Religions of India in Practice

Śītalā, the goddess of smallpox, is a deity who is popular throughout the Indian subcontinent, where smallpox has been endemic for centuries, but she is especially venerated in the delta regions of Bengal (today the Indian state of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh), which suffered terrible outbreaks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her name literally means the Cool One, an epithet that appears to be a euphemistic designation, since her speciality is accompanied by debilitating fever, but probably derives from her birth from the cooled ashes of the sacrificial fire. Her chief lieutenant and the organizer of her vast contingent of diseases is Jvara or Jvarāsura, the triple-headed Fever Demon. Śītalā herself is also known as Queen of Disease (Roga Rājā), Lord of Pestilence (Vyādhi Pati) and Master of Poxes (Basanta Rāya), especially smallpox, her most dreaded product. She is represented most frequently by a golden pot, although in wealthier temples she is depicted as a woman riding on a donkey, her preferred mount, and she will be represented occasionally in the village by a simply decorated stone.

Śītalā is one of the many Hindu mother goddesses invoked by the inhabitants of Bengal and, like other goddesses, she is worshiped by all classes, including many Muslims. The majority of these deities, mothers of the earth, are benevolent in obviously positive ways: they provide wealth, fertility, extensive families, and long life, and preside over knowledge, language, and the arts. With these patrons obvious salutary relations can be developed; but Śītalā’s is a relationship of great ambivalence, for she represents one particularly frightful dimension of the Bengali physical environment: diseases. As mother she can be expected to nurture, but she is prone to anger and quick to offend, a characteristic she shares with Manasā, goddess of snakes, and Ṣaṣṭhī, goddess of children, along with the more well-known goddesses such as Kālī. When provoked, she can be expected to visit her wayward child and to remind that child that she is still their mother. To most, the logic of that causal connection is understandable, for those who defy her suffer her wrath in the form of pestilential disease; they get what they deserve. Yet many faithful and devoted worshipers of the goddess have also been touched by her heavy hand, and that is not so easily explained.

To the casual observer, the inhabitant of Śītalā’s landscape is faced with a very uneasy set of alternatives, which run something like this. If you do not worship the goddess, you run the risk of being singled out for this egregious omission; Śītalā will extract her due. Yet, should you revere Śītalā and supplicate her, you risk coming to her direct attention, and that might prompt her to visit you, her devotee, in person. When she calls she leaves her mark, the pock, pointedly called “the grace of the mother” (māyera dayā). Should you survive, you bear her indelible print as a living reminder of her latent presence; should you die—and millions have—your death at the hands of the deity ensures an eventual salvation. Either way, the faithful and the corrupt alike directly encounter the divine as it is manifest in the natural world; some weather the enounter and others succumb, but none emerges unscathed. It is, as one scholar has aptly named it, a “theology of the repulsive.”

Yet, to the inhabitants of Bengal, this threat of punishment is not so pessimistically burdensome because it is accompanied by a promise of well-being. Worship of the goddess does not require that Bengalis fatalistically resign themselves to her wrath, nor does a naturalistic explanation of the presence of the disease run counter to her veneration. Bengalis accept the modern scientific etiology of the disease and, at the same time, accept that Śītalā is responsible. Steps can be taken to avoid her pox, and the most popular is the innoculation, which has been prevalent in Bengal for several centuries (guṭikā). The advent of this particular goddess has long been associated with a cycle of drought, which reduces food availability, and famine, which weakens and makes vulnerable the local population—to which can be added the exacerbations of the rapacious tax-collector, who refuses to relent during these times of need. Worship of the goddess, which seems to peak during these periods—as demonstrated in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—belays anxiety and creates a strong communal response that cuts across the traditional divisions of Bengali society. The natural world and the ills of society are inextricably bound one to the other, and the goddess must in these times intervene to remind, reward, and punish, while the local population must work together to overcome the challenge to the normal order of things. If they discipline themselves in proper conduct, the goddess will be benevolent.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Śītalā’s worship effloresced in direct correspondence to the epidemics that devastated the Bengali countryside. During the eighteenth century writing her texts, and in the nineteenth printing her texts became an industry of devotion, perhaps born of desperation. Yet even to compose or transmit her texts carries its own danger. The text that follows is the earliest known example of a Bengali Śītalā Maṅgala, the “Auspicious Song of the Cool One,” written by one Kṛṣṇarāma Dāsa. Informed speculation places the date as early as 1690 C.E. but, based on internal evidence, it is probably a few years later. In this text the goddess is thoroughly provoked by the shameless behavior of an incorrigible toll collector named Madana Dāsa, who eventually suffers the full force of her wrath. Many of the poxes distributed by the goddess to this despicable man are descriptive of their shape and color and have been literally translated; where possible modern equivalents to other diseases have been noted. The language of the text itself conveys the ambivalence of Śītalā’s position. Madana Dāsa’s capitulation is really just that; the text even speaks of Śītalā simply frightening people into giving up their sinful ways. The humor, morbid though it is, and the mocking tones adopted by the goddess to bludgeon her hapless victims, suggest the oral and performative nature of the tale—although this is not quite so ribald nor riddled with the plethora of stinging double-entendres as the most popular and most frequently performed version of the cycle today, the story by Nityānanda, who wrote his tale in the 1750s. Kṛṣṇarāma, who collected and recorded no fewer than five maṅgala poems, explains that he has written it just as he heard it—a subtle caveat which hints that his fear of poetic failure could have personally disastrous results. The story of Madana Dāsa is the first and simplest of three episodes still extant from this earliest tale, and in its narrative starkness vividly captures the intensity of dramatic confrontation in these stories. Even though smallpox has been officially eradicated since 1978, the memory remains fresh and the worship of Śītalā continues, for to the Bengali follower, the manifestation of the pox is part of a much larger causal nexus that connects earth, heaven, and moral action; where there is the potential for drought and famine and taxes, the community must remain ever-vigilant for the visit of this mother-figure.

The following story is translated from “Madana Dāsa Pālā” of Kṛṣṇarāma Dāsa’s Śītalā Maṅgala in Kāvi Kṛṣṇarāma Dāsera Granthāvali, edited by Satyanārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭācārya (Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1958), pp. 251-57.

A study by Edward C. Dimock, Jr., entitled “A Theology of the Repulsive: The Myth of the Goddess Śītalā,” may be found in The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India, edited by John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, Berkeley Religious Studies Series (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1982), pp. 184-203. Ralph W. Nicholas and Aditi Nath Sarkar, published “The Fever Demon and the Census Commissioner: Śītalā Mythology in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Bengal,” in Bengal: Studies in Literature, Society and History, edited by Marvin Davis, South Asia Occasional Paper no. 27 (East Lansing: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1976), pp. 3-68. Nicholas has published three other relevant articles: “Śītalā and the Art of Printing: The Transmission and Propogation of the Myth of the Goddess of Smallpox in Rural West Bengal.” in, Mass Culture, Language and Arts in India, edited by M. L. Apte (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1978), pp. 152-80, “The Village Mother in Bengal,” in Mother Worship: Theme and Variation, edited by James Preston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 192-209; and “The Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal, “Journal of Asian Studies 41: 1 (November 1981), 21-44. Also see Susan S. Wadley, “Śītalā: the Cool One,” Asian Folklore Studies 39: 1 (1980), 32-62.

1.Let us bow down to you Śītalā, the Cool One,

whose enchanting lotus feet

reap universal weal.

The serene beauty of your face soothes and delights

more than clusters of hand-picked flowers,

forcing the fount of elixir, the moon, to hide in shame.

2.Bestower of calm and remover of fears,

you remain ever resolute

with the name She Who Lays Waste the Corrupt.

You reside at all times

in the dark hollow of your golden pot,

your comely shape cleansing and absolving.

3.Links of bells girdle your waist,

tinkling anklets ride above your feet,

your limbs whispy like tender shoots of paddy.

Plain bands and ornamental bracelets

demurely grace your delicate wrists,

while conch-shell bangles dance at your hand.

4.You provide the life-giving rains,

and plunder all suffering.

Around your neck glisten strands of pure gold.

Your flowing tresses fly wild,

thicker than a yak-tail whisk—

no fiery sun can compare.

5.Not once in eternity will be destroyed

the good fortune of all those who are

blessed to serve under your motherly care.

Brahmā sings high your praise;

how can I, who am intellectually impaired,

tell anything of your incomparable majesty?

6.With hands cupped in deference, the minstrel

places his meager offering into your pot—

Listen to your tale in song!

He who is devoted to you

sees his manifold faults destroyed,

destined never to endure more miseries.

7.Because you are suffused with compassion,

descend into our midst and

protect the clan of our dramatic subject.

You infuse yourself throughout the world,

the universe—but when taking form on earth,

you prefer that of a simple household ascetic.

8.When you spoke to me in dream

this truth alone entered my mind—

I could know nothing else whatsoever.

This tale is true, and it is truth—

your two feet alone provide shelter

from misfortune and disaster.

9.May you inhabit this sacred pot,

Goddess of Smallpox, possessor of all qualities,

and grant us an auspicious look.

Kṛṣṇarāma describes in detail

the education process directed at our subject

by that gracious glance.

10. In another realm situated across the wide waters there was a prosperous sea-trading community called Saptagrāma or “Seven Cities.” Everyone referred to it as a meritorious land. The goddess, mounted on her donkey, traveled to every corner of the earth, and eventually reached that place. 11. Living in the environs of that fair city was one Madana Dāsa, appropriately named the Servant of the Lord of Spring Pleasures, a Kāyastha by caste, who labored as a toll collector along the highway. Always accompanied by a large contingent of local militia, and flanked on either side by menacing Rajput warriors, he was easily recognized by the paper and pen he held in his hand.

12. In order to test this man, the goddess called upon her venerable contingent, summoning untold numbers of dread diseases. Then the Goddess of Smallpox transformed herself into a vendor of assorted foods—fruits, vegetables, pulses, and sweetmeats. Her menagerie of bulging sacks failed calculation. 13. Jaundice hid in oil laced with turmeric, while ripe wood-apples harbored the dreaded goiter, both innocently under cover of a brace of palmyra fruits. A cluster of ripe, juicy coconuts was really nothing but hydrocele—dropsy of the scrotum—and dysentery invaded her tender young bunches of spinach leaves. 14. Typhoid fever wove itself into the leafy greens, and various wind afflictions—flatulence, eructation, halitosis—assumed the form of irresistible milk sweets. Corns, warts, moles, wenns, sebaceous cysts, and other skin extrusions were disguised in the homologous shapes of sesame seeds. Jaundice likewise invaded the sugar of various milk sweets, while dropsy became the bulbous sweetmeat that resembled its own symptomatic protruding belly. Jujube seeds—which easily burst when ripe—were actually boils and abscesses. 15. Betel nuts were tiny enclosed sacks of elephantiasis; leprosy insinuated itself into sandalwood; and digestive diseases flowed through the succulent pith of ginger root. In melons and grains of various types were fixed morbidity of the spleen, hepatitis, and other disorders of the liver and internal organs—all of whose names filled the general populace with horror!

16. Her multitude of bags were carried on oxen, who in appropriate form trampled underfoot the garland offerings made along the road, and clumsily brushed aside the ritual vessels used to worship the many gods and goddesses. Yanking on the coarse rope lead, she beat those ornery beasts of burden with her wooden goad. And with the sweet words, “Move, you rotten sons-of-bitches!” she urged them gently down the road. 17. The Queen of Dread Diseases, on her donkey mount, now followed along behind the train, appearing to be but a successful trader. Magically the toll collector appeared, walking down to the end of the landing ghat, while our treasure-trove of virtues, the goddess, steadily advanced toward him. 18. She said nothing at all to that toll collector, gamely driving right on by. This infuriated Madana Dāsa, who watched in utter disbelief. He quickly ordered his armed guards to apprehend her—right then and right there on the road—so Kṛṣṇarāma writes, his own curiosity suddenly piqued.

19. “I do not understand! What is all the fuss about my carts? Why do you refer to my ox as lowly? By what right do you, a lordly man, treat everyone with contempt? I have never encountered such ill behavior anywhere else in the world! 20. Whose privileged son are you to determine whether and whither one passes? I have no fear of anyone . . . ” and so it went.

With each word the officer twisted the end of his mustache a little harder, cranking his anger another notch higher. The head of the column of soldiers advanced quickly. 21. “I will wring your little neck!” the militiaman growled menacingly as he reached out to grab her. “It will certainly be a pleasure to punish you!”

“So you will slap the blackjack across my neck, then steal away everything I own. But it is curious how my anger checks itself, 22. For as soon as you attack and the first cry of distress is born, the full weight of your arrogance will come crashing down. I will not even have to resort to the evil eye! Even half that amount of hubris would be extremely unpleasant to bear. Let that give you pause, you insufferable brute! If the truth be known, my initial attraction to you had first inclined me to share some of my boundless hoard. 23. But now that you have cast aspersions on me there is no escaping the fruits of those deprecations. How can one so ostensibly full of good sense be so decidedly pig-headed? In your kind one finds neither honor nor respect. Listen, what I think is that everyone in your detachment is a double-talking sophist sprung from the most noxious of dung heaps! 24. The treachery in your minds is matched only by the lust harbored in your breast. Pay attention to me, you hard-hearted fools!”

The poet Kṛṣṇarāma can but describe the Goddess of Smallpox, whose deep, frightful eyes have been wrathfully cast.

25. The militia officer spoke, “Hey you addle-brained crone! Pull over by the śāla tree. Do exactly as I say! I want you front and center to explain yourself!”

“I have come from Tomabālapura, ‘the City of Your Youth,’ terribly far from this place, but then tell me, brother, where else is a trader to find goods and produce of such extraordinary and exceptional quality?”

26. Jumping at the bait, the officer queried, “Tell me, how exactly did you come to be so laden with this merchandise? Did you just break out of jail? All of these bags bear the unmistakable look of ill-gotten gains! . . . . ” And so the accusations flew.

At last, the goddess feigned to acquiesce, “Sāheb, your honor, our negotiations clearly have reached an impasse. Take everything away. It is undoubtedly your good fortune.” 27. And so the Goddess of Smallpox relented, with the cryptic parting comment, “I came to distribute my goods and distribute I have. Now happily and with a light heart I return to my home in Burdwan.” But secretly she thought to herself, “You, my toll collector, are such an ass; you have neither shame nor intelligence!”

28. The toll collector never once feared for his safety. He never acknowledged requests or listened to solicitation, even when proffered by a holy man, 29. Because, you see, the toll collector was thoroughly and completely wicked. It was with a sinister pleasure that he confiscated items without number. 30. It was routine for the collector to rough up the poor and ignorant and, under pretext, to appropriate their possessions, which mysteriously but invariably, found their way into his private house. 31. This day he was quite pleased to have hauled in such a handsome catch, for various important personages would come to his home expecting lavish entertainment—and so they did.

32. The Goddess of Pestilence watched from her perch in the heavens as the toll master and his guests ate. The sweets and other items that he had personally selected were eaten noisily and with great relish. 33. Afterwards, some bathed and then reached for the turmeric-laced oil, which really contained jaundice. 34. In their gluttony, the guests unceremoniously wolfed down the sugary pots of sweets, which distended their greedy stomachs. Then they turned to the small metal plates filled with the dreaded dropsy sweets of ascites and beriberi. 35. What they consumed as tasty grains entered their guts as pyemia, splenomegaly, and various necroses of the spleen. 36. The bodies of those who ate the palmyra fruits were wracked with clonic convulsions, which alas were only portents to the lesions, boils, and furuncles that would soon appear on their thighs, in their intestines, and around their anuses. 37. The betel was consumed with much laughter and pleasant banter, only to be manifested as hepatitis and cirrhosis, and followed closely by either elephantiasis or blindness. 38. What first appeared on their bodies as a simple leukoderma was really leprosy in disguise. When they partook of the various leafy greens, they tasted typhoid. 39. When they glanced in the mirror they discovered through blurry eyes that their corneas had glazed over with cataracts. No one could speak clearly for the agonizing, hacking cries of pain—it was fever fueled by sin.

40. The punishment reserved for that mean toll collector was deemed especially appropriate—various forms of smallpox he contracted in their guise as pulses. 41. Ground pulse cakes coated with poppy seeds hid measles, chickenpox, and even the disfiguring pox of the “black death.” 42. The “sackcloth” pox blanketed him in a rough patchwork of pustules, while the “māsakalāi pulse” pox clumped in painful, thick, oozing masses.

43. There is no one on earth who could weather this onslaught: it afflicted each and every one without exception. The poet Kṛṣṇarāma opines that the retribution for their folly was more than fitting.

44. Draped around the victim’s neck was a breathtaking necklace of deep red coral—and his life breath it was, being drained by the reddish “bloody-mawed” pox. 45. Madana Dāsa, rogue of tax extortionists, was felled. So, too, his mighty Rajput warriors buckled under the strain. 46. That toll man found that he could no longer vent his wrath, for masses of putrid boils and abscesses had erupted to shrink his mouth to but the tiniest, painful pinhole. 47. The hideous “monster” pox appeared, so even the threads of his loose pajamas lacerated his flesh like razors. The deadly “ugly-maker black” pox turned his body into a disfigured pulp. 48. His guards shed their weapons and armor, down to undershirts and turbans, but even the light touch of their cotton left them howling in agony, so they shamelessly and without hesitation stripped stark naked—but to no avail.

49. Choosing her moment, the Queen of Pestilence resumed her disguise, and with deliberate intention returned to that now-devastated place to needle her offender. 50. “We just couldn’t get enough, could we? And have we gotten tired after sampling all our scrumptious goodies? Now tell me, why is the big bad toll collector straining so hard without success? Are we suffering from a touch of tenesmus? Do we hurt? . . . ” And so she made her point.

51. Grudgingly repentant, Madana Dāsa—the Servant of the Lord of Spring Pleasures—pressed his palms together in humility. “I have committed many gross and grave offenses toward your person. 52. You have left an indelible impression on this man of rank, and can on others at your will. I will worship your holy feet if only you will cure me! Remove these excruciating diseases! 53. Say that it will be so, Gracious One! Heed my petition! For your worship I will never use anyone but my brahman who personally attends me, the eminent toll collector. 54. When that brahman goes to perform your evening rituals, everyone will know it is dedicated to Śītalā, Lord of the Śūdras.

55. And so it was that the goddess, that ocean of greatness, left her mark and become widely known. Said she, “You are now the son of Śītalā, the Cool One, for it is really I, Ruler of Pox, in disguise. 56. When you worship me in my pot, you will suffer no more. You will come to taste a wonderful variety of pleasures and joys, and they will expand immeasurably.” 57. With these parting words, the goddess started for her own abode, and the toll collector was, as promised, relieved of all of his dread diseases.

58. He erected a winsome temple on the banks of the Gaṅgā River and had there installed the Queen of Smallpox, Śītalā, the Cool One. 59. He had her worship performed, offering the full gamut of appropriate sacral items. From that the wicked and base were frightened into good and honest people! 60. Goats and rams were sacrificed with satisfying production, and her worship was consumated with reverent concentration and attention.

61. The lowly among men, who struggle with death and disease in our world, are incapable of cognizing just how extraordinary this treasure-trove of qualities truly is. 62. The Mother’s parental affection erodes one’s faults and, one by one, the entire population will have their sins forgiven. 63. The goddess, compassionate as she alone can be, has offered her grace, and the whole world dances in that knowledge, letting fly the sounds of triumph. 64. Openly pleased, the Goddess of Smallpox triumphantly returned to her private heavenly citadel, and along the way nothing could be heard but praise of Śītalā, the Cool One. . . .

149. The poet Kṛṣṇarāma pleads, “Listen carefully, my dear Mother Śītalā, for I have composed your song exactly as it was recited.”