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Festivals
Long before anyone wrote down a reason for it, people in Assam were already building a fire, feasting beside it all night, and then scattering its ashes back onto the land that had fed them.
Magh Bihu, observed in mid-January in the month of Magh, marks the end of the harvesting season across Assam. Unlike many of the festivals in this collection, its origin is not recorded in a single myth with named gods and a clear plot. It is instead a pre-Vedic farming tradition. Its roots lie in the practices of Assam's own native peoples, among them the Bodo, Deori, and Chutia. Historians and folklorists believe its history of fire worship and harvest thanksgiving stretches back thousands of years. This is thought to come before Puranic Hinduism ever reached the region at all.
This is worth stating plainly, rather than working around. Magh Bihu does not have a Puranic origin story to source, because it was never a Puranic festival to begin with. Its history belongs to the record of Assam's own farming and tribal traditions, not to Sanskrit scripture.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.