Samakka-Saralamma Jatara: The big tribal spiritual reset

This is big. This is really, really big,” says Thota Sailu, scanning a gigantic granite arch etched with scenes of movement — drummers and dancers — on one side and a constellation of cultural symbols — a bird, a cow, a lizard and the swastika — on the other.

Rising over 50 feet, the square arch, assembled from just three massive slabs, opens into a series of eight smaller arches beyond it, setting the tone for an arrival that feels larger than ritual.

A farmer in his 40s, Sailu, has travelled nearly 150 km from Khammam to Medaram, a forest village in Mulugu district. He drags along an unwilling lamb towards the centre of the Samakka-Saralamma Jatara, a biennial Adivasi communal festival of Telangana held on the banks of the river Godavari, deep inside the jungles of Dandakaranya. The festival has, for hundreds of years, drawn millions of Adivasis from within the State as well as neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. It will commence on January 28 this year.

One of the world’s largest indigenous gatherings, still rooted in animist belief, Medaram is now in the midst of a profound shift. The spiritual core of the festival resembles a construction site: cranes loom over the trees, welders and stone masons move through the clearing, and the shrill whine of drills cuts through the forest air. The ancient heart of the Jatara is being reshaped by the modern State of Telangana, and nothing about the gathering looks quite the same anymore. “Earlier, only a few people could offer worship at a time. If 100 people filled up the circle, the queue was stopped to allow them to finish their rituals before another batch was sent in. That changes everything, where streams of people can worship and move in an orderly fashion,” says Dabbagatla Tagore, head priest of the Govinda Raju clan.

At the heart of the Medaram Jatara lies the invocation of a family rather than a distant cosmic pantheon: Samakka, the mother, her husband, Pagididda Raju, their daughter, Saralamma, and her son-in-law, Govinda Raju. This intimate, kinship-based theology shapes every aspect of the three-day festival, the largest tribal gathering in Central India, drawing tribespeople from the plains and hills of the four States.

A sea of devotees

For three days following the sighting of the full moon in the Hindu month of Magh, the festival reaches a crescendo. Pilgrims pour in through serpentine queue lines, carrying blocks of jaggery, chickens or lambs. In the warm glow of winter sun and the glare of LED lights, devotees circle the platform marked by a bamboo totem draped in sarees, bangles and thick layers of kumkum (vermillion). Tonnes of jaggery offered at the site turn the ground into a sweet-smelling, deceptively slippery sludge.

On the auspicious days, the surge of devotees grows so intense that coconuts and offerings are hurled towards the platform, forcing the priests to don helmets and stay alert to objects being flung around.

The spiritual core of the Jatara contains four platforms dedicated to Sammakka, Saralamma, Pagididda Raju and Govinda Raju. Two trees — Peddegi (Pterocarpus marsupium) and Tuniki (Diospyros melanoxylon) — representing Sammakka and Saralamma stand within the oblong space. What was once a compact space measuring about 2,940 square metres, with a single entrance arch bearing the image of the goddesses, has been expanded to nearly twice its size at 5,816 square metres to accommodate more devotees at a time. The lone arch with the dominant image of a Goddess has given way to a series of nine arches and 32 pillars, without one dominant image. Instead, around 7,000 images narrating clan histories are etched across the structures that now frame the central area.

“All Koya tribe people coming for the Jatara carry their dalgudda or padige (triangular flag), which has the complete history of the clan,” says Tholem Kalyan, one of only two flagmakers for the Koyas. “The storytellers use the flag to narrate the history of the gotram. It also has kings of other gotrams and the objects, animals and trees they consider sacred, along with their way of life. There are a minimum of 90 images in each flag for the full story of one gattu or clan.”

Alongside creation myths, including the origins of the earth and sky from an egg, the flags carry humour: a fisherman snagging a pig, a two-headed cow. “These stories are told by arthi kalakarlu (Koya storytellers). Each of these families has a head and the group’s leader is the thalapathi. They have reservations about the big changes,” Kalyan adds.

“It would have been better if we were taken into confidence about the changes. But it has been done unilaterally. Our belief cannot be changed, where the divinities are with us only for three days. No structure is needed for adoration,” says Nageshwar Rao, thalapathi of the Koyas.

The Medaram Jatara, also known as the Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara, traces its origins to a historical-mythical past that begins with the discovery of a girl child in a forest said to be filled with tigers. “Don’t go inside. Don’t go from that side either. There are tigers on the hill,” warns Raju, painting the outer wall of the hillock known as Chilakalagutta. “Only during the three days of the Jatara do people climb the hill, firing weapons and beating kettledrums to keep the tigers at bay and bring the Goddess to the gadde (platform).”

According to legend, the girl child grew up to marry Pagididda Raju, nephew of the king who had rescued her. Their daughter Saralamma was born before a four-year famine struck the land. When a tribal elder refused to pay taxes to the Kakatiya ruler, an army was sent into the forests, killing every member of the ruling family. Sammakka, injured but alive, vanished into the forest, leaving behind only bangles and a pot of kumkum.

It is from Chilakalagutta that the family of Sammakka, the Siddiboina, treks to a cave to bring down the goddess, symbolised by bangles and a kumkum bharina (a small box of vermillion).

Bringing the goddesses home

Every two years, the Koya tribe commemorates the sacrifice of the four family members, praying for fulfilled wishes and protection from disease. And they do it not by climbing the hill to worship. Instead, they bring the goddesses and gods home — to their thrones — to be among their people for three days.

The consecration platform of Sammakka and Saralamma during the Medaram Jatara in 1986.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

“The earlier space was smaller, leading to problems in crowd management that became dangerous at times. What we did, with the consent of priests and tribal elders, was realign the four gadde (platforms) in one line, reducing the chances of accidents. The flooring is now granite, as the mud floor used to become slippery because of jaggery offerings to the divinities,” says architect Yeshwant Ramamurthy, who helped design the reconstruction of the holy precinct. “There is a masterplan, and only part of it has been implemented. Once the entire process is complete, devotees will have a safe and authentic pilgrimage experience.”

For the Koya tribe, the Medaram Jatara is a time when family goddesses and gods descend to live among the people. Adivasi pilgrims begin arriving nearly a month before the main festival, turning the forest settlement into a site of communal gathering and shared celebration.

The relationship with the divinities is intensely familial. A short distance from the main shrine lies Jampanna Vagu, a dry stream of the Godavari, where Jampanna, the Koya general and son of Sammakka, is believed to have fallen from wounds inflicted by the Kakatiya army. It is here, half-immersed in water, that women enter a trance, invoking spirits to glimpse the future and the past of the families who seek their guidance.

Swaying in ecstasy, with guttural ululation, raised hands, and wet hair flung back, the women speak as vessels of the divine. The trances lay bare the most intimate family truths — a wayward son, a troubled marriage, a daughter-in-law’s suffering. Later, as families sit down to eat together, their joys are shared with the gods and goddesses as well: liquor flows, spicy food is served, and the air fills with boisterous conversation.

The platform with the symbol of Sammakka, the presiding deity, at the Medaram Jatara site.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

“Spiritually, the Koyas practise animism infused with Hindu elements, celebrating a cycle of festivals that reflect their agricultural rhythms and mythological narratives. The Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara, in particular, symbolises their collective memory, resistance and cultural pride,” concludes the PhD dissertation of Chandra Mahesh, a scholar of the Suravaram Pratapa Reddy Telugu University.

Shift in beliefs and practices

Over the centuries, however, both belief and practice have shifted. Once limited to the Koya tribe, the festival now draws people from non-tribal communities as well. Coconuts, which do not grow in the forests of central India, have become a prominent offering, with kiosks inside the holy precinct cracking them open for devotees. Vippa saara, the liquor brewed from mahua fruit (Madhuca longifolia) and recorded by anthropologists such as Edgar Thurston as a ritual libation, has largely been replaced by bottled liquor sold in grocery stores. “The cattle and buffalo are slaughtered on ceremonial occasions to provide a feast to the assembled guests and relatives. The favourite alcoholic drink is Mohua liquor which they brew regularly and drink profusely,” notes a 1992 study of the Koya tribe.

“Many belief systems have disappeared. The Koyas practised slash-and-burn farming, and did not have any shape for gods and goddesses; they prayed to formless deities. But now, photocopies of other goddesses are being superimposed and circulated within the community. It is erasure of a culture,” says Jayadheer Tirumala Rao, who has studied tribal lives, collected manuscripts and documented indigenous belief systems.

The nine grand arches at Medaram seem to offer an unintended historical irony. The Kakatiya rulers, who once fought the Koya tribes to impose their authority and nearly wiped them out, were themselves displaced in 1323. The Kirti Toranas (victory arches) they erected at the heart of their kingdom in Warangal now stand in lonely, weathered splendour, visited largely by tourists. In contrast, the arches raised for the Sammakka-Saralamma Jatara will soon witness a vast tide of humanity flowing through them, marking the arrival of the Goddess among her people.

As Sailu leads the lamb away from the holy site, past the queue lines and into the harvested paddy fields beyond, his family waits in a hired vehicle. “What we sacrifice, we eat like prasadam. We cannot sacrifice there, that’s why we do it in this open space,” he says, as other families nearby prepare their celebratory meals.

In a few hours, the mood will turn to elation, for Sailu’s family and for countless others who have come to Medaram to receive the Goddess as her presence settles over Medaram that isbig, really, really big.