Indigenous Water Knowledge: Religious Values and Cultural Practices

Abstract

The world’s oldest human civilizations developed near major water systems. The same custom was followed in the Kumaon region of the Uttarakhand state in Indian Himalayas. The traditions of water management were established and developed by the inhabitants according to the local ecological knowledge, environment, and available resources, in which understanding of their geographical circumstances and foresights were inherent.

The mountain communities of Kumaon acquired knowledge of the nature of water sources according to the geography of the Himalayas for hundreds of years and developed indigenous techniques for water conservation accordingly. The terrain of the Himalayas is very diverse, so the water harvesting systems also vary, the availability of water in the Lesser Himalayas is very arduous, and so this part has rich religious, cultural, and social traditions of water conservation. The people of Kumaon implemented the knowledge and instructions received from the holy religious texts. In the tradition, water management was not considered a mere technical job, but it was taken as a cultural work and was governed by socio-religious values. Traditional rules for usage with water conservation were kept intact by the societies, where non-compliance with traditional rules was considered a sin.

The consciousness of water harvesting in the region has been there since ancient times. People had discovered the significance of water and well-built cultural, religious, social, and scientific methods for its use. The importance behind the conservation of water is the difficult geographic terrain of the Lesser Himalayas where water is not readily available so the water was given the form of divinity.