Goddess and Disease

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Isn't Niritti the goddess of demons and nightmares?

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nora55_1999

Saturday, February 09, 2002 8:25 AM

Goddess and Disease

I know this might sound strange to some people to associate Goddess

and Disease, but in many parts of India especially in the rural areas

( where they live in villages ), the believe is very strong up to the

present day. Even in a Cosmopolitan City like Singapore, these

believe still runs deep in the minds of the Indians/Hindu community.

What is the difference between disease as a curse and disease as a

blessings? This brings me back to my previous quotation in the

article about Matrkas : What does not kills us makes us strong.

Disease is a way of making us strong, especially if we are able to

pass through it and recover. It does makes sense right, especially if

there is lack of immunization and medical facilities, disease does

cause your body to produce antibodies which will last a life time. So

there is a believe that if you do survive the disease, you are more

able to deal with the rest of the life can throw at us. But there are

some who never make it. They stay sickly, weak and eventually dies. So

the disease is the Goddess form of training for us, to prepare us for

the harsh world. Some of us just aren't ready.Worshipping disease is

a way to try to appease it. Plagues appear as if they have a will of

their own. They will take one person and not another, wipe out entire

towns, or only take some. They may skip over the house, an only take

one in that house, but take everyone in the next house. Disease is

fickle and seems like having its own agenda. It can rise from its own

ashes years later. Therefore it does make sense to have a goddess of

disease. She give order to an otherwise orderless process, disease

gives and takes, and looks like it have mind behind it. There are two

goddess often associated with disease. Both these goddess associated

with Small Pox and are also considered as Village Goddess. a)

Sitalab) MariyamanGoddess Sitala is said to be a beautiful but a

harsh goddess. She has a temper ,unforgiving and will do with you as

she wishes. She desires worship and those who did not worship her

should dearly fear her wrath. But most of the time she comes through

for you. Sitala is often associated with Plague. Goddess Mariyamman

is popular in the South India. There are two version to the myth of

Mariyammana) She as a young Brahmin girl who are being tricked into

marrying an untouchable; who disguised himself as a Brahmin. When

she found out, she became furious and kills herself. She is

transformed into a goddess and in her divine form punishes the

untouchables by burning him to ashes and other myths depicting her

humiliating and humbling the husband. b) As a pious and pure wife who

is married to a devout holy man. She is so pure that she can perform

miraculous task. One day she sees two gandharvas making love and

feels envy for them. Thereupon she loses her miraculous powers.

Suspecting that the wife have had sexual disloyalty, her husband

command her son to kill the mother. The son obeys his father and

decapitated his mother. Eventually she is restored to life, but in

the process her head an body get transposed with those of an

untouchable woman. Mariyamman is thus understood to have a Brahmin

head and an untouchable body. With regards to disease and villages,

these goddess play dual role, namelya) as protector of the

village against diseaseb) as the inflictor of disease it

self.Richard Brubaker in his book ""The Ambivalent Mistress" sumup

the dual role of these goddess ".. the goddess is the one who

manifests herself in epidemicdisease, who guards against it and keeps

it at bay, who inflicts it upon her people in wrath, who joins her

people in fighting an conquering it, who suffers it herself; she it

is who invites its appearance and then struggles against it; she

enters people's bodies by means of it,but sometimes heals them by

taking it upon herself; she uses it as a means to enhance her own

worship; she is enflamed by its heat and needs to be cooled, and may

be cooled by the fanning of disease-heated humans, while the latter

may also be cooled by pouring water on her image; she is both the

scourge and the mistress of disease demons, and perhaps even their

mistress in both sense of the term; she mercilessly chastises her

people with the disease, but holds its victims especially dear; she

delights in the disease, is aroused by it, goes mad with it; she

kills with is and uses it to give newlife"To from this

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