The curious custom of frog weddings in India
There are thousands of festivals, traditions and customs that India follows, thanks to our diversity in religions, castes, communities and ethnicities. A lot of these customs were born hundreds to thousands of years ago out of superstition or blind faith. One of these, which you may find hard to believe, is marrying two frogs to please rain gods and bring more rain. Intriguing, isn’t it? If this didn’t sound strange enough, then here’s another weirdly amusing piece of new for you: In a recent incident in Bhopal, two frogs were divorced two months after their wedding, as there was excessive rainfall.
Why frog wedding?
India is a tropical country and a favourable southwest summer monsoon is critical to securing water for irrigating its crops. So, what happens if it does not rain well in a particular year? There will be water shortage resulting in below-average crop yields which is mostly the case every year in major drought-prone regions such as southern and eastern Maharashtra, northern Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Telangana, and Rajasthan.
Since India is an agricultural country, a huge population depends on farming as its source of income. Shortage of water (rainfall), therefore, leads to droughts which create famines affecting a big percentage of the population. For example, in the 1972 Maharashtra drought, 2.5 crore people were affected.
This dependence on a good monsoon has given rise to numerous rituals to please the rain gods and bring abundant showers. One of these popular rituals is frog wedding.
Frog wedding as a ritual
Frog weddings are a way to please rain God in which two frogs are married in much the same way as any Hindu wedding. In different parts of India, they take different forms and are known by different names. For example, you know them as Bhekulir Biya in Assam or Mandooka Parinaya in southern India and Banger Biye in Tripura.
In Assamese, Bhekuli means frog and Biya stands for marriage, while in Tripura, Bang is a frog, Biye is wedding. In south Indian language, Mandooka means frog, and Parinaya means wedding.
The Assamese Folklore
The Assamese ancestors believed that if the frogs croak and call their mate, it rains, as . Monsoon is the mating season of the frogs. There is also an old Assamese poem which states that the farmers pray to the clouds and ask them why there is no rain. Then the clouds reply that if the frogs do not croak, then it won’t rain? That’s how the croaking of the frog is associated with the rain in this ritual.
The marriage of frogs
Want to know how the wedding takes place? Well, the female frog is made to sit and oil is applied to her body. After that, she is left for some time and is bathed in water, and is dressed for her D-day. Meanwhile, hundreds of villagers gather and Vedic hymns are recited. Later, vermillion is applied to the female frog tying her to her partner for life. Once the marriage takes place, the bride is sent to the groom's house in a decorated hand cart. Later on, the couple is left in the pond and then people pray for them to croak to God for the rainfall. Quite interesting!