World of Philosophy

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

Page 215

desses invoked my curiosity, but my snobberies were geared to the Sanskrit goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, not some smallpox goddess. It was not until I came across an image of her that she had an impact on me. Mariyamman sits on my puja, I look at her daily. At the very least she is a reminder of my inadvertent snobbery for the Brahminical deities deemed worthy of worship. She is niuch more than that. She is about change and growth, and how that often hurts. I had fancied myself a Sakta Tantrika, enjoyed the myths of the goddess, and utilized some of her mantras and mudras, but it was not until I had stood in the Kali temple, and later held my Mariyamman murti, that I understood the power of the goddess for me, as a woman.
From the broad perspective the question is no longer whether the goddess is empowering to women, because she both is and is not. It is more a question about how one's vantage point of interpretation affects self and societal understanding. For me Mariyamman epitomizes the expanse past the horizon of biases, she is both not just a smallpox goddess, and simultaneously asks why is being a smallpox goddess of less import then some flasher moniker?
Continuing and Moving Forward with Regular Re-Interpretation
Because the stories of the deities are never the definitive story but represent diverse and sometimes conflicting teachings, and because they are what interest me that is where my proposal resides. It is in a method of interpretation that asks one to participate in the myths in a way that all the parties contained within each story are explored as aspects of oneself. I am the demon and the demon slayer, the subservient wife and the husband who calls for her beheading. Depending on my vantage point I can explore the many shades of a deity in order to grasp which aspects I need to cultivate within myself: In this sense the god no longer needs to be a fantasy husband, but rather a part of me.
Since I come from a culture without divine female imagery the sight of the goddess made me feel privy to a secret well of female strength, but I suspect the stories of the goddesses are very loaded for Indians. If one's family, teachers, and priests have a certain set of interpretations that do not coincide with one's world view, excavating the goddess may seem to be much work. For some contemporary Indian women regular re-interpretation may be the only way the goddess could be useful for them. Mariyamman's fluidity, even her strange rise to upward mobility attests to the pliability of the deities, even as she exemplifies how religion reflects culture.
Whether or not the goddess is a male construct is not necessarily the issue, her stories and evolutes are rich enough to be mined in variant ways. The need to differentiate male and female myths and roles may very well be
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