Forest Based lifestyles – Role of Traditions in Honey Hunting

A forest is a living organism and man’s dependence upon it is best exemplified by the cultural linkages of honey hunting to bees residing in forests. Honey hunting, practiced across the world in various forms, evokes in the minds of a layman images of death defying acts. The fact that honey as a product is valuable and the process of harvesting of honey is fraught with danger has given rise to myths and legends. Numerous folklore, superstitions and stories surrounding honey hunting have been zealously refined over centuries.

The activity symbolizes a binding element amongst adivasis in forested villages as elaborate rituals and ceremonies bring together members of the community into a communal display of goodwill. The togetherness is unidirectional in ensuring safety of the honey hunter as he or she is the strongest and bravest of them.

Role of Bees

As honey is a sacred drink, so are bees blessed with mystical powers. They are revered for their extraordinary capacity of generating sweet honey. Adivasis consider bees as superior beings bringing fertility to the land. The honey hunter takes care in ensuring that no harm befalls the bees who are supposed to symbolize purity, an important consideration why he undergoes severe penance before setting out into the forest.

Rituals and Superstitions

When honey hunting starts, legends, rituals and superstitions play an important part. The actual date for hunting is usually set based on common consensus amongst villagers. It is now that they declare that the comb is ripe and the hunt must start.

Preparation begins in serious earnest. Days before the harvest, the honey hunter goes on fast- praying and bathing with regularity. Any relationship with women is avoided. Observance of these austerities varies significantly in different groups.

Adivasis worship their local gods before setting out. They believe that some cliffs are god’s cliffs – from where no honey can be collected. Spirits are accorded special status during this period, as there is a belief that disturbing or angering the spirits can lead to an unsuccessful hunt or even a death in the vicinity. The village priest is consulted and it is he who usually fixes the date and time for the harvest. He conducts a puja invoking the gods and ancestors praying for their blessings and signals the start of the entire process. The honey collecting ritual also includes an invocation to the bees to leave their combs so that honey can be collected, beseeching them to return to bring forth the blossoms in the forest and fields.

Traditionally, certain cliffs have been venerated and marked as sacred – there is no extraction of honey from them. Historical reasons for this worship are vague but the moot point is that the honey hunter is one person who has over several generations been conscious of the need to preserve the Golden Honeybee by leaving cliffs unharvested. These links between the bee, forest, animal and man are complex and perhaps best understood by the older generation who lament that loss of forests could start the cycle of doom which would ultimately leave communities poorer by several degrees.

Leaving cliffs untouched resulted in the protection of bees, which in turn contributed to increased cross-pollination and diversity of the forests. This finally indicates – in the words of a Honey hunter, ‘that bees prefer this forest and return again and again because it is their home’. In simple words, it indicates that the particular ecosystem is healthy for bees to raise their colonies.

These intricate rituals are crucial to the community, as they believe that honey hunting is an activity favoured by the gods. Improperly followed rituals are believed to provoke unnatural events. In a practical sense, these legends and traditions have their utility in conservation of forest areas -

First, they reaffirm the hunters’ ecosystem centric respect towards his immediate environment and seek to make him a part of the greater complex of nature and not a competitor to it. Also, these legends preserve an age-old system of community monitoring which seeks to cause minimum damage on the ecosystem and regard all life as sacrosanct. Besides, folklore and traditions signify the prominent place of honey hunting in the sociocultural milieu of the adivasi way of life. Finally, these legends assist in simplifying dangers and inconveniences associated with the act of Honey hunting by codifying practical and easy to use rules.