Jambhoji: The 29 Rules, and the Trees

Grouped, because a list of twenty nine is hard to hold.

The living beings group

• Do not kill animals. Absolute, and it is the centre of the code
• Be compassionate to all living beings
• Do not eat meat
• Do not cut green trees
• Geld the bull, so that it is not sold on for slaughter and so that herds do not outgrow the land
• Provide a shelter for goats and sheep so they are not killed by predators or by traders

The water and fuel group, which is where the desert shows

• Filter your drinking water
• Filter your milk
• Check firewood before burning it, so that insects and small creatures in it are not burned alive

Which is a level of attention that only makes sense in a place where every one of those is scarce and every living thing is countable.

The devotional group

• Perform sandhya morning and evening
• Sing the praise of Vishnu in the evening
• Perform havan daily
• Do jaap
• Bathe in the morning
• Keep the fast on Amavasya

The conduct group

• Be content
• Be patient
• Be pure in mind
• Do not lie
• Do not steal
• Do not slander
• Do not argue or condemn
• Do not use foul language
• Forgive

The abstinence group

• No opium
• No tobacco
• No cannabis
• No alcohol
• Do not wear blue clothes

And that last one has a reason.

Blue dye in that period meant indigo, and indigo cultivation and processing was destructive of land and involved large scale plant destruction, and the rule is a boycott of a production process rather than a colour preference.

The seclusion rules, which need an honest note

Two of the twenty nine concern ritual impurity: thirty days after childbirth and five days during menstruation.

These are period typical rules and they appear in codes across the subcontinent, and this article is not going to pretend they are not in the list.

And the honest position on them is the same as everywhere else in this series.

Menstrual seclusion has documented harms: girls miss school in large numbers, women are excluded from kitchens, water sources and normal family life, and in the most extreme forms, such as the chhaupadi practice in parts of Nepal, women and girls have died of cold, smoke inhalation and snakebite while confined to outbuildings.

Menstruation is not a contamination, no medical basis exists for any of the restrictions, and the public health position and the courts have been clear.

Bishnoi practice today varies widely, as it does in every community, and a great many Bishnoi households have quietly dropped or softened this.

And a rule from 1485 about ritual purity does not carry the same weight as the rules about killing, which the community itself has demonstrated by which ones it has been prepared to die for.

What is remarkable about the list as a whole

It is unusually practical.

There is no metaphysics in it. No cosmology, no doctrine about the nature of the self, no position on liberation. It is a list of things to do and not do, given to farmers and herders in a drought, which could be memorised by somebody who could not read and enforced by a village.

And it worked for five centuries, which is a stronger claim than most systems can make.

This is the event, and it should be told at full length because it is usually told in one sentence.

What was happening

The Maharaja of Jodhpur, Abhai Singh, was building a palace.

A palace needs lime. Lime needs lime kilns. Lime kilns need wood, in quantity, and in the Marwar desert the wood that exists is khejri, the tree the rest of India calls shami and which is worshipped at Dussehra.

The khejri is the reason people can live there at all. It fixes nitrogen, it holds the soil, its pods are food, its leaves are fodder, it survives drought, and it grows where nothing else will. Cutting khejri in that country is not like cutting a tree elsewhere.

The Maharaja's men went to Khejarli village, which is Bishnoi, to cut.

Amrita Devi

A Bishnoi woman of that village came out and told them they could not.

They told her the timber was for the Maharaja.

She offered to pay. They refused, or in some accounts demanded a bribe, and she refused that as a matter of principle: paying to protect what the rule already protected was itself a violation of it.

And then she put her arms around a tree.

The recorded sentence attributed to her is: sar santey rooonkh rahe to bhi sasto jaan. If a tree is saved at the cost of a head, the bargain is cheap.

They killed her.

Her three daughters, Asu, Ratni and Bhagu, did the same thing and were killed.

What happened next

Word went out to the surrounding Bishnoi villages, and people came.

Eighty four villages sent people. They came and they held the trees.

And the axemen kept working.

Three hundred and sixty three Bishnoi were killed at Khejarli. Men, women, children and old people. The accounts record that the old and the married came forward before the young, on the reasoning that those with less life left should go first.

Then it stopped.

Word reached Abhai Singh, the cutting was halted, he came in person, and he issued an order forbidding the cutting of trees and the killing of animals in Bishnoi villages, which stood.

What to do with this

Three things.

One. It happened, and it is dated, and it is not a legend. Khejarli is a real village in Jodhpur district, the memorial is there, the names are recorded, and the state of Rajasthan and the Government of India both formally recognise it. The Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award is named for her.

Two. It is the origin of the idea that became Chipko. The Chipko movement of the 1970s in Garhwal, in which villagers embraced trees to prevent felling, is explicitly connected to Khejarli by its own participants, and the technique is the same technique two hundred and forty years later.

Three. And this is the part that matters for a devotional site.

They did it because of a rule in a list.

Not because of an argument about ecology, not because of a movement, not because anybody organised them, and not because they expected to win. Rule number seventeen of twenty nine, given by a man in a drought in 1485, said do not cut green trees, and two hundred and forty five years later three hundred and sixty three people held that position against the state with their bodies.

Which is what a rule is for.

A practice that has never cost you anything has not been tested, and the Bishnoi are the clearest available example of what it looks like when one is.

What the community still does

Protects animals, in a way that is visible from the road.

Drive through Bishnoi country in western Rajasthan and there are blackbuck and chinkara grazing next to villages, unafraid, in a state where they are hunted everywhere else, and this is not accidental.

The community feeds wild animals during drought, maintains water points for them, and there is a well documented practice of Bishnoi women breastfeeding orphaned fawns, which sounds like a story until you see the photographs, of which there are many.

Anti poaching

Bishnoi organisations actively pursue poaching cases, report offences, and have followed prosecutions for decades where the state might have let them lapse.

A well known blackbuck poaching case from 1998 near Jodhpur was pursued by the community through trials and appeals for more than two decades, which is a level of persistence that no ordinary complainant sustains.

And the note that has to go with it

There have been confrontations, and there is a line.

Reporting poaching is right and is the community's own achievement. Confronting armed poachers personally is dangerous and getting people killed is not a win.

The Wildlife Protection Act 1972 is the instrument, the Forest Department and the police are the enforcers, and the correct sequence is: note the vehicle, note the time and place, photograph if it is safe to, call 112 and the forest department, and let the state do the arresting.

A conviction obtained through evidence lasts. A confrontation on a road at night usually does not end the way anybody planned.

What a reader anywhere can actually take

Not the rules, which belong to a community and are not on offer as a menu.

But the shape of them is portable, and here is the version that fits any household.

One. Water.

A bowl of water on a roof, a balcony or a windowsill through the hot months keeps birds alive, and in an Indian summer this is not a gesture. Change it daily so it does not become a mosquito breeding site, which is the whole discipline.

Two. A tree.

Plant one and keep it alive for three years, which is the part people skip. A planted sapling that nobody waters is a photograph.

Prefer native species: khejri in the arid west, neem, peepal, banyan, jamun, imli, bel, arjuna. Do not plant eucalyptus or conocarpus, which are widely planted, drink heavily and support almost no local wildlife.

Three. Do not buy the animal.

No products from wild species. Ivory, shahtoosh, tortoise shell, wild bird feathers, mongoose hair brushes, star tortoises and other wild pets, and the various things sold at temple town stalls as auspicious that are made of parts of protected animals.

Possession of most of these is an offence under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, and the market exists because people buy.

Four. The Bishnoi filter.

Their most distinctive rules are the small ones: check the firewood, filter the water, filter the milk.

The portable version is the pause. Before doing an ordinary thing, look at whether something small is about to be killed by it, and this is a two second habit that changes how a person walks around a house.

Where to go

• Mukam, near Nokha, Bikaner district, where Jambhoji's samadhi is, with melas on the Amavasya of Asoj and of Phalgun
• Khejarli, Jodhpur district, where the memorial to the three hundred and sixty three is, and the annual gathering in September
• Pipasar, Nagaur district, his birthplace
• Samrathal Dhora, near Mukam
• Bishnoi villages around Jodhpur, which run village visits, and where you will see the blackbuck

A note on visiting the villages

Village tourism around Jodhpur is a real industry and much of it is respectful and much of it is not.

Go with an operator that pays the village, do not photograph people or their houses without asking, do not treat a working household as an exhibit, and if opium is offered as a traditional welcome, understand that opium is a controlled substance under the NDPS Act and that consuming it is an offence regardless of how it is framed.

A daily practice from this entry

• Vishnu, or Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya, which is what the name Bishnoi comes from
• Water out for the birds, changed daily
• And Amrita Devi's line, which is the whole of the Bishnoi position in eight words: if a tree is saved at the cost of a head, the bargain is cheap

Who: Guru Jambheshwar, called Jambhoji, 1451 to 1536, founder of the Bishnoi, born at Pipasar in Nagaur district, Rajasthan, into a Panwar family. The accounts say he did not speak for his first seven years and then spent about twenty seven years herding cattle in the desert. He died at Lalasar in 1536 and his samadhi is at Mukam near Nokha in Bikaner district.

1485: western Rajasthan was in a severe and prolonged drought, which in that country means the wells fail, the grass fails, the livestock die, people eat the seed grain, then the trees, and then they leave. The standard response is to cut whatever wood is left, sell the animals and move. Instead, at Samrathal Dhora, he founded a community and gave it twenty nine rules, bis and nau, hence Bishnoi. His compositions, the Shabdavani of around a hundred and twenty shabads, are the community's scripture.

The rules: on living beings, do not kill animals, be compassionate to all, do not eat meat, do not cut green trees, geld the bull so it is not sold for slaughter, and shelter goats and sheep. On water and fuel, filter your drinking water, filter your milk, and check firewood before burning it so insects in it are not burned alive, which is a level of attention that only makes sense where everything is scarce and countable. On devotion, sandhya morning and evening, evening praise of Vishnu, daily havan, jaap, a morning bath and the Amavasya fast. On conduct, contentment, patience, purity of mind, no lying, stealing, slander, quarrelling or foul language, and forgiveness. On abstinence, no opium, tobacco, cannabis or alcohol, and no blue clothes, that last one being a boycott of indigo production rather than a colour preference. Two rules concern ritual impurity after childbirth and during menstruation, which are period typical and appear in codes across the subcontinent; menstrual seclusion has documented harms including girls missing school and, in extreme forms such as chhaupadi in parts of Nepal, deaths from cold, smoke and snakebite, there is no medical basis for any of it, Bishnoi practice today varies widely, and a rule about ritual purity does not carry the weight of the rules about killing, which the community has shown by which ones it has been prepared to die for.

Khejarli, 1730: Maharaja Abhai Singh of Jodhpur was building a palace, which needed lime, which needed kilns, which needed wood, and the wood in that desert is khejri, the tree the rest of India calls shami. The khejri is why people can live there: it fixes nitrogen, holds soil, its pods are food and leaves fodder, it survives drought and grows where nothing else will. His men went to Khejarli village to cut. Amrita Devi told them they could not, offered to pay when they refused, refused a bribe on the principle that paying to protect what the rule already protected was itself a violation, and then put her arms around a tree, saying that if a tree is saved at the cost of a head the bargain is cheap. They killed her. Her three daughters, Asu, Ratni and Bhagu, did the same and were killed. Word went out and eighty four villages sent people, who came and held the trees while the axemen kept working. Three hundred and sixty three Bishnoi were killed, with the old and married coming forward before the young on the reasoning that those with less life left should go first. Then word reached Abhai Singh, the cutting was halted, he came in person and issued an order forbidding tree cutting and animal killing in Bishnoi villages, which stood.

What it means: it is dated and documented, Khejarli is a real village with a memorial and recorded names, and the Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award is named for her. It is the origin of what became Chipko, which its own participants connect to Khejarli explicitly. And they did it because of a rule in a list, not an argument about ecology, not a movement, not because anybody organised them and not because they expected to win: rule seventeen of twenty nine, given in a drought in 1485, said do not cut green trees, and two hundred and forty five years later three hundred and sixty three people held that position against the state with their bodies. A practice that has never cost you anything has not been tested.

Now: blackbuck and chinkara graze unafraid next to Bishnoi villages, the community feeds wild animals during drought and maintains water points, and Bishnoi women breastfeeding orphaned fawns is documented in photographs. Bishnoi organisations pursue poaching prosecutions for decades where the state might let them lapse. But confronting armed poachers personally is dangerous: the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 is the instrument, note the vehicle, time and place, photograph if safe, call 112 and the forest department, and let the state arrest. What any reader can take is portable: water out for birds and changed daily, a native tree planted and kept alive for three years rather than photographed, buying nothing made from wild species, and the Bishnoi pause before an ordinary action to see whether something small is about to be killed by it.