Sankranthi in Karnataka – Kannada Makara Sankranti

Sankranthi, or Makara Sankranti, is a harvest festival in Karnataka as is the case in other parts of India.  Sankranthi is celebrated when sun transcends from Sagittarius to Capricorn during the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. Sankranthi means ‘change of direction’ and is based on solar event and it also marks the arrival of Spring Season. In Kannada culture, Sankranthi is synonymous with ellu (sesame-jaggery mix), sugar candies and sugarcane.

Uttarayana, the day time of Devas, begins from Sankranthi and the next six months are considered highly auspicious. There are also numerous other legends that are associated with Sankranthi.

The day before the festival all the houses are thoroughly cleaned. And on the day of Sankranti, green mango leaves are used to decorate doors and windows and the thresholds of houses and colorful rangoli is drawn on the doorsteps. People also fly kites on the day.

Talk about Sankranthi and the first things that a Kannadiga would remember is sugarcane. Stacks of sugarcane sticks piled up in the market herald the arrival of the Sankranti festival. Shredding the sugarcane with teeth and munching the juice off it is a major activity on the day.

People also exchange yellu – a mixture of fried sesame, peanuts and gram with jaggery and copra. People visit relatives, friends and neighbors on the day and exchange yellu balla. The festive feast includes rice and moong dal kichdi (both sweet and salt), curries with freshly harvested field beans, sweet potato, sweet pumpkin, etc. The list increases as one travels to rural Karnataka.

Numerous music and dance festival are also held during the period.

http://www.hindu-blog.com/2009/01/sankranthi-in-karnataka-kannada-makara.html

Significance of Mahalaya Amavasya - Isha Yoga Center

Sadhguru:- We are who we are today only because of all the things that have been given to us.

The new moon day known as the Mahalaya Amavasya is the beginning of Dussehra. It is a special day dedicated to making an offering to express our gratitude to all the previous generations of people who have contributed to our life.

Scientists say that human beings and their ancestors have existed on this planet for 20 million years. That is a lot of time. All these hundreds of thousands of generations that lived on this planet before us have given us something or the other. The language that we speak, the way we sit, our clothes, our buildings – almost everything that we know today has come to us from generations before us.

When only animals existed on this planet, it was all about survival, eating, sleeping, reproduction and dying one day. Then slowly, this animal which knew only survival, started evolving. From being horizontal, it started standing up; the brain started growing, and this animal’s ability to do things suddenly started multiplying. The significant thing about being human is that we can use tools. This simple ability of using tools, we multiplied or made it grow into technologies. The day an ape picked up a thighbone of an animal and started fighting with that bone instead of with just his hands; when, apart from his own body, he had the necessary intelligence to start using tools to make his life, in some way that was the beginning of human life on the planet.

Now, human beings started structuring lives so that we could live a little better than animals. Shelters came up, buildings came up, clothes came – so many things happened on this planet because of human beings. From simple things like making fire to discovering the wheel and innumerable other things, this legacy has been passed on from generation to generation. We are who we are today only because of all the things that have been given to us. Let us say, human beings had never worn clothes, and suppose you were the first person who had to stitch a shirt, it would not be easy; it would take many years to figure out how to stitch a shirt.

We have taken all the things that we have today for granted. But without the generations that came before us, firstly we would not exist here; secondly, without their contribution we would not have all the things that we have today. So instead of taking them for granted, today is a day when we express our gratitude to all of them.  It is done as a ritual to pay homage to one’s dead parents, but is actually an expression of gratitude for all those generations of ancestors who lived before us.

During this time, in the Indian subcontinent, new crops would have just begun to bear yield. So their first produce is offered to the ancestors as a mark of respect and thankfulness, by way of pinda, before the whole population breaks into celebration in the form of other festivals like Navaratri, Vijayadashami and Diwali.


http://blog.ishafoundation.org/consecrated-spaces/isha-yoga-center/significance-of-mahalaya-amavasya/