Sammakka & Saralamma

Sammakka and her daughter Saralamma are the goddesses of the Koya people, honoured at Medaram, a forest village in Mulugu district of Telangana. Their jātara, held every two years in the winter month of Māgha, draws crowds counted in the millions and is widely described as the largest tribal religious gathering in Asia. The tradition is a living indigenous one, kept by Koya priests without brahmanical rites, and its scale has made it a festival of the whole Telugu country while remaining Koya at its centre.

The tradition

In the tradition kept at Medaram, Sammakka was found as an infant in the forest, in some tellings guarded by tigers, and was raised among the Koyas, marrying the chieftain Pagididda Raju. When drought made the tribute demanded by the Kakatiya kings unpayable, the Koyas refused it, and war followed. Her husband and kinsmen fell in the fighting; Sammakka herself fought on, was wounded, and withdrew into the hills, where those who followed her found no body but a casket of vermilion. Saralamma, her daughter, fell in the same struggle. Devotees hold that mother and daughter did not die but passed into the forest, from which they return to their people at each jātara.

The jātara

At the festival the goddesses arrive not as images but as vermilion brought from their forest shrines by Koya priests and installed on gaddes, raised platforms, at Medaram. Pilgrims bathe in the Jampanna Vagu stream, named for a warrior of the legend, and make the characteristic offering of jaggery, called bangaram, gold, often given in weights matching the devotee's own. The jātara is recognised as a state festival of Telangana.