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HAPTER VI.

VILLAGE DEITIES.

I

Most of the Saivite goddesses described above have been Village found to be of fearsome appearance, fond of flesh, blood and deilie s . ... . . and their wine J and intimately connected with goblins, spirits, demons relation to and diseases. One of them Tvarita, it was seen, was the Tantrik goddess of the Kiratas, and Vindhyavasim was evidently g another living on the Vindhya Mountain. Apya (Durga) is described in the Harivamsa as the goddess of the Sabaras, Pulindas, Barbaras and other wild tribes and as fond of wine and flesh. It will not now be difficult to trace a connexion between these and the village goddesses whose shrines are generally the haunts of malevolent demons and who are often appeased only by the slaughter of fowls, sheep, goats and buffaloes. Almost every village in South India, however insignificant it may be, has a shrine for one or more goddesses of this nature. Generally they are situated outside the village in groves of trees much dreaded by the people and are consi- dered to be the grdma-devatds, the guardian deities of the village. Often there are no temples properly so called, and where there are structures, they are crude and simple enshrining within them rough unhewn stones representing the amma or " mother " sacred to that village. Sometimes there is only a spear or a trident fixed up straight in the ground in place of the goddess-stones. The goddesses bear different names. Some are called after the villages where their primary shrines exist, such as Kollapuri-amma, Huskur-amma, Pung- (i.e., Punganur-)amma, Hosur-amma, Uchchangi-amma, etc. Other popular names among village deities are the " Seven Kanniyamar," BhadrakalT, Kaliyamma, Mariyamma, Mutyal- amma, Ponnamma, Ellamma, 2 Ankalamma, Kolumamma,

1 In the Silpasara, where the Chaushashti-Yoginis are described, some are stated to feed on dead bodies, some to wander at nights like devils and some to be quarrelsome demons with ugly eyes and erect hair on head. Eighteen well- known shrines of these goddesses in India and Ceylon (Lanka) are enumerated.

2 Nagendra Natha Vasu in his M ayurabhanj a speaks of a Greek goddess called Ella and connects her with Ajaikapad, one of the forms of Rudra, already mentioned.