Revering rain

Monsoon was once sacred; it was invited with ritual, and sent off with tribute. That was when our society was predominantly agrarian, and the role of rain was unmistakable; its place in the cycle of life was directly witnessed and understood. Now, past the schoolbook diagrams of the water cycle, it’s harder to see how the rains feed the food we order on Uber Eats. The porous ground that once absorbed rainwater is growing scarce from reckless construction and paving. Rainwater unable to reunite with the earth, pools or rushes, slowing down commute, causing flash floods, influenza, mosquitoes, extra cleaning, extra gardening, extra laundry and maddening levels of traffic. Our old reverence toward rain is fading. This is an attempt to re-remember it through the lore, myths and stories connected to rain.

Monsoon arrives dissolving hierarchies with the same insistence that it dissolves thirst. When the monsoon hits, there is no difference between farmer and priest, believer and skeptic. Monsoons evoked a common longing for dry shelter, some warmth and any mercy. It also evoked hope for growth and a better harvest. These collective emotions of awe, hope, and longing for safety, and the direct results of the monsoons observed in nature, were what shaped most rain lore.

In Sri Lanka, the full moon of Poson, now celebrated by Buddhists marking Buddhism’s arrival in Sri Lanka, was once the great water festival celebrating fertility and abundance. In the lunar month between June and July, known as Jetthamüla in ancient Lanka, water sports were performed to awaken the sleeping cloud god Parjanya. Parjanya—Pajjunna to the Pali texts, Podona or Poson to the Sinhala tongue—was closely associated with the water festival, and the name remained as Buddhist philosophy was integrated into the island culture.  

Rain was closely associated with fertility, too. Naturally, the human body itself was used as a conduit to pray for fruitfulness and return. According to historian Charles Godakumbura, "they desired to appease the Rain-God so that he may return to them with the cycle of seasons. The gods of fertility are always pleased at the sight of behaviour which leads to their purpose, namely the increase of the human race together with the abundance of crops and increase of cattle and other livestock, and they would hardly approve too much moral restraint, particularly in matters of sex.”

In those early imaginings, water was not a mere resource but divinity.

The Naga cult arose from this belief. The serpent spirits, guardians of water and treasure, were honoured at reservoirs and riversides, their stone forms emerging from the earth as if from the very waters they protected. The Naga was a warning to careless interactions with water, embodying the mysterious balance between danger and nourishment. To honour the Naga was to acknowledge both fear and faith, that the same water that sustains and quenches can also drown and suffocate. 

1872, Naga pond in Ceylon Ruins of Anuradhapura by Joseph Lawton

Bairava, the guardian god of wealth in Hindu faith, is worshipped in a ceremony which takes place in the middle of the dry tanks of Sri Lanka’s North-Central Province. Devotees stand in the dry beds of tanks, calling on Bairava to break the drought and bring on the rains in order to sustain wealth; it’s a ritual that reveals the subconscious connection between rain and abundance.

Even faiths that came later folded themselves into this ancient grammar of water. The story of St. Joseph Vaz, the Goan saint, remains one of the island’s most beloved tales, connecting divine power with rain. When King Vimaladharmasuriya invited the renowned miracle maker to pray for rain in drought-stricken Kandy, Vaz requested a public altar. The story accounts that as he prayed, raindrops started to fall, everywhere but upon the altar where he stood, initiating a late monsoon. This local legacy probably got interwoven with the lore of St. Joseph, who is prayed to receive rains, because even today, it is customary to keep a statue of St. Joseph under an umbrella during outdoor weddings and ceremonies, as a plea to shelter from rain.

St. Joseph statue placed under an umbrella with a prayer to hold back major rains during a wedding.

In villages across the island, echoes of more rain lore persist. Gammadu, Panmadu and Kohomba Kankariya are all linked to monsoons and seeking protection from floods and diseases that follow major rains. Even the performance of ritualistic village games such as Porapol gasima and Ankeliya, and some elements of folk play known as Sokari, are also connected to rain. Farmers in Kataragama cook through the night on the threshing floor to honor the role of rain gods in a good harvest; villagers in Kotmale offer prayers to Meghavarana, the lord of clouds. From the bathing of the sacred Bo trees, the Esala Perahera, the exposition of the Tooth Relic, to aspects of Pongal celebration, stories around rain often took the form of a covenant between human life and natural order. Across religions, the monsoon is a great equalizer, undoing separations, reminding us of the smallness that binds all life.

Perhaps this is why rain rituals have survived every empire and every reform. They spring from the same elemental recognition: that survival is shared; that we all speak, in each’s own idiom, to the same sky. History reminds us that we once celebrated rain not merely as weather but as revelation. And perhaps we still can, if we pause to notice the quiet miracles it performs, even in our cities. The rains have always been our equalizer, our reminder that everything alive depends on water, for better or for worse.