Ceremony for the rain of Cor people

In the economic, cultural and spiritual life of the Cor people, praying for rain is an important agricultural ritual, dating back a long time. This is a traditional ritual, praying for favorable wind and rain, lush crops, buds and buds and flowering. In addition, the ritual of praying for rain also expressed the Cor's desire to live in the desire to build an increasingly rich and prosperous village, a healthy, happy family.
Cor people pray for rain, pray for prosperity
The elder of Ho Van Nghia village (76 years old), village 3, Tra Kot commune, Bac Tra My district (Quang Nam), said: “The rain praying ceremony is a prosperous belief festival that takes place during the time. droughts last for months. For many generations, the life of the Cor people depended heavily on the weather, they believed that the god of blessing would fulfill their wishes if they truly prayed. " Every year, around June (lunar calendar), after clearing the old fields, the cultivation of upland rice and the crops of the crop was completed, the Cor people organized a rain praying ceremony, so that the seeds would sprout and the green trees would grow. Fresh and well developed.

In order to pray for the rain to take place in accordance with the traditional ritual, the village elder and the priest worshiped with the villagers to agree on choosing a good good day and the donation of gifts and ways to organize the festival. Depending on the drought level of that year and the conditions of each house, each village, the gifts may be more or less, but organize a rain praying for big or small rain. But it is necessary to have a rooster, 1 cup of rice, sticky rice, pork, betel, areca, wine bottle, leaf cake, lam rice. Boiled cassava is an indispensable gift of the Cor - This is the main agricultural product of the people, symbolizing bumper crops. In addition, gifts and indispensable dry item is a hedgehog or squirrel. The ritual of praying for rain was held at the place of planting the tree in the center of the village.

Unique ritual "praying for rain"
According to the concept of the Cor people, before the rain prayers, all the people in the village must be present. The sorcerer leads a group of people in the village to worship a local god and water spirits at the village's water station. The worshiping ceremony is held at noon. When the gifts are prepared, the four most respected elders in traditional costumes will represent the whole village to perform the ceremony, of which one elder is the main priest. When the sound of drums and gongs emerged, the priest took the boiled rooster and prayed with the village elders.

The content of the vow must show the earnest request to the gods. The vow of Cor, read: "Today is a good day, the Cor people have a ceremony to offer to the gods of the mountain, the god of the river, the god of the earth, ancestors and grandparents to eat, enjoy their sacrifices. in the village. When eating, drinking enough, please bless the villagers this year with good rain and wind, let the green forest trees so that the water from the gaps and streams flows to serve the irrigation of the fields, please protect the floods. , erosion and natural disasters affect the production and life of the people in the village, so that the people can prune the rice fields for many seeds, grow cassava trees into green trees, and have lots of tubers, produce favorable conditions, and harvest crops. bumper ”, in the cheers and cheers of the community.

After performing the ritual of worshiping the land and water gods, the Cor performed a worship indoors, followed by an offering in the yard of a tree. In the ritual outside the yard, the elder played the role of the ceremony master, leading the group around the tree to perform the ceremony of offering Mass with the expectation of praying to the gods for good rain and wind, to have a good harvest. , the village is full of warm, animals are full of herds.

General festival of the Cor people
Rain praying takes place in a warm, joyous, bustling atmosphere, the traditional beauty is expressed in the ceremony and the reverence for the gods. If the ceremony is solemnly performed according to the traditional ritual of sacrifice, the festival will be held jubilantly and boisterously. The young Cor girls in the vibrant colors of traditional costumes, and the colorful beads rhythmic rhythm in ka dance, and the young men beat gongs, drums howling a large space of mountains and forests, contributing to creating an atmosphere for Cor ethnic rain praying festival in the highland of Bac Tra My.

In this day, the old people meet to talk about family, children, production development, husbandry, and cultivation. This is also a day of community solidarity, bringing people closer together, understanding each other, to jointly build and develop the village. Prayer for rain, also important in their spiritual lives, contributes to uniting people with the spirit.

Ceremony for rain, it is also an opportunity for the Cor girls to find lovers through the songs of traditional folk songs, far away, to sing aly or to express their feelings to their lovers with a flute trumpet aap, so many love flourishes so the couple. At the end of the rain prayers, everyone was excited in joy and joy, everyone invited each other to drink and drink, and they made an appointment next year to return to the ceremony, they believed in a better new crop.

Through the rain praying ceremony, many other cultural values ​​have been restored and revived, such as: the art of playing gongs, drums, flutes, folk songs, folk sculpture, mentioned tree decoration and moist. The reality has also been recreated to teach the younger generation to be proud of their nation's cultural traditions. Since then, contribute to preserving, preserving and promoting the values ​​of Cor ethnic culture here.