Within Santal religious life, the rhythm of New Year and agriculture is woven into a sacred cycle of festivals that bind community, land, and the unseen powers. The ritual year effectively begins with Baha Parab, the Flower Festival in spring, when new leaves and blossoms signal renewal and the start of cultivation. At this time, offerings of flowers, rice beer, and sacrificial fowl are made at the Jaher than, the sacred grove that serves as the spiritual heart of the village. Thakur Jiu, Marang Buru, other bongas, and the ancestors are invoked for timely rain, protection from misfortune, and a fruitful agricultural year. Homes and communal spaces are cleansed, branches and flowers are ceremonially brought into the village, and the entire community joins in music, line-dancing, and shared food and drink. In this way, the New Year is not merely a date, but a re-consecration of the relationship between humans, spirits, and the natural world.

The agricultural cycle is then marked at key thresholds through distinct rituals that accompany sowing, growth, and harvest. Before ploughing and seed-sowing, Erok Sim functions as a pre-sowing rite in which offerings are made to Earth Mother and field spirits, and tools, plough, and seeds may be ritually purified. As the crops grow, Hariar Sim is observed as a mid-cultivation ceremony, with propitiatory acts to safeguard the fields from pests, disease, and other forms of harm. If adversity strikes—whether in the form of illness, drought, or infestation—additional rites may be performed to restore balance with local spirits. Each of these observances underscores that cultivation is never a purely technical act, but a negotiated partnership with the powers inhabiting land and sky.

The culmination of this sacred cycle comes with the harvest festivals, when gratitude and celebration take center stage. Nawakhan, the New Rice Festival, and Sohrai or Sohorae, the broader post-harvest celebration, are observed after the rice has been gathered in. First-fruits of the new rice and other produce are offered at the sacred grove to deities and ancestors before the community partakes, affirming that all abundance is received rather than simply produced. Cattle, indispensable to ploughing and transport, are washed, decorated, and honored, and agricultural tools are treated with reverence, acknowledging their role in sustaining life. Houses may be repaired and adorned, and for several days the village is alive with feasting, song, and dance, as social bonds are renewed alongside the covenant with the spiritual world.

Seen as a whole, the Santal ritual calendar maps directly onto the agricultural year: Baha Parab inaugurates renewal and sowing, Erok Sim and Hariar Sim accompany the vulnerable stages of growth, and Nawakhan and Sohrai sanctify the moment of harvest and redistribution. Through these observances, the community continually reaffirms that farming is a sacred vocation, carried out under the gaze of Thakur Jiu, Marang Buru, the bongas, and the ancestors. The sacred grove, the dancing ground, the fields, and the cattle-shed all become liturgical spaces in which gratitude, dependence, and reciprocity are enacted. In this pattern, time itself is experienced as a cycle of offering and return, in which each new year and each harvest is both a gift received and a promise renewed.