Mariyamman

[Guest guest]

One of the most popular Goddess particularly in the Southern India,

Sri Langka and in the South East Asian region especially amongst the

speakers of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam or Tulu. SHE is also

one of the most popular village goddess, and just like any other

great goddess she is often identified with several other names such

as :

- Kalmariyammal

- Bhadramariyamma

- KaruMariyamma

- MuttuMariyamma

- Ammae

- Marimuthu

 

She is often associated with disease [ see post 2032 ] especially

Small Pox, Cholera and Chicken Pox. She has also been credited with

causing and relieving Tuberculosis. There are two terminologies when

associated Mariyamman with these disease : "Little Mother"

and "Big

Mother"

 

Little Mother : when one describe her capacity to cause and prevent

Chicken Pox

Big Mother when she is associated with more serious infectious

disease.

 

There are some who have understood Mariyamman to be another form of

Durga or Kali, but the rituals and mythologies involved are quite

different from any of these goddess.

 

Several etymologies have been offered for the names of Mariyamman

a) Muttu is a word that means `pearl'. This is also a

suggestion

that `pearls' refer to the pustules often contracted during

the onset

of Chicken Pox or Small Pox.

 

b) Mari is associated with pertilencec and disease, which then

give one possible meaning as `the disease mother'. Some have

associated the word Mari with her ability to change suddenly. There

form Mari can also means `to change' in Tamil. This word

`change' to

describe her as having an unpredictably dangerous capacity for anger,

heat and violence. Another group have proposed that "Mari"

means "rain". She has been described, sometimes

euphemistically, as a

cool goddess, or as a goddess whose image likes to be cooled with

water. Because she is traditionally most active in the peak of the

hot season, when contagious fever post great danger, and when rains

are desirable, she is approached by worshippers requesting coolness

and rain.

 

c) Ammae means Mothers. This term is more of honorific than

descriptive. Mariyamman is often depicted as without children. Most

of the story of Mariyamman; she is either a widow, a little girl or a

woman cast out of her home by her husband.

 

 

 

 

 

These are three version of the Story of Mariyamman that I have found

so far, and they are :

 

1. A young Brahmin girl is courted by and eventually married to

an untouchable who has disguised himself as a Brahmin. On discovering

the trick, the woman becomes furious and kills herself. She is

transformed into a goddess and in her divine form punishes the

untouchable by burning him to ashes or otherwise humiliating or

humbling him. Another version to this story is that, Goddess Parvati

implanted herself [ classic case of Parthenogenesis ] in the womb of

a Brahmin Woman, and was born. In school she met a Pariyan boy [ an

outcast ] who fell in love with her. He went to her father,

concealing his caste and asked for her hand in marriage. The father

not suspecting, consented to the marriage, only to discover it later

on. However they also realized that nothing could be done since the

wedding had already taken place. Later, contemplating the discover of

her marriage to a man of such inferior status, the new bride became

furious. Looking at her husband with rage, she became immediately

changed, and the fire from her anger engulfed his body. He pleaded

with her to stop the burning, but she replied that even though he was

her husband, he must never again enter the house. Instead, he was to

stand outside forever. His body was reduced to ashes by the heat ,

and where the ashes fell a margosa tree grew. The young woman had

become a changed person : Mariyamman.

 

2. She [ Renuka ] is an extremely pious, pure wife who is

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

miraculous tasks such as making jars out of loose sand and boiling

water simply by placing a pot of water on her head. One day, however

she sees two gandharvas making love and feels envy for them.

Thereupon she loses her miraculous powers. Discovering this and

suspecting sexual disloyalty, her husband commands their son [

Parasuraman ] to kill his mother. The Son obeys his father and

decapitates his mother. To show his great pleasure to the Son, the

father grants him one boon. The Sons asks that his mothers life to be

restored. Eventually she is restored to life, but in the process her

head and body get transposed with those of an untouchable woman. When

she return home [ in her new state : body of an untouchable ] her

husband refuse to accept her changed form, and curses her instead.

She became the bearer of the "Pearl" which is the name given

to Small

Pox. She has authorities over this disease. She brings this disease

upon the rishis who begs for healing. She offers him healing if she

be permitted to go to the four worlds of Siva, Vishnu, Brahma and

Yama. The rishis granted her wishes. She went to Shiva and causes the

disease on him. In exchange for healing she receives his Shoolani [ a

forked weapon] and his cow. She inflicts Vishnu and gets from him his

Conch Shell and wheel. From Brahma she gets consent for converting

her name. She is no longer Renuka but assumes the name Mariyamman [

the changed mother ]. She then inflicts Yama with and from Yama wife

she demanded a huge festival for her only then she remove the

"pearl-

like' form from Yama face.

Another version to this story is that, when the husband refuse to

take her back, she is sent out into the village to live from the

gifts of the people. Here she utilizes her powers to protect all

those who sustain her with food, offerings and worship.

 

3. Nagavalli is a wife of Rishi Piruhu. One of the nine great

rishis in the olden days. She is famous for her beauty and also her

virtue. One day when the rishi was away from home Brahman, Vishnu and

Siva came to visit her to see whether she was as beautiful and as

virtuous as reported. Not knowing who they were and resenting their

intrusion, she had them changed into little children. They took

offense and cursed her, so that her beauty faded away and her face

became dotted with marks like those of small pox. When Piruhu

returned and found her thus disfigured, he drove her away and

declared that she should be born a demon in the next world, and

caused the spread of disease which would make people resemble her.

When she was cast out a washerwoman took care of her.

 

The act of restorating the head, Mariyamman becomes an immortal. If

you read my message on Chinnamasta : the self decapatitating

(message 26 }

 

"The severing of ones head symbolically represents liberation.

The

realization that one is not separate from others but part of the

great self. Nevertheless severing the head is not just the end of

it, the ability to restore one's head is the completion of

the "sacrificial"

process in which marked not of death but of immortality."

 

Satapatha Brahmana, a sacrificial text states that : " when one

receives a new head, a transformation occurs which is usually

interpreted as receiving a better head" and with reference to

Ganesha, when he received his elephant head, he received his

`real'

head which express his true nature.

 

Therefore one can apply this logic to the case of Mariyamman. This

new state of transformation, She is able to assume various forms. It

is said that she can be imagined as the seven sisters. Another form

that Mariyamman closely associated is Ellaiyamman. A very powerful

Goddess, who protects the people from all evil. And that she have a

troops of devils under her control. She protects the villages in all

four directions. The only distinctive different between Ellaiyamman

and Mariyamman is that, for Ellaiyamman, she has the head of the

Untouchables and the body of the Brahmin woman, whilst Mariyamman has

the head of the Brahmin and the body of the Untouchable. In some

versions the untouchable body is Maatangi. In some of Ellaiyamman

iconography she is sometimes represented with the torn-off head of

Brahmin woman in her hand.

 

There are many other stories about Mariyamman, but all of them tends

to fall into two categories

 

a) Mariyamman as an exemplary human female whose harsh and

unjust treatment at the hands of callus, indifferent or negligent

males causing great suffering and eventually undeserved death. In

Tamil nadu, a premature, valiant and unjust death is often the

occasion for apotheosis. In this case Mariyamman the human is

transmutted into a goddess.

 

b) Mariyamman born as divine intercession [ as in the classic

case of Parthenogenesis ] and as a woman she suffers indignities and

assaults by males – human, demonic and divine, until finally she

strike back, devastatingly and definitively, becoming a goddess in

the process of potential and poised vengence.

 

Several themes to these [ found in almost every account of

Mariyamman ]

 

1. Is that she begins her life as a virtuous woman or as an

exemplary goddess who, in the transformative cycles of rebirth,

happens to be born as human. But no matter in which guise she

appears, she is confronted and mistreated by male arrogance,

violence, deceit or neglect.

 

2. In almost many of the stories, there is always an unfortunate

woman who will comes to the aid of the mistreated or unfortunate

Mariyamman providing comfort and shelter. In this Mariyamman becomes

a best example of the plight of unfortunate Indian woman : widows,

outcasts etc.

 

If we were to sum up the mythologies of Mariyamman on the whole, it

can be seen that the males are being portrayed as the guilty

perpetrators of violent or injustices. Women on the other hand are

companions in suffering to the goddess, just as she becomes one of

them in the world where men must be defeated, punished and humiliated

for their transgressions against female virtue, innocence and

goodwill.

 

Symbolism of Mariyamman & Ellaiyamman

 

Mariyamman is thus understood to have a Brahmin head and an

untouchable body, which significant in the terms of both her

ambivalent nature and her role as a village goddess exemplifying the

social status quo in which Brahmins are at the head of the social

systems. But in Ellaiyamman it's the reverse. The head that

symbolizes power/knowledge of the Brahmin (erudition in the Vedas and

schooling in the proper practice of Ritual, wisdom of orthodoxy and

orthopraxis ) is being replaced with the head that signifies the

power of the untouchables. This in many sense is a symbolic act of

subversion, an inversion of the status quo as propagated by Hindu

Myth and Practice.

 

The story points out to the complex nature of the relationship

between the untouchables/low caste population and the Brahmin. In an

article presented by Sathiananthan Clarke [ see reference ] in which

he states that the story of Ellaiyamman and Mariyamman propound the

idea that the Paraiyars or the untouchables are caught / victims of

conflicts of the caste system. Another studies carried out by Robert

Deliege in to the myth of origins of the untouchables, Hanjans

consider their low degraded position as a result of a mistake, some

mockery or an accident. [ Replication and Consensus : Untouchability,

Casta and ideology in India ]

 

Ironically they use the symbolism of a woman to associate it

victimization.

 

Just a little story to share : I had a close friend visited me

sometime back, and she relate a story of how her elder sister who

once contracted chicken pox. This sister have a very peculiar habit,

in which she likes to pluck the pustules and feed on it. They tried

anything they can think of to stop her from doing such grotesque

habit but it does not help. Eventually they consulted an elderly

person, who upon seeing such behaviour bow before the girl and asked

her : "MAA what is it that you really like to have?" in which

the

girl replied that she really like to eat chicken. Thereafter the

family sacrifice a chicken in the name of Mariyamman, and

subsequently cook it and offered to the sister. Within 24 hours all

the pustules disappeared and the sister cant even remember about the

act of plucking of the pustules. Hard to believe, I discover later on

that this is not just an isolated case.

 

 

References

 

David Kinsley : Hindu Goddess. Vision of the Divine Feminine in the

Hindu Religious Tradition

 

Elizabeth Anne Benard : Chinnamasta. The Aweful Buddhist and Hindu

Tantric Goddess.

 

William Harman. Promises made to Goddess : Women's Boon and

Men's

Fears.

 

Sathiananthan Clarke: Paraiyars Ellaiyamman as an Iconic Symbols of

Collective Resistence and Emancipatory Mythography.

 

 

 

Om ParaShaktiye Namaha