Fairs and Festivals, Part VII-B

PRG. 179.11' em 75-0--- . ANANTAPUR CENSUS OF INDIA 1961 VOLUME II ANDHRA PRADESH PART VII-B (10) FAIRS AND F ( 10. Anantapur District ) A. CHANDRA S:EKHAR OF THE INDIAN ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICE Sltl}erintendent of Cens'Us Ope'rations. Andhru Pradesh Price: Rs. 7.25 P. or 16 Sh. 11 d.. or $ 2.fil c, 1961 CENSUS PUBLICATIONS, ANDHRA PRADESH (All the Census Publications of this State will bear Vol. No. II) PART I-A General Report PART I-B Report on Vital Statistics PART I-C Subsidiary Tables PART II-A General Population Tables PARt II-B (i) Economic Tables [B-1 to B-1VJ PART II-B (ii) Economic Tables [B-V to B-IXJ PARt II-C Cultural and Migration Tables PART III Household Economic Tables PART IV-A Housing Report and Subsidiary Tables PART IV-B Housing and Establishment Tables PART V-A Special Tables for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes PART V-B Ethnographic Notes on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe5 PART VI Village Survey Monographs (46") PART VII-A (I)) Handicraft Survey Reports (Selected Crafts) PART VII-A (2) J PART VlI-B (1 to 20) Fairs and Festivals (Separate Book for each District) PART VIII-A Administration Report-Enumeration "'\ (Not for PART VIII-B Administration Report-Tabulation J Sale) PART IX State Atlas PART X Special Report on Hyderabad City District Census Handbooks (Separate Volume for each Dislricf) Plate I: . A ceiling painting of Veerabhadra in Lepakshi temple, Lepakshi, Hindupur Taluk FOREWORD Although since the beginning of history, foreign travellers and historians have recorded the principal marts and entrepots of commerce in India and have even mentioned impo~'tant festivals and fairs and articles of special excellence available in them, no systematic regional inventory was attempted until the time of Dr. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton in the beginning of the nineteenth cen tury. One of the tasks set before him by a resolution of the Governor-General-in-Council in 1807 was "to examine with as much accuracy as local circumstances will admit": "an a:ccount of the \"arious kinds and amount of goods manufactured in each district .... the ability of the country to produce the raw materials used in them .... how the necessary capital is procured, the situation of the artists and manufacturers, the mode of providing their goods .... commerce: the quantity of goods exported and imported in each district; the manner of conducting sales, especially at fairs and markets." That he discharged his duty very thoroughly will appear from his statistical accounts of My sore and the northern districts of Bengal and Bihar. The great Revenue Surveys of the middle of the nineteenth century made no attempt in thIs direction, and accounts of fairs and festivals in districts were neglected until W. W. Hunter took up the compilation of statistIcal accounts again in the last quarter of last century. For the purpose of notifying holidays in the East India Company's offices the Board in Calcutta had since 1789 been in the habit of "procuring an accurate Bengalee almanac properly authenticated by brahmanical astronomy" from the Nabadwip Court (letter from Secretary of Board to Collector of Nadiya, 5 July 1799, No. 8217, W. W. Hunter's Unpublished Bengalee lVISS Records). Satis Chandra Vidyabhusan in his History of indian Logic wrote that "almanacs were prepared by the Pundit Samaj of Nabad wip which were supplied to the Nawab's Court of Murshidabad as well as to the East India Com pany, the Supreme Court, etc ..... the Nabadwip Panjika under the imprimatur of Nabadwipadhi pateranugya was accepted by all the landlords uf Bengal". This Nc.bc.dttlP Panjika which remained the standard almanac for Bengal continued in use throughout the first half of the nineteenth century and each issue contained a list of important fairs and festivals in every district. A valuable almanac was that published by the Vernacular Literature Committee's Almanac published in 1855-6 (1262 B.S.). It gave an account of 309 famous fairs of Bengal in its second part. The Gupta Press Panjika or almanac which virtually replaced Nabadwip Panjika made its first appearance in 1869 and continued to publish a useful list of important fairs and festivals in the country. But this list was by no means exhaustive nor were W. W. Hunter's which he published with each Sta tistical Account. Meanwhile native crafts, industries and objects of artistry decayed rapidly and thoroughly as a result of the East India Company's policy of extinguishing them, and official interest in fairs and festivals declined, although these occasions, divc::sted of much of their glory, still continued to at tract livestock, grain, merchandise and handicrafts from far and near. The Imperial Gazetteers pub lished between 1880 and 1910 gave a minor place to these important seasonal markets or temporary inland ports. Even the District Gazetteers, which still are the fullest and most compact accounts of districts, make but casual mention of fairs and festivals in the country and attach little economic importance to them. For, indeed, the importance of fairs and festivals-as the meeting ground of livestock and agri cultural commodities of many religions and many cultures, crafts and motifs from far and near, of ideas and design, workmanship, excellence and fi~1ish, of tools and appliances, of trends of the future and vanishing practices of the past, of adaptabiliry and local variation, of skill and imagination - Ai (~eclined with the punitive export policy of the Enst India Company and the unrestricted import of machine-made goods, so much so that at the close of the last century fairs and festivals were reduced to a matter of concern only for the Publi-: Health Department. They were no longer regard ed as important centres of trade aml commerce, but were now from the Government point of view merely a collection of human beings among WhOI'.l epidemics were to be prevented from breaking out. Fairs and festivals continued to be a matter cf law and order and the Police Department and the District Board continued to maintain full lists of them in their local offices, a source which has so far remained unquarried. Following the census operations of West Bengal in 1U51, a slim volume, containing a list of fairs and festivals arranged according to distric13 and their Police Stations, was brought out as part of the West Bengal scheme of Census PubhcatiollS. This list was mainly made up of jnformatjon sup plied by District Boards and Superintendents of Police of districts. The two lists were collated to make up a comprehensive list containing several columns: the name of the village arranged under its district and Police Station, with its Jurisdiction List number, the name of the festival or fair t)y which it is commonly known in the locality, the English month of the year in which it is held, the duration of the festival or fair, and finally the number of persons attending it. Although merely a list, and not quite complete at that, this volume attracted attention and received the appreciation both of scholars and the general public. Its general value lay in its being a compendium and its particular value lay in presenting a distribution (hroughout the country of particular festive occa sions. The Superintendent of Census Operation", for 'Nest Bengal, who continued in an honorary capacity, was plied from time to time with requests to undertake an extensive survey of the sub ject which seemed to accord well with the Superintendent's own personal desire. For one thing, quite a few of the old and traditional fairs and festivals of West Bengal are on their way to ex tinction on account of various forces working against them and a record of these rapidly vanishing fairs and festivals could be made only now as never again in the future. In the next place, the Census Office considered it its duty to sustain by ct more searching survey the interest that the publication had aroused. A different approach suggested itself as t11e new task was viewed in terms of collection of ex tensive first-hand material on each fair and festival. It was necessary therefore, in the first place, to approach as many individuals as possible in each locality, and not restrict the enquiry oniy to Government or semi-Government sources, Departments or organisations. In the second place, a satisfactory questionnaire was considered mos~, essential. A number of aims were kept in view in framing the questionnaire. These were: (a) The questionnaire should be very simple and precise in language, designed primarily for the understanding of a person of primary education standard. At the same time, the question sLould be suggestive enough to invite ancillary information. Were this objective achieved, it should be possible to obtain exhaustive information without irrelevant detail. (b) It should succeed in obtaining a clear Environmental, social and economic background of the village or place in which a particular fair i3 held or a festival is observed. (c) It should emphasise those aspects of a festival or worship which would bring out the details of rituals and religious practices peculiar to the locality. (d) It should obtain i~formation not only on the more important and better-known festivals or fairs, but also on the less known but otherwise significant fairs and festivals. It was decided to extend the scope of enquiry beyond those fairs and festivals that are approved and licensed by the District authorities, for the latter would be a small number compared to the total. (e) It should attempt sufficient information on economic activities and patterns in respect of each fair, however big or small.

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