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Gramadevata

Devdutt, the name Mumbai originates from Mumbadevi, Chandigarh from Chandi and Kolkata from Kali. Why are these city names associated with the names of goddesses?

India is a country of villages, and cities arise from villages. It is said that places where human settlements were formed were originally occupied by a devi, devata, gandharva, yaksha and rakshasa. So if you are going to live there, you have to please the devi of that place—known as gramadevi. All of India’s villages are associated with some gramadevi or devata. Mumbai is a conglomeration of seven villages, each of which has a gramadevi like Prabhadevi and Gamdevi. Mumbadevi is the most famous. Similarly, Chandigarh’s well-known devis are Chandi devi and Mansa devi. The Kalighat Temple in Kolkata is very well known. Dhaka in Bangladesh has the Dhakeshwari Temple.

Why do some places have gramadevatas and some devis?

It’s not a systematic, organized knowledge. Any group of people, any human community, requires food to satisfy their hunger and for protection from their fears. The gramadevis are usually associated with fertility, with the land that gives food, like Annapurna, Gauri and so on. They are locally addressed as mother, by words such as aai, amma, baa or ammavaru. These are food goddesses. For protection, there are kshetra pal (protectors of the area) or guards called veer or veeroba. These are usually male gods, often with big moustaches, holding a trishul (trident), sword or bhala (spear) in their hands. They either have a horse or a dog with them, similar to hunters who protect. So gramadevi is associated with fertility and gramadevata with protection.

But it’s not so clear-cut. In Odisha, there’s Thakurani, a gramadevi who carries weapons in her hand. These are ferocious goddesses, also called matrikaya. In Nepal, too, and, in fact, everywhere in India, we have goddesses associated with both war and fertility. They can have a fearsome appearance with untied hair, long teeth and nails, red eyes, etc. Their descriptions are quite interesting: they come riding elephants, their hair has burning sticks in it and they carry a trishul in one hand with an elephant impaled on it—very violent, powerful images.

If you look at Hindu dharma, in the Vedas, there were gods associated with the rains (Indra), sun (Surya) and moon (Chandra). Later, in the Upanishads, gods were associated with concepts such as creation, sustenance, knowledge (vidya), wealth (dhan), etc. These belonged to the Margi parampara—not associated with a place or time but sanatana, eternal. The gramadevatas and devis are associated with a particular place—river, pond, mountain or cave. If you go to someone’s house you’ll see that they have a gramadevi or kuldevi (god of the family), ishta-devata (personal god) or griha-devata (god of the home). These could have various forms, appearing sometimes as a snake, sometimes as a monkey. In south India, there are big temples of gramadevatas usually outside the village. These can be seen especially in Tamil Nadu where they build tall images of these gods with big moustaches. In Rajasthan, there is Nagnechiya Maa and in Gujarat, Ashapura Mata. In fact, every part of India is associated with gramadevis and devas.

Do these gods and goddesses originate from folk tales?

They originate from the folklore of that area which is often associated with the Puranas. In early times, perhaps the people from that area alone knew about these gods, but as they became known outside the village, spread across India due to foreign visitors or because they became sites of pilgrimage, the local stories and the gods too became famous, acquiring nearly cosmic proportions. So the desi became margi; the local became sanatana.

The Vedas mention earth (prithvi) as a goddess (devi) but you’ll not find Mumbadevi mentioned in the Vedas or the Puranas, not even the Sthal Puranas. If you go to a Mumbadevi temple, they’ll say she is a form of devi, of Durga, and she looks like her too—she’ll be astride a tiger, trishul in hand. If you ask about her story, it’ll be about her killing Mahishasura or some other demon, but not anything specific. But for the people of that area their goddess is very important. If there’s any problem like a drought, epidemic or crop failure, they believe it is because their gramadevi is angry with them. If you go to a temple, you’ll find that the image is usually only of the head of the gramadevi because the village is supposed to be the body. There’ll be a head, a pair of eyes and a hand in varad mudra (giving something) or raised in blessing. The images are usually crude. The Kali goddess image in Kolkata is basically a big rock on which the eyes, hands and tongue have been created with bronze and silver. So before the appearance of a city, town or village, the local tribes must have felt the power of this rock and declared it the devi of the area. It’s a very local form. It does not have anything to do with what is now a conceptual form, that is, Kali or Durga. The local and the conceptual came to be seen as related gradually over time. Similarly, the Tirupati Devasthanam in Chennai, Vitthal Temple in Pandharpur and Jagannath Temple in Puri perhaps belonged to gramadevatas 2000 to 3000 years ago. They slowly got big temples and became famous all over India. The Khandoba Temple in Maharashtra is one such temple. Khandoba is an important local god of the Marathas; he’s called Mallana in Andhra Pradesh and is also known in Karnataka. He is a very powerful, masculine, virile god.

There is a popular story about his marriage. Once Khandoba and his men arrive at a hut in the forest, tired after a failed hunt. A girl, Banai, offers them water and welcomes Khandoba to rest there for as long as he wants. Later, he begins to help her and her father around the house. After a year passes, Khandoba asks the girl’s father for the payment for his services, but he is told that the food and shelter were his payment. Khandoba asks to marry Banai, which the father refuses. An angry Khandoba goes and kills all the goats in the pen and demands that he be married to Banai. He claims he would then bring all the goats back to life and make the father’s region prosper. This is how Khandoba and Banai—who is also believed to have had feelings for him—are married.

This theme of marrying the god is an important one. The stories are probably meant to convey how different kuls or families settled in a village. There is a guardian gramadevata associated with any region or sthal and different families marry their daughters or kuldevis to him. Since most of this belongs to the oral tradition, you won’t find stories about them too easily. The Tirupati Devasthanam that is so famous now also has an interesting story. In Vaikuntha, there’s a disagreement between Lakshmi and Vishnu. Lakshmi comes to settle down in Kolhapur as Mahalakshmi. Vishnu follows her but she refuses to speak to him. Vishnu says he’ll stay back on earth till she does. But he does not find a region to stay as they are all taken up by the gramadevatas, so he asks Bhupati, the lord of the earth—who is also Vishnu in the Varaha avatar. Bhupati tells him to stay wherever he sees something like Shesh Naga, the king of serpents. At Tirupati there are seven mountains that are said to look like the heads of Shesh Naga, so Vishnu decides to stay there. As he lives there alone and has nothing to eat, Shiva and Brahma come there as a cow and a calf and provide him with milk.

The local king, Kubera, gets upset that his cow is giving milk to someone else and beats it. Vishnu is angered on seeing this because he is Gopala (a cowherd) too and there’s an altercation between them. Meanwhile, Vishnu and the king’s daughter, Padmavati (a form of Lakshmi), fall in love. The king agrees to their marriage and lets him stay in his domain till he pays off the bride price. They say Vishnu still hasn’t paid off Kubera’s loan and so continues to live in Tirupati.

So, through marriage, people of different communities formed a relationship with the gramadevatas and derived legitimacy from it. Some gramadevatas are bachelors, stay on a mountain away from women, protect the people, are yogis or from the Nath sect like Baba Balak Nath in north India and Ayyappa in south India.

Why is a devi associated with the earth?

The earth is seen as a mother. The gramadevi is a form of mother. A gramadevi’s puja is quite a violent ritual. For example, the bhakts or devotees walk on fire, pierce their tongues or attach a hook to their skin and swing from it—the intention is to express their devotion through pain and suffering. The explanation for this is that human beings torture the earth by cutting down trees, ploughing, dividing and controlling the land and choosing to grow different crops on it. The devi suffers because of all this but allows it because she is a mother.

But once a year she reveals her anger, and we ask for her forgiveness and offer her blood to appease her thirst. So offering sacrifice is commonly associated with the gramadevis. The animals sacrificed are bullocks, male goats and so on, most famously during Dussehra. The crops that grow annually are seen as the mother’s milk, but once a year she wants to drink blood. This is seen as the cycle of life. Kali drinks blood and Gauri gives milk. This cycle of life is depicted in the gramadevis’ rituals. Through the year she is not given much importance, but after the harvest season, after all the celebrations, the sacrifice takes place and the sowing season begins.

Animal sacrifice is legally not allowed any more.

So now it is substituted with, say, a coconut or a pumpkin or mud dolls. You no longer need to sacrifice real animals; you only have to show your awareness that civilization or sanskriti is built atop nature, prakriti. It’s a form of environmental consciousness, a realization that all your prosperity is the result of domesticating the devi.

There’s a puja to appease Kal Bhairava, a form of Shiva. Are all the gramadevatas forms of Shiva or Vishnu?

Yes and no. The gramadevatas are local. Since we see Hinduism in a homogenized way, some have become associated with the Puranic gods. There’s Kaal (time) Bhairava, sometimes there are Kala (black) Bhairava and Gora (fair) Bhairava, associated with Shiva or Vishnu. In a way they become mainstream gods—Shiva, Vishnu, Shakti, Rama or Krishna—whom you find anywhere in India.

Recently, my friend got married. He went to his village with his wife to get blessings from his kuldevata. Who is a kuldevata?

The kuldevata concept is closely associated with the gramadevata. Gram, village, is associated with geography or physical space. Kul, with family. Whenever a family moves, the kuldevata is taken along. Each community has its own kuldevata, like the Saraswat Brahmins have Shanta Durga. After the wedding, the bride is introduced to or blessings are sought for the couple from the kuldevata.