The Solung festival is a popular agriculture festival celebrated by the Adi tribe in the Arunachal Pradesh. The festival is celebrated at the beginning of September every year, after the sowing of the seeds, to seek a good harvest and prosperity.
The celebrations of the Solung festival last for five days and are divided into three parts: Sopi-Yekpi, Binnayat and Ekop.
The first part of the festival, known as Sopi-Yekpi or Ardo-Bado, is the inaugural day during which pigs and mithuns are sacrificed and offered to the god of domestic animals, Dadi Bote.
The second part of the Solung festival is Binnayat, where the goddess of food and crops, Kine Nane is worshipped.
In the last phase of the festival, Ekop, the lead singer, also known as Miri, narrates the story of Abotani or Nibo, the forefather of the Adi Tribes.
History of the Solung festival
According to Adi Tribe’s mythology, one of the ‘Doying-Bote’ (God of heaven) came in contact with Kine-nane and became sexually excited. When he was about to copulate with two monsters, Totel-Mone and Dubeng-Mone intervened and snatched off his testicles to destroy them and in the process, scattered the divine sperms over different places from which some paddy plants sprouted.
When Kine-nane found out that human beings were starving for food, she sent the paddy seeds through a dog. Since then, the men of the Adi Tribe have been producing paddy in abundance to meet the requirements of the people.
Significance of Solung festival
The popular belief of celebrating the Solung festival is to satisfy Doying-Bote and Kine-nane so that the former will appear in the form of clouds and rains and the latter in the form of great soil fertility.
The Adi Tribe community believes that if Doying-Bote and Kine-nane land on earth together and have a successful reunion, it will lead to high yields of crops, which means more wealth for the men of the tribe.
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