Goddess Ellamma

[Venkatraman Iyer]

Dr. Rm. Krishnan wrote:
>Gradually the non-brahmin customs get modified. For example the tribal
>practice of a goat sacrifice will get
>changed to a pumpkin breakage (with kunkum paste mimicking blood) Earlier
>paNdAram would have poured/sprayed water over the goat and showed Araththi.
>Now the Brahmin priest would be spraying water placing camphor over the
>pumpkin, after kunkum is smeared over. The pumpkin with burning camphor
>would be used for Araththi to ward off evil and it would be broken outside
>of the temple.

This process was put in place for a long time in India; In the North,
this was happening much before than what can be observed in the South
or East.

D. L. Eck, Banaras: City of Light, p. 54 "The Buddhist jataka tales,
like the Puranas, tell of the worship of yakshas, ... What is
especially interesting to us is that in many of these tales various
yakshas, yakshIs, and nagas are converted to the worship of the
bodhisattva. These yakshas are said to be tree-dwelling deities who
are to be propitiated with offerings of meat as well as the
traditional incense and flowers. It is clear that the cultus of
ancient Banaras included the form of worship called bali.

  The remnants of this ancient cultus are plainly visible today. When
we see the trunks of great trees daubed with orange sindUr, swathed
about with string, and sprinkled with water by circumambulating
worshippers; when we see a plain stone in a "shrine" consisting of
nothing but two bricks surmounted by a slab of rock; when we see
worshippers bathing in a pool; when we see them smearing Ganesha or
Hanuman with vermilion and sprinkling flowers in his lap - we are
seeing something of this city's religious life that is pre-Shaiva,
pre-Buddhist, and probably more than three thousand years old."

In the thread, Etymology of Puujaa, A. Parpola
wrote in October 1995:
"If puujaa originally refers to worship, the Dravidian etymology from
the root puucu 'to smear' is quite acceptable. We must remember that
among the  oldest objects of worship in South Asia are the sacred
trees, and  smearing the tree trunks with red-coloured powders and
oils was an  integral part of the early tree cult (cf. e.g.
J. Auboyer, Daily life in  ancient India, 1961, page 154). The Rgvedic
sense 'to honour' may be due to a secondary widening of the meaning."

In the exquisite words of the poet A.K.Ramanujan, a variant of the
Ellamma/Mariyamman story: "A sage's wife, Mariamma, was sentenced by
her husband to death. At the moment of execution she embraced an
outcaste woman, Ellamma, for her sympathy. In the fray both the
outcaste woman and the brahmin lost their heads. Later, the husband
relented, granted them pardon and restored their heads by his
spiritual powers. But the heads were transposed by mistake. To
Mariamma (with a brahmin head and an outcaste body) goats and cocks
but not buffaloes were sacrificed; to Ellamma (outcaste head and
brahmin body) buffaloes instead of goats and cocks."
(p. 24, Speaking of Siva, Penguin).

Literally, we see as percentage of brahminness in the goddess' body
increases, the "cleanliness" of offerings increase. Often, Indian
middle castes claim beef or pork are less "clean" compared to goats
or fowl, and avoid taking those flesh.

Best wishes,
V. Iyer

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