Graha Pooja

Rajendra Pudel 8/9/2015

Roll, no: 09

Homework

Submitted to Performance study.  

Graha Pooja a powerful ritual. How ritual like Graha pooja Controls us:

Ritual is usually seen in its conservative function. Ritual in this sense serves to reproduce and transmit the values and structures of a society from one generation to the next and to maintain those values and structures over time. Since ritual certainly has the power to be used for conserving the values and structures of a society.As rituals instill values, whether conservative or innovative or effect long term or short we still follow them. Catherine Bell puts light on that ritual have certain power that controls us. She evokes, “..ritualization, as a strategic mode of action effective within certain social orders, does not, in any useful understanding of words, ‘control’ individual or society". This paper digs out how Rituals like Rudri/Nava Graha Pooja shapes our community and builds our confidence. Such rituals like Rudri is to be performed during any natural crisis such as flood, or earthquake, and also when people suffer together because they bound together in that commonality Turner calls "Communitas". This is called "Sameness of feeling". Further this can be done individually with in one family through the process of ritual transformation to end the suffering of all.

We have a lot of ritual performance which start from birth until we die. Even after our funerals there are certain ritual to be performed. Ritual occurs from early morning to late evening (it term as Nityekarma). We can't feel refresh unless we perform certain ritual, like taking bath, doing some Yoga, chanting Gayetri mantra or even having a cup tea. So, we perform a ritual because the act of itself has meaning or because doing it make us feel better about ourselves. Since any action is a ritual if we do it at least in part of its symbolic and emotional value. Here I am talking about my own experience of performing ritual like Rudri or Garaha Pooja. We have been doing Rudri since our ancestral time in some purpose when we believe that when things goes wrong or it seems our fate will not function well in future.  Every symbols, ingredients, mantra we use in this worship has its own meaning. We start it in proper time by proper person or groups not only by words but by action.  As Bell argues  "for an understanding of ritualization as a distinct way of acting, with an internal structural pattern which can be deployed within various contexts to achieve ends both salient to its actors and constitutive of its own reproduction". When I was performing or acting in the ceremony of Graha pooja, I went through some process that priest asked me to do, then question comes, why such ritual? The remedial and procedural methods of pooja to nava Garha's for a clear understanding and universal benefit. Our forefather/sages hundreds of years back through their enlighten sight have formed these procedures and they have pointed out the Nava Graha's and Named them as Surya, Chandra, Kuja, Budha, Guru, Shukra, Shani , Rahu, Ketu. There some interesting process like Gai dan/giving cow to Nephew or priest…as our Hindu mythology said, Dan/donation is process to mokchhya. Offering holy leafs to different god and goddess, Panchamrit, chant the mantra 108 times using a rudraksha rosary and by keeping a shani yatra are such process which we believe that would avoid 'Shani Dasha'or Shaniswara means "slow mover' for better results. The mantras of shani one can chant to please Shani and reduce the malefic effects. The mantras that I chant were as follows: 

"Om Hlim Sham Shanaye Namah" 

"Om praam preem praum sah shanayishraya namah" 

"Om sham shanayscharaya namaha"

"Aum Aing Hring Shring Shung Shanaishcharaye Namah Aum"

I asked to my priest meaning of these above mantras, he mentiond, " I bow to Lord Shani, who is black in colour and son of Sun and born to Chaya and brother of Yama , who moves very slowly.

Saneeswaran is reputed to be both a giver and destroyer. Anyone who sincerely pray to Shanidev will not only be freed from troubles but also gets a life that one desires". Same like Bell ideas that Rituals have effect, it has certain cannon to follow, it has to be performed according to the sastra, there should be credibility, certain participation of people, it should be confirmatively to the convention. Acceptance of order, i went through the sastra. Finally the our performativity of Rudir rituals over, we have invited some of our neighbor and relative in the ceremony, this shows a rituals not only perform through some symbols and remedies but also it bounds the society. In Bell's words, " the notion of ritual as a means of social control, delineating the ways in which participants must be free to contest and appropriate for their own ends the schemes employed by a ritual, if the ritual authority is to actually engage them in a legitimating relation of power, and not simply one of coercion." What power does Rudri/Graha pooja hold? As my experience told, when I stayed there as an actor of rudri, I was separated from the other people, since morning I was purified, I was not a normal boy that I used to  be on  previous day. I entered into the sacred space, a state of "liminality" a state of being in-between-neither here nor there. its similar like when you enter into temple or church for a moment you feel significance of being there. In Dr. Tom F. Driver words "when people engage in ritual activity, they separate themselves, partially if not totally, from the roles and statuses they have the workaday world..".

Though, we don’t have direct link between the ritual process and or intention to come out, acting rituals with the desire of begetting a certain result appears to be sufficient of that result to come true. Some rituals have quick result for example after marriage a boy and girl cant not be same anymore, they start sleeping together from the same night, this is the quick effect of rituals where as ritual like Rudri has long term effect, we can't see the result but still we put faith up on so that we still follow the process, in this sense we can say that rituals have such power that controlled me because psychologically I believe that  after that day onward I feel my Dasha have been avoided, I have gained confidence that I can start my new business. I would say our everyday rituals have loads of meaning and when we perform them it is unbelievably effective, if not physically but psychologically it controls us.