Fairs and Festivals of Rajasthan: Exam Notes

No chapter of Rajasthan general knowledge is set more often than its fairs and festivals, and the questions are always of the same shape: a fair is named and the candidate must supply the district, the deity or the tithi on which it falls. The state has thousands of melas, but the examination draws on about thirty of them, and they fall into neat groups. Some are cattle fairs, held where herders gather to trade animals. Some belong to a folk deity and are held at that deity's shrine. Some are the urs of a Sufi saint or a Jain or tribal gathering. A last group is modern: the tourism festivals that the state government has built around a season or an animal. Learn each name with three tags, the place, the deity or animal, and the month, and the chapter answers itself.

The cattle fairs

Rajasthan is a land of herders, so the great fairs are animal fairs. The best known is the Pushkar fair at Pushkar in Ajmer district, held on Kartik Purnima beside the lake and the Brahma temple, where camels, horses and cattle are traded and which draws visitors from abroad. The Nagaur cattle fair, also called the Ramdeoji cattle fair, is held at Nagaur in January or February and is famous for the Nagauri bullock. The Mallinath cattle fair at Tilwara in Barmer district is held in Chaitra on the bank of the Luni and is the great horse fair of the state, where the Malani breed is sold. The Tejaji cattle fair at Parbatsar in Nagaur district falls in Bhadrapad and the Gomti Sagar fair at Jhalrapatan is held in Vaishakh.

Fairs of the folk deities

The folk deities of Rajasthan, the lok devta, have their own fairs, and these are the most asked of all. Gogaji, the deity of snakes, is worshipped at Gogamedi in Hanumangarh district, where the fair is held in Bhadrapad. Baba Ramdev, the saint of the oppressed, has his samadhi at Ramdevra, also called Runicha, in Pokhran tehsil of Jaisalmer district, and the fair there falls in Bhadrapad. Tejaji, revered as a protector against snakebite, is honoured on Tejadashmi in Bhadrapad, and Pabuji is remembered in the phad paintings of the Bhopas. Among the goddesses, the Karni Mata fair is held at Deshnok in Bikaner district, at the temple famous for its rats; the Kaila Devi fair is held in Karauli district in Chaitra; the Shila Devi and Shitla Mata fairs draw crowds at Amber and at Chaksu in Jaipur district; and the Jeen Mata fair is held at Revasa in Sikar district during the Navratras.

Religious fairs, urs and tribal gatherings

The Urs of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at the Ajmer Sharif dargah is the largest Muslim gathering in the state and is held in the Islamic month of Rajab. The Urs at Galiakot in Dungarpur district, at the shrine of Syed Fakhruddin, is the great gathering of the Dawoodi Bohra community. Among Jain fairs, the Shri Mahavirji fair in Karauli district and the Rishabhdev or Kesariyaji fair at Dhulev in Udaipur district are the best known. The Baneshwar fair in Dungarpur district, held in Magh at the confluence of the Som and the Mahi, is called the Kumbh of the tribals, because the Bhils gather there in enormous numbers; it joins the worship of Shiva at the Baneshwar temple with the Vaishnav following of Mavji. The Mukam fair at Nokha in Bikaner district is the fair of the Bishnoi community, held at the samadhi of Guru Jambheshwar. The Kolayat fair in Bikaner district, on Kartik Purnima, is held at the tirth of Kapil Muni, and Kartik Purnima also brings the Chandrabhaga fair to Jhalrapatan in Jhalawar district and the Keshoraipatan fair to Bundi district.

The festivals of Rajasthan

Gangaur is the festival most closely identified with the state. It begins on the day after Holi and runs for eighteen days to Chaitra Shukla Tritiya, when unmarried girls and married women worship Gauri and Ishar, that is Parvati and Shiva, for a good husband and for the long life of a husband; the procession at Jaipur and the boat procession on Lake Pichola at Udaipur are famous. The saying teej tyohar bavdi, le dubi Gangaur places Teej at the head of the year's festivals and Gangaur at its close. Hariyali Teej falls in Shravan and is kept with special ceremony at Jaipur, while Kajali Teej at Bundi falls in Bhadrapad. Akha Teej, that is Akshaya Tritiya in Vaishakh, is the great day for marriages. Holi has its local forms: the Dolchi Holi of Bikaner, fought with leather pots of water, the Kodamar Holi of Bhinay in Ajmer, the Patthar Mar Holi of Barmer and the royal Gair of Udaipur. Other days kept widely are Shitla Saptami, Gogaji Navami, Tejadashmi, Dhinga Gavar at Jodhpur and Makar Sankranti, when Jaipur flies kites.

The tourism festivals

What to revise

Fix the five cattle fairs with their districts first, then the folk deity fairs, which carry the most marks, then the three Kartik Purnima fairs of Pushkar, Kolayat and Chandrabhaga together. Gangaur with eighteen days and Gauri and Ishar, and Baneshwar as the Kumbh of the tribals, are the two statements most often set as true or false.