Bathukamma Festival of Andhra Pradesh
Name of Festival : Bathukamma Festival
Major Territory of Celebration
Bathukamma Festival is a Autumn festival celebrated by the Hindu women of Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Time of celebration (Months)
This Festival is celebrated by the Low Backward Castes women. It commences on the first day of the lunar month, Aswayuja and ends on Mahamavami one day before Dussera called as Durgashtami.This Festival is falls on the month of September/October.
About Festival :
Bathukamma is a beautiful flower stack, arranged with seasonal flowers, in seven concentric layers .Bathukamma words make ( Bathuku + Amma ) Bathuku means in Telugu live/life, and Amma means mother so that Bathukamma, is celebrated for the glory of a Low-Backward-Caste Folk Goddess, later denoted as Goddess Gauri.
On this day every house wife, after taking bath dressed-up in traditional silk saris, and wear jewellery and arranges different kinds of flowers like gunuka , tangedi, lotus, alli, katla, teku of various colours in the shape of a stupa on a platter of reeds or bamboo or brass and on the top goddess Lakshmi in turmeric is installed. After worshipped it is kept in a corner of a room.
In the evening all women gather with their bathukammas in their locality and all the bathukammas place them in the middle and dance around them, synchronizing steps and claps in unison, and singing soul stirring bathukamma folk songs.Women dancing around their Bathukammas.After dancing Bathukammas are taken to a lake or a pond and spend some more time singing and dancing and are set afloat in the water body.
The festival goes on for nine days and the last day of the festival is called Chaddula Batakamma.
