177such as kurugu ( Strobilanthes sp.) and hebbidru ( Bambusa arundinacea ). The for-
mer is said to bloom every 7 years (the most recent occurrence was in 2010),
whereas the later has done so only a handful of times in living memory. Far more
important than these cycles, however, is the annual monsoon cycle, which holds
sway over most of the Indian subcontinent between the months of May and October.
This has led the Solega to develop a calendar of rains, which cycles in close concert
with the sequence of agricultural tasks.
6.2.1.1 Solega Rain Calendar
Timekeeping on an annual cycle is carried out by means of a calendar of rains,
which approximates a similar Kannada system, but differs from it in signifi cant
ways. The Kannada rain calendar ultimately derives from the Sanskrit -based Hindu
astrological sequence of nakṣatra (this term can be glossed as either ‘constellations’
or ‘lunar mansions’), which are said to divide the plane of the ecliptic into 27 equal
parts (Fig. 6.1 ). As there are 27 days in a sidereal month, the width of a nakṣatra is
the arc of sky traversed by the moon in about one day. The 27 Kannada rain name s
closely follow the Sanskrit terms, at least where the orthography is concerned—
minor deviations occur in spoken Kannada, in the lack of aspiration in the Sanskrit
breathy consonants, for example. Though offi cially called maḷe ‘rain’ on printed
Kannada calendars, these subdivisions of the year play an important role in astro-
logical calculations. They also align with important Hindu festivals , such as (y)
uga:di ‘new year’,^2 which coincides with the transition between re:vati maḷe and
ashvini maḷe. Kannada speakers tend not to use the 27 maḷe names to refer to the
precipitation associated with different phases of the monsoon , but instead employ
two high-frequency words to divide up the rainy season—these are munga:ru , the
oncoming south-west monsoon (June–September), and hinga:ru , the retreating
north-east monsoon (September–November). Etymologically, mun- is usually asso-
ciated with directional semantic content such as ‘front’ or ‘previous’, while hin-
tends to indicate ‘back’ or ‘following’.
The Hindu astrological almanac also has a distinct sequence of 12 months, also
with Sanskrit labels, based on the sign of the zodiac that the sun transects at a par-
ticular time of year. The average Kannada speaker, however, is only aware of the
English month-names of the Gregorian calendar; this is true even of people in rural
Karnataka. In the Hindi-speaking parts of India, too, such knowledge is becoming
more obscure, although older speakers might occasionally make reference to months
such as a:ṣa:ḍh (mid-June to mid-July), marked by the onset of the south-west
monsoons , and often associated with violent thunderstorms.
The Solega rain calendar is highly syncretic, drawing on the Sanskrit and
Kannada categories described above, while also incorporating a number of concepts
(^2) The Solega, while never claiming these festivals as their own, do take part in such celebrations.
This is, however, a recent development, and the Solega have a completely different cycle of indig-
enous festivals linked to the agricultural cycle (see Fig. 6.2 ).