World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 208

are she curses them to become children; they in turn take offence and curse her with the loss of her beauty exemplified by a face be-speckled with pustules. Her rishi husband discovers his now deformed bride and kicks her out of their home with a curse to be reborn as a disease-demon that infects people with her self same pox. Another popular creation story equates her with the story of Parasurama's mother. The story of a Brahmin wife whose virtue was manifested by her ability to make jars out of sands, to boil water by placing a pot atop her head, and to carry large quantities of water home from her bath without a bowl or pitcher, as her sari dried fluttering overhead. The stories vary on whether she saw reflected in the water held in her hands a beautiful bird, a handsome gandharva, or copulating gandharvas but in all cases she feels a momentary pang of yearning. At that the water splashes to the grown and her drying sari, now soaked through, tumbles to the earth. Her rishi husband, seeing the loss of her special abilities condemns her by ordering their son to behead her. He beheads her, along with a woman from the lowest caste who she either hid behind, or chose to embrace. The son returns home devastated and his father offers him a boon for his obedience, he quickly asks to be able to restore his mother. The wish is granted, but in his enthusiasm he places the wrong head on the wrong body. Thus broken and put back together she becomes goddesses. The one with the Brahmin head is Mariyamma while the other switched woman became Yellamma..
By and large Mariyamman is considered a low caste deity, sometimes the last choice deity of those who make pilgrimages to her temples in plea for some kind of cure, she is at times the goddess of the desperate. Her creation stories can be viewed as warnings to Brahmin women, as well as examples of Brahminical influence. Kinsley notes how the interpretation of the Parasurama's mother's story is very often viewed as a re-affirmation of the hierarchal caste system established in the Rg Veda's Purusha Sūkta (10:90). The primordial man/the first sacrifice has a head made up of the Brahmin caste, the feet made of the lowest caste, while the body held everything in between. On the other hand, Mariyamman holding all castes in one body could be seen as an example of how she represents all people who live in her village because,
The extent of the all-inclusive nature of local-goddess worship in villages is indicated by the participation of Brahmins and Muslims in these festivals. The point is the locals goddess is not so much a Hindu deity or a deity specially related to a caste or occupation, or even a specific phenomenon such as diseaseHThe point is that from the village's point of view the goddess is specifically their deity, their lady, as it were, who has their particular needs at heart.
Besides, the Purusha Sūktam type of interpretation implies that the
159