South-Indian Images of Gods and Goddesses c11.s2.4

c11.s2.4

Peculiar ceremonies. Some of the ceremonies peculiar to the temples of the village goddesses, besides animal sacrifices, are (1) fire-walking, (2) swinging on the *sidi* with a hook passed through the skin during what is otherwise known as the *chakra-pūjā*, (3) lashing oneself with a whip, (4) piercing a metallic wire right through the tongue or through the sides of the mouth, (5) slashing at the breast and forehead with swords until the blood spurts out, (6) thrusting a spear through the abdomen¹ and (7) carrying on head the karagam, lamps of ghee, or earthen pots with blazing fire in them. Annual festivals called jātras are generally held in honour of the village deities. But when infectious diseases among men and cattle prevail, special worship is arranged for, to appease the deities by sacrificing animals, offering heaps of cooked rice mixed with blood, or by carrying the karagam. This last is celebrated by dressing the selected person who has taken a vow to perform the ceremony, in the yellow cloths of a woman, putting on him the ornaments of women and making him carry on his head a pot or pots profusely decorated with flowers and margosa leaves and supposed to contain in them the spirit of the particular goddess for whose propitiation the ceremony is gone through. A class of Tamil-speaking gardeners, called Tigalas in Mysore and allied to the Pallis or Vanniyans of other districts, are particularly devoted to the five Pāndavas of the Mahābhārata story, and to their common wife, Draupadī. The illustration from the courtyard of the Draupadī temple at Kumbakōnam (fig. 139) shows a group, in which the figure of Bhadrakālī with eight arms and a flaming crown, crushing the head of a giant under her left foot, is distinctly seen. The original goddess of the temple is, however, Draupadī whose metallic figure with that of Arjuna, one of her five husbands, is preserved in the central shrine. The two huge heads seen in the illustration, next to Bhadrakālī, are those of the hero, Aravan—said to be a son of Arjuna by a Nāga princess. He is believed to have been offered as a sacrifice on the great battle-field of Kurukshētra, especially with the object of securing success to the Pāndava brothers. Substantial big temples are built for Draupadī and the Pāndavas under the name Dharmarāja in the country round Kolar and Bangalore. The karagam-carrying ceremony is performed every year and attracts immense crowds of excited sightseers. The central figure of the ceremony is the priest who, as he madly trips along with the sacred weight over his head, like a high tiara decorated with flowers, is closely followed by a select number of men—the supposed attendant deities—with drawn swords in their hands. This scene very strongly reminds one of the goddess Sūlinī, who has been described above to be one of the Tāntrik goddesses,