The Frogs Who Sang for Rain

All through the dry months the pond had been shrinking.

By the end there was no pond. There was a bed of cracked mud, and somewhere in it, the poet says, the frogs lay like a dried-out leather bag. They had not made a sound for a year. They lay still and kept their silence, the way a priest keeps a vow.

Then Parjanya spoke. The thunder rolled, and the rain of heaven came down onto the cracked bed of the pool and onto the frogs lying in it.

The first voice rose from the mud, and then another.

Before long the whole pond was shouting. To the poet who stood listening it sounded like cows lowing with their calves beside them. He stayed in the rain and watched, and he made a hymn of what he saw. He was laughing as he made it, but he was not mocking them.

The frogs were greeting each other. One hopped up to another, croaking, and the other croaked back.

"See how he runs to him," said the poet, "calling out with joy, like a son running to his father."

Two of them sat side by side in the flowing water, a green one and a spotted one, and joined their voices. One would call, and his neighbour would give the same call back.

The poet knew that sound. He had heard it every day of his boyhood, in the house where he had learned the hymns. A teacher speaks a line, and the pupil says it after him.

"One repeats the other's words," he said, "just as a student repeats the lesson of his teacher."

He looked more closely, and saw that they were not all alike. One frog bellowed like a cow. Another bleated like a goat. One was green and one was spotted. They all had the one name, frog, and yet each had his own shape and his own way of using his voice.

And every one of them seemed to swell as he sang.

By now the pond was brimming, and the frogs sat all around the edge of it.

The poet had seen this before as well. At the great all-night Soma rite the priests sit in a ring round the full vessel and chant. Here was the same gathering, on the first day of the rains.

"Like priests at the overnight rite, talking round the brimming bowl," he sang, "you frogs gather round the pool to honour this day, the first day of the rainy season."

He carried it further, because it fitted so well. Priests who press the Soma keep a rite that lasts the whole year, and then they lift up their voices. The frogs had kept their year of silence, and now they had lifted theirs. Other priests work over the hot milk pots until they sweat. The frogs had been baked all summer like heated pots themselves, and now they had come out, and not one of them was hiding.

"They keep the order of the twelve months, as the gods laid it down," said the poet. "These fellows never miss the season. When the rains come round again in the year, the hot ones get their freedom."

He ended as hymns to the gods end, by asking for gifts, and he asked the frogs.

"The one who lows like a cow and the one who bleats like a goat have given us riches. The green one and the spotted one have given us treasure. May the frogs give us cows by the hundred, and lengthen our lives, in this season that makes everything grow."

The frogs kept singing, and it kept raining.

In the villages of Assam there is a custom for the years when the hot season drags on and the monsoon does not arrive. It is called Bhekuli Biya. Bhekuli is the Assamese word for a frog, and biya means a wedding.

The reason behind it is given in an old Assamese verse. The farmers ask the clouds why they do not rain, and the clouds answer that there can be no rain until the frogs croak.

So the village sets out to make the frogs glad.

Two frogs are caught, a male and a female, and washed. They are dressed as an Assamese groom and bride. The village does not hurry through it as a joke. A priest or an elder leads it, and the customs of a real wedding are followed. The two frogs are seated on a small platform and joined with a red thread. The priest says the prayers and asks the god of rain for his blessing. Vermilion is put on the forehead of the bride, as it would be for any married woman.

The neighbours come as wedding guests. A child asks his grandfather when the rain will come.

"When they are happy," says the old man. "Listen for them tonight."

When the rites are finished the pair is carried to a pond or a stream and set free. If the two stay together in the water, people take it as a sign that the god is pleased and that rain is on its way.

The god the villagers pray to at the frog wedding is usually named as Varuna. Parjanya's name is not heard there.