Navruz is the holiday of happiness and flourishing

Navruz is the holiday of happiness and flourishing

Navruz belongs to those great holidays that in spite of a change in religious outlooks and political novelties will always and invariably be accompanying mankind on his diverse and difficult course of life.
It is difficult to find in the history of human civilisation a more ancient celebrity than that of Navruz - the holiday of spring renovation of nature.
Its roots go back as far as the late Stone Age- newly Stone Age / 5-10 thousand B.C./. when mankind after a million years of the consumption era (collection of wild cereals and fruit, hunting) started to cultivate those cereals.
A transition to agriculture and irrigation had led mankind to understanding of natural phenomena and to identification of relevant calendar cycles connected with season change.
As attendant phenomena there had appeared agrarian rites, an agrarian magic and various agricultural festivals that had been closely-connected with mythology as the main way of world understanding in primitive society and man's attitude towards his environment. There appeared various myths, including calendar myths, called on to explain to the man of that time this or that phenomenon by supernatural forces. The calendar myths were closely connected with a cycle of rites and conjurations directed to the renovation of vegetation in springtime and provision of harvest.
Symbolic embodiments of these phenomena, in accordance with world view in those times, there became divinities (originally heroes) of dying and animating nature.
These heroes, going into struggle with the chthonic demon / the demon of underground world/ and often with the goddess-mother or with the wife-sister, would perish, but then their mother, wife, or sister would be looking for them and reanimating them; the heroes would go into action with their opponent-the demon and defeat him, which also would symbolically explain resurrection of the vegetable kingdom after long winter months of its «death».
In the ancient Mesopotamian and East-Mediterranean myths there are quite a lot of such divinities presented - Osirius. Tammuz, Balu. Adonis, Attis, Dionis.
In mythological perceptions of the peoples of Central Asia, it was Siyavush who was perceived as the divinity of dying and animating nature and who was archly killed by the tsar Afrasiab and then resurrected in the form of a wonderful flower grown from his shed blood.
These heroes-divinities were often considered as the main figures of festivals held on the boundary of the seasons. There were many of them but the main one was considered the day of vernal equinox
- Navruz -. which in the languages of the peoples of Central Asia and Iran stands for a new day or a New Year.
Those festivals used to be accompanied by performing various sacral actions, spiritual rituals and agrarian magic and by cooking ritual food. The ritual food expressed the essence of all the festivals
- their agrarian character and renovation of vegetation.
Thus, the main ritual food eaten during Navruz celebration by Uzbeks and other peoples of Central Asia has been sumalak - a specific dish cooked from wheat acrospires.
On the days of Navruz celebration in Sasanid Iran, according to Kisravi's data (9th century), they used to stand a silver table before the Shah on the edges of which were laid round cakes bilked from different grains: wheat, barley, millet, durro. peas, lentil, rice, sesame and haricot. Right there, seven grains of each cereal were laid on the edges of the table, and in the middle of the table they put seven branches of the trees, which were considered to be a good sign: willow, olive, quince and pomegranate being cut in one, two and tree joints.
There was also one more tradition - twenty five days prior to Navruz there in the court of the tsar they used to construct twelve pillars from adobe bricks and on each pillar different cereals were planted. - wheat, barley, peas, haricot, etc.

As the grains have germinated, on the sixth day of Navruz, the grains were picked up and scattered all over the hall. This ceremony was accompanied with songs, music and games, and then the people told fortunes: the best-germinated cereal would determine the crop of good harvest in that year.
All these in many respects magic actions were supposed to promote increasing of fertility and harvest. It is not by chance that branches of those plants (according to K. Inostrantsev, also the ritual cakes) had writings of the following meaning on them: «it was multiplied*, j «it will be multiplied*. It is being multiplied*. , etc.
In general chronology of Navruz festivals has two historical traditions. One of them / according to I.S. Braginskiy - earlier) refers the celebration of Navruz to the time of crop harvesting and reaping that coincides with the autumn month Mekhregan, which name was connected with the name of the ancient Sun divinity Mitr (or Mikhr). From this there is a link of Navruz with a solar cult.
According to another version the celebration of Navruz must fall at vernal equinox, when they used to perform ritual actions in honour of the divinity of dying and resurrecting nature.
Many oriental authors has left their writings about Navruz but most valuable information was presented by Kisravi /Ш-th century/ , Beruni /10-11th century/ and by the famous work «Navruznama» the authorship of which is ascribed to Omar Hayam. According to Abu Raikhon Beruni it was Djamshid - a legendary tsar from the Kayanid dynasty -. who established the celebration of Navruz.
Abu Raikhon Beruni and Musa ibn Isa al-Kisravi give detailed description of Navruz ceremonial at the courts of ancient tsars. The full first month of the New Year is divided into six parts by six days each, each part being a holiday for a certain social group. Besides, Beruni gives information, which is absent in Kisavi's, that every day of each six parts of Navruz has a definite purpose in the ceremonial of Navruz celebration. According to Beruni the order of Navruz celebration by different social groups was as follow: tsars,
the nobility, servants, clients, folk, shepherds. The order by Kisravi was somewhat different: the nobility, the tsar himself, servants, retinue, military, folk. K. Inostrantsev believed that Kisravi had described a more correct order of Navruz celebration, as it reflected I a great importance of the feudal clique in the political system of Sasanid Iran. I. however, am inclined to explain this difference by the fact that Kisravi was stick to Sasanid Tradition while Beruni based his information on the peculiarities of the political system in ancient Khorezm where the role of feudal nobility had not been as significant as that in Sasanid Iran.
In the official ceremonial of Navruz celebration each day had a definite meaning. Thus, on the first day the tsar would open the celebration, declared about receptions and grants, the following four days were devoted to receptions of representatives from various categories of nobility: the second day was devoted to the representatives of the highest aristocracy, the third one- to knights and supreme clergy, the fourth one - to householders and the fifth one - to children of the tsar and to clients.
The sixth day of celebration was of specific significance. It was a proper tsarist day as it was devoted to observation of gifts and to rest. According to Beruni that day was called Great Navruz. and also, Khurdadruz. its A vesta's form is Khaurvatat - (he name of one of Amesha - Sienta. Khaurvatat as well as his twin Amcretat
at first being an abstract concept of health and immortality, and (hen the patronises of water and vegetation, according to J. Darmestr I and K. Inostrantsev expressed the idea of nature renovation and I their material embodiment resulted in the attributes of spring celebration.
In spite of the fact that the character of Navruz and its rites did not correspond to the norms of Islam, the second abbasid caliph Mansur /756-775 A.D./, taking into account importance of that holiday in the life of the peoples of Central Asia and Iran, introduced Navruz into the category of official holidays.
The ritual practice of Navruz has many actions and rituals and j various popular beliefs. Thus, Beruni informs that the person, eating honey on the first day of Navruz, will get rid of all illnesses for all the year and the one, who in the morning of the sixth day of Great Navruz before saying any word eats sugar, will get rid of misfortunes.
The ritual actions connected with Navruz celebrations in Central Asia included lighting of different fires that may be bonfire or chiragi, decorating rooms with branches of various plants, collecting of flowers, sprinkling of guests with flour, gifting coloured eggs, money, etc. In particular, the tradition of money gifting goes back to very ancient tradition when on the first day of Navruz the tsar was presented, apart from the above mentioned cereals and ritual small loafs of bread, with white / that is silver/ dirkhem of the year of Navruz celebration and with a new dinar /golden coin/.
All the festivities would be accompanied with songs and ritual dances.
The famous «Navruzname» has the following admonition: «one, who celebrates and enjoys himself on the day of Navruz, will be happily living till the next Navruz».