Sacrificial catharsis ushers in festival of “Maroj”

Maroj the festival of Juanpur and Jaunasar belt is celebrated with fervour.The highlight of the festival is sacrifice of goats.the festival is celebrated in the belt adjacent to mUssoorie.The villagers already have iniitiated the practice of drying the meat.
Source:http://www.garhwalpost.com/leftnewsdetail.aspx?id=796;&nt=Feature
Thousands of goats  have been sacrificed to obtain the cathartic sacrifice at the beginning of the festival “Maroj” in the hillsides of the Jaunpur-Jaunsar-Bawar valley. The animals have already seen one round of slaughter with the advent of the Magh mela in mid-January. This is not the end of the festival, though, as thousands more are lined up to be sacrificed to local deities here in a month long festival celebrated across 500 villages. The goats are dragged to be sacrificed in front of the “Bhairon Devta” temple amidst thumping drumbeats; the villagers pull a goat into the square and kill the animal to thank the deity for a prosperous year ahead. A roaring cheer lasts throughout the ritual as all existing families sacrifice their goats. Once slaughtered, goats are taken home and the meat is cut into pieces locally called ‘banta’ and wrapped to be sent to the married daughters. After the feast is shared with the entire village, the leftovers are hung, dried and stored to be eaten the year round. The origin of the tradition is believed in the period when no cultivation was possible in winters due to heavy snowfall in the region, so the villagers had ample time to feast in front of the local deity. 
The other theory, according to Vijay Negi, documentary film maker from Mussoorie is that ‘Maroj’ was celebrated on the advent of the chilly month of January as this was also period of conception for the animals, especially goats. So the goats were slaughtered one day before the advent of Magh month, and as it was cold the whole goat would remain intact and edible the entire month, as no refrigeration was required in winters, thus providing necessary protein to the villagers, since vegetable cultivation was not possible in this month. 
According to some, the ageless tradition finds its root in a cathartic sacrifice of the animals. The theory of cathartic sacrifice is not new. In early cults, cathartic sacrifice was done to cleanse impurity. The festival of ‘Maroj’ has it roots in the Rig-Vedic tradition where a bull was sacrificed to Rudra. The sanctity of the remainder of the herd was concentrated on a single animal; the God, incarnate in the herd, was eliminated by the sacrifice, and the cattle saved from the dangers to which their association with the God exposed them. The Feast of First Fruit is another example; comparable with this concentration of holiness is the respect or veneration shown to a single animal as representative of its species. In both these cases, the object of the rite is the elimination of impurity or of a source of danger and to herald a year of prosperity. Whether the cathartic sacrifice will benefit the people remains to be seen in the coming month. Meanwhile there are more goats lined up for the slaughter in the month of Maroj festival.