Karma Puja Festival
Karma Puja is a festival celebrated in the state of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Assam. This festival is also known as Karam or Karma. It is a harvest festival. During this festival, people do puja of lord karma and request for a good harvest of the year.
Karma Puja festival for good harvest
During the karma festival people of the town plant nine types of seeds such as wheat, corn, rice, etc. In this festival, girls in the village fast the whole day.
And special ritual is done by people to worship Lord karma. Lord karma is the god of power and youth. People go to the jungle and cut branches of the Karam tree to worship god karma. These branches are usually carried by unmarried, young girls.
Then branches are planted in the middle of the village and then decorated with flowers. Then bramhin of the town do the puja. This puja includes animal sacrifice where a fowl is killed and his blood is given to the branch.
On the next day, these branches plunged in the river near the village.
Festival Season
Karma festival is celebrated on the 11th day of Purnima (full moon) between august and September. People from many places in India come to see this worship and rituals that people of the village do during this puja.
Puja of this festival begins with a ritual dance which is one of the main attractions of this festival. All men and women drink liquor and spend the entire night singing and dancing in the puja arena.
History of Karma Puja Festival
It is said that Once upon a time there were seven brothers who worked on farms. They were doing so much work that they had not the time for lunch. So, their wives came to farm daily with lunch. One day their wives didn’t come with lunch and the brothers were hungry.
That day, in the evening, when brothers returned home, they found their wives dancing and singing near the Karam tree. Brothers got angry after seeing this and one of the seven brothers snatched branch of Karam and threw it in the river.
Lord karma felt insulted therefore family suffered from hunger and starved. One day bramhin came to them and asked what happened. Seven brothers narrated the whole story to that bramhin. After hearing bramhin told that lord karma was angry at them and said seven brothers to please lord karma.
Seven brothers went to search for lord karma and one day they found a karma tree in the jungle then they worshipped karma trees and then their economic condition began to improve.
From that day till today people of the village do karma puja.
This festival brings the whole community together. People meet each other dance with each other and share joy in the community.
