Folk religion and mythology of koch community of Assam

Abstract

So far as the researches are done on Koch community, they have focused mainly on the political and socio-cultural histories of the community. Such works highlighted the establishment of a political dynasty, struggling for an identity and the social set up of the community. The works on rituals, rites and other belief systems with regard to folk religion are very much less. Though most of the Koch people are the followers of Hinduism, they still practice their age-old belief systems. In mundane life, they have to acclimatize to the locality in which they survive in the course of which they get mixed up with Hinduism to their old religious practices and thus emerged their “folk Hinduism”. It embodies the ritual practices and other forms of folklore, verbal and non-verbal behaviour like narratives, songs, riddles, proverbs etc. The religious belief that is in practice occurs in orality transmitted orally from one generation to the other. Thus, practices of the folk religion of the Koch community are not taken into consideration to understand their social lives. In light of the above discussion, the existing works are highlighting the socio-historical life of the Koch community and hence the studies are lopsided. For having a holistic perspective, folklore as an ongoing cultural process of the community has to be given emphasis. Because, folklore is a tradition based creation of the folk, by the folk and for the folk whose mode of transmission is oral which includes the process of changes that occur over a period of time and space