’ on the shoulders of a stalwart young woman, each of the other Mirs holding one of her hands. The little party staggers over the narrow shaking bridge, and then starts off at a run, to the outspoken delight of the onlookers. Occasionally the women dance on some convenient house-top. In the afternoon they invariably feast and dance under the big mulberry tree in the east village, and use the east or west village dancing-place according to the position of the sun. During the night all congregate at the east village dancing-place.
“Although they all seem abandoned to feasting and holiday-making, they are nevertheless engaged in strictly religious ceremonies. To watch them at night, when the majority is obviously tired, leaves no double in the mind on this point. I have… observed by the fitful light of the wood fire how exhausted and earnest the women looked. One young woman, shrugging her shoulders in time to the music, had streams of perspiration rolling down her face, although she was all muscle apparently. The exertions these women undergo are astonishing to see. Many of the very old women have to give up from sheer exhaustion, but the midde-aged and the young work away singing and dancing hour after hour and night after night.”
“The aged are very earnest and solemn; the young girls, on the other hand, are ready to seize every opportunity to make improper remarks to any male spectator of whom they do not stand in awe. Still the great majority of the dancers at all times attend strictly to the dancing… They evidently believed themselves to be engaged in an occupation which did them infinite credit in every way. I could read as much in their faces and in their gestures.
“All wore horned caps except the little girls…” The women were dressed in their finery, wearing the national budzun [a dark woolen cloak]. A large number carried dancing axes, and not a few had daggers.” One old woman flourished her dagger before Robertson’s eyes for a few minutes, to the delight of the other dancers.
The women of Lutdeh danced to Imra, Gish, Dizane, and the other deities in their turn. “After each dance there was a short rest, after which the women collected again in the centre of the platform.” They did a call-and-response anthem, and began dancing again.
2013 Max Dashú
Source: http://www.sourcememory.net/veleda/?p=684
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