Akshara Brahma: Where each phrase is a prayer for A.P.’s Savara tribals-OxBig News Network

As daybreak breaks over Addangi, a hamlet nestled within the folds of the Eastern Ghats in Srikakulam district, 23-year-old Savara Kalavathi steps barefoot right into a modest constructing with an asbestos roof. She cleans the ground and sprinkles cow dung water on the entrance yard earlier than lighting a small brass lamp in a wall area of interest. She folds her arms and closes her eyes in reverence because the slender flame sparkles to life.

Kalavathi has been performing this every day ritual for the previous 4 years, ever since she grew to become a daasibo (servant of god), religious custodian of a novel non secular order that worships not idols however one thing extra elementary to a folks’s existence: their language.

Lying between Chaaradi and Lalaada hills on Andhra-Odisha border in Kothuru mandal, Addangi is house to 56 households of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group of Savara, 38 households of whom are adherents of ‘Akshara Brahma’.

“We worship our language as god,” says Kalavathi, operating a hand over the temple’s wall, adorned with the names of days, months and some different primary phrases in Savara. In the wall area of interest, bathed in a heat glow, is a portrait of the 24 letters of the Savara alphabet organized in a definite sample.

For half a day each Thursday, followers of the sect collect on the temple to interact in classes of writing, studying and singing Savara songs as a mark of devotion to their mom tongue. For the remainder of the week, lighting the lamp by one of many three daasibos within the village is the only real ritual. “A daasibo can withdraw from service any time, leaving the task of finding a successor to the community,” says Kalavathi.

For Savaras like her, language worship has develop into a automobile to make sure the continuity of their life-style, tradition and reminiscences of their historical neighborhood.

A dwelling god

Renowned for the intricate wall artwork of Edisinge and the vigorous Thongseng folks dance, the Savara tribespeople predominantly reside in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, with smaller populations scattered throughout different States.

Of a inhabitants of round 1.1 lakh (2011 Census) in A.P., 84,585 reside within the erstwhile Srikakulam district and 25,903 within the erstwhile Vizianagaram district, in accordance with the State Tribal Welfare Department. Most are farmers, with a small proportion relying on forest produce for livelihood.

Savara belongs to the Kol Munda group of the Austro-Asiatic household of languages. It existed as an oral language till 1936, when Mangei Gomango, a polyglot from Odisha, developed a script for it— Soran Sompen (Akshara Brahma).

The 24 characters (18 consonants and 6 vowels) are the preliminary letters of the names of the 24 Savara deities, making the alphabet a illustration of their pantheon, in accordance with a 2012 particular challenge of the Journal of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute, Odisha.

The non secular order asks its followers to shun animal sacrifice, popularise the Savara script and language and move on the tribal knowledge to the subsequent era.

Arrival in Andhra

Akshara Brahma arrived in Andhra Pradesh within the Nineties. And by the flip of the century, quite a few Savara households in North Andhra to undertake it. Today, round 950 households in 80 Savara tribal villages within the erstwhile Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts observe Akshara Brahma, says Savara Kameswara Rao, a 46-year-old authorities schoolteacher from Seethampeta who, as a youngster, spearheaded the marketing campaign again then.

Akshara Brahma has effected a elementary shift within the tribespeople’s lifestyle. Traditionally, the Savara festivals of Puli Panduga and Maamidi Panduga (harvest pageant) mandated animal sacrifice for the neighborhood feast.

“In the Akshara Brahma order, animal sacrifice during festivals is prohibited, replaced instead by breaking of coconuts,” says Sandhya, an aged resident in Addangi. All neighborhood festivals are celebrated on the Akshara Brahma temple within the village, making it a typical venue for cultural bonding.

“Under Akshara Brahma, the Savaras have joined hands to protect our culture and language. Our objective is to promote it academically too, not just worship it,” says Kameswara Rao.

Irrespective of formal training, most followers of Akshara Brahma can both learn or write the 24 letters of the language, owing largely to their acquaintance with them on the temple.

In 2014, the Savaras fashioned a 12-member village committee, Akshara Brahma Youth Society (AYS), to run the cultural and educational actions. An vital member on the panel is a vidhya volunteer, who’s prepared to show the language to the villagers.

The volunteer holds courses for schoolchildren all year long, with particular classes throughout Dasara, Pongal and summer time holidays. Kalavathi, a graduate in biology and zoology, has additionally been volunteering to show the language to the village kids. She is the eighth volunteer within the village, and her two rapid predecessors had been additionally girls. Moreover, she is the primary to obtain a month-to-month honorarium of ₹1,000, raised by the neighborhood.

The youngest amongst 5 sisters, Kalavathi works beneath MGNREGS and as a farmhand to assist her household. “Nonetheless, I set aside two hours a day for my tribe by serving as a Daasibo and as a vidhya volunteer. I am privileged to be part of a movement promoting our language and serving our community through education,” she says. At her summer time camp, she teaches over 20 schoolchildren of varied ages.

Future plans

On May 17 this 12 months, 40 authorities lecturers, representing the Savara tribespeople in Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts, held a round-table convention, the third of its sort, at Gopalapuram village in Srikakulam district to debate methods to advertise the script. There, they handed a decision to provide you with books in Savara.

A Savara woman shows a textbook incorporates 24 letters of the Savara script, throughout a particular class at Addangi village in Seetampeta Agency.
| Photo Credit:
T. APPALA NAIDU

“Our next move is to launch more books in Savara to popularise our language and culture. The Savara tribal teachers will also be taught to read and write the language,” says Kameswara Rao, who presided over all three of the spherical tables.

He claims that due to Akshara Brahma, the tribespeople are extra literate and cautious with liquor consumption and expenditure.

Lockstep with cultural icon

According to the sect’s followers, the AYS has been laying a particular give attention to selling Thongseng, the Savara folks dance carried out throughout weddings and festivals. In this artwork type, often carried out at night time, women and men dance collectively, with girls holding umbrellas.

Savara Chinna Rao, an assistant priest in Addangi, says your complete neighborhood dance to Savara songs on the Akshara Brahma temple throughout the winter. “This festival lasts for 30 nights during Karthika Pournima. It symbolises our unity in celebrating our tradition and language.”

Support from exterior

Impressed by the cultural and linguistic actions of the Savaras, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) has reportedly begun funding the development of Akshara Brahma temples in Savara tribal villages.

“The TTD has pledged ₹10 lakh for the construction of an Akshara Brahma temple in our village and has so far released ₹6 lakh, without any condition on the architecture,” says Addangi AYS president Anand Savara.

Villagers in Naugada within the neighbouring Parvathipuram Manyam district additionally claimed that the TTD is funding a ₹10-lakh temple, which is beneath development. Naugada is likely one of the first villages that embraced Akshara Brahma in Andhra Pradesh within the Nineties. Currently, all 70 households are adherents of the sect.

Savara Venu Gopal, son of village priest Ananda Rao, says his household devoted their complete 80 cents on the hill to Akshara Brahma actions. “Our village is building a two-story temple on this hill,” says Venu Gopal, a farmer. Savara Rajesh, Naugada’s tribal doctor (Tey-Re-Marin), says the village temple has emerged as a vacation spot for Savara weddings. “Wedding fees are spent on village development,” he provides. The subsequent wedding ceremony is on May 25.

Art nearing extinction

Despite its affect on Savara tradition, Akshara Brahma is but to discover a method to preserve the tribe’s most exceptional artwork: Edisinge, a type of wall artwork that makes use of vermilion and colors manufactured from rice, charcoal and ash from coconut shells.

A Savara tribeswoman beside the Edisinge wall artwork inside her home at Seethampeta Agency. The wall artwork depicts her tribes affiliation with nature.
| Photo Credit:
T. APPALA NAIDU

These detailed work, which honour ancestors and depict agriculture, searching and the area’s biodiversity, used to embellish the interior partitions of mud homes. As fashionable buildings substitute conventional dwellings, this historical artwork type is quick disappearing in North Andhra.

Savara Lakhsmana Rao (28),an Edisinge artist from Seethampeta in Parvathipuram Manyam district, says he hasn’t had a home to color in 4 years. “The art is on the verge of extinction in Andhra Pradesh,” he says, including that elders who mastered Edisinge in most Savara villages are lengthy gone. Addangi’s final skilled Edisinge artist, Savara Chinna Appanna (65), concurs: “There is no more space.”

Vice-Chancellor of Adikavi Nannaya University-Rajamahendravaram Sattupati Prasanna Sree, an authority on the Savara language and script, observes that the Savara tribespeople have a good time life and nature by way of the Edisinge. Notably, Prasanna Sree can also be attempting to carry out a Telugu-Savara dictionary, however however her efforts have hit a hurdle after the loss of life of her supply in Seethampeta Agency.

According to officers within the School Education Department, the script has not been formally utilized in any educational exercise in Andhra Pradesh. However, proponents of Akshara Brahma have been demanding that the federal government carry out major college textbooks within the Savara Language.

Back in Addangi, Kalavathi balances her duties within the religious and sensible realms. She is not only servant of god, but in addition a guardian of her tradition and language, preserving them and making certain its continuity.

Completing her morning rituals on the temple and summer time courses for college kids by 8.30 a.m., she races to hitch fellow tribeswomen heading to the MGNREGS worksite. And as she walks previous a village board displaying ‘Addangi’ within the Savara script, delight paints a lightweight smile on her lips.