Mariyamman
Mariamman or Mariamman ( Tamil மாரியம்மன் Mariamman [ maːɾijamːən ]) is an in southern India and northern Sri Lanka widespread Hindu goddess . It is especially in the context of Volksgeligion as a village goddess ( gramadevata ) to protect against smallpox , cholera and other diseases as well as for rain worshiped. Even Tamils in the diaspora have built in many places temple to worship the goddess.
character
The Goddess can both cause diseases and protect against them or heal them; it can also take possession of people. She is benevolent and caring to her devotees, but adamant and vengeful to those who refuse to worship her; so Mariyamman is also described as bloodthirsty and wild. Often, statues of Mariyamman are placed at the entrance of villages to ward off strangers, unwanted visitors and enemies and keep them away. In her ecstatic dance, the goddess can scatter "pearls" that cause smallpox (peeling); in northern India it corresponds to the smallpox goddess Shitala . Smallpox is often seen as Mariyamman's punishment for neglecting her cult; smallpox is considered a sign of the goddess's presence and is referred to as her eyes, pearls, or kisses. It was widely believed that treating smallpox caused the wrath of the Goddess and that it made the disease even worse.
iconography
Mariyamman is shown with four arms, sitting in the relaxed “Lalitasana” pose: one leg bent, the other hanging down. The goddess bears the head of a Brahmin woman (her first was separated from her son, on the orders of her husband to punish her unchaste thoughts) and has the body of an untouchable woman , which expresses her contradicting nature. Mariyamman carries a knife or sword and a small rattle drum ( damaru ) around which a snake is wrapped as a handle in both of her right hands ; in her left hands she carries a bowl ( kalasha ) and a trident ( trishula ) as a metal weapon. A feed swing is attached to her head. Mariyamman is red in color and wears a yellow dress and a pearl necklace around her neck. But she is also presented as a black figure under a canopy of five snakes. Two small teeth protrude from her mouth and tongues of fire run from her head to her shoulders. Mariyamman is usually represented together with two "demonesses": the left represents her friendly and blessing side, the right her destructive, angry side, symbolized with fangs and wild mane. The proud mount ( vahana ) of the goddess is a male lion (as with the two goddesses Durga and Parvati ).
Creation myths
Most of the myths about Mariyamman are about her chastity, loyalty and purity, the suffering of her motherhood, and how she is hurt, betrayed and betrayed by her husband. The subject of their beheading is also of central importance. According to a myth, Mariyamman was the wife of Tirunalluvar , a Tamil poet who was a pariah ( belonging to the lowest caste group ). Soon she suffered from smallpox and was walking from house to house in search of food. To keep the flies away from her wounds, she used leaves of the neem tree to fan (a popular medicine in India). When she recovered, people began to worship her as the goddess of smallpox. To keep smallpox away from their homes, their followers still hang neem leaves, sacred to the goddess, over the doors.
Another myth relates the following: One day the Trimurti (triple deity) came to Nagavali , wife of Piruhu , one of the famous seven rishis , when he was absent. Trimurti wanted to look at the beauty and virtue she had heard of. But Nagavali, who did not know the triple deity, was angry at her intrusion into her home and turned them into children. The deity became angry and cursed and cursed Nagavali. So her beauty faded and her face was disfigured by smallpox. When her husband came home and saw her ugly disfigured face, he sent her away. He cursed them to be reborn as a "demon" and to transmit the dreaded smallpox disease, which is why people would love and adore them. From then on she was called Mari , which in this context means "the changed one".
In another version, Mariyamman can do many miracles because of her virtue, purity and loyalty, such as shaping sand into pots or making a jug boil by turning it upside down. Once, when her husband is away , Mariyamman watched and envied two Gandharvas (demigods) passing by who had sexually united. But as a result she lost her magical powers. When her husband came home and found this out, he accused her of adultery and ordered the son to behead her as punishment for her sexual misconduct. He later resuscitated her with the head of a Brahmin woman and the body of an untouchable one.
Mariyamman is also known as Durgamma , the daughter of a Brahmin. She was seduced by her husband before marriage. One day he expressed a desire to eat a cow's tongue. When Durgamma realized that her husband was an untouchable man in the disguise of a Brahmin, she committed suicide in anger. She turned into a goddess after her death in order to take revenge on him. She took a sickle to cut off the deceiver's head (according to other versions of the myth, she burned him to ashes), and so also to humiliate and degrade him. Thereby she became the protective goddess of the betrayed wives.
In a variant of the myth, Mariamma is the mother of Parashurama (sixth avatar of the god Vishnu ). On the orders of his father, the Rishi Jamadagni , he is to behead his mother because she had unchaste thoughts at the sight of a Gandharva . At that moment, however, a pariah woman comes by and embraces Mariamma out of pity in order to protect her. Parashurama then beheads both women at the same time with one blow. However, his father grants him the desire to reassemble and revive his mother immediately afterwards. In the hurry, however, he swaps the heads and accidentally puts the head of the pariah woman on his mother, while Mariamma puts the head on her. From then on she is worshiped as the goddess Mariamma with a pariah body, while the other becomes Yelamma and represents the angry side of the goddess. Water buffalo are sacrificed to this (in earlier times) , while goats and chickens are slaughtered for Mariamma. This variant is a Tamil transfer of the myth of Renuka as the wife of Jamadagni: After her beheading, she is brought back to life and is henceforth the goddess Mariyamman, who can both distribute and cure smallpox.
According to another myth, Mariyamman is Vishnu's sister and known as Mahamaya .
Adoration
Mariyamman is especially venerated by the lowest castes and untouchables, and especially by women, but the Brahmin priests do not recognize her. Around 1920, Henry Whitehead, a Right Reverend ( bishop ) of the Anglican Church , reported that the goddess's processions and festivals included animal sacrifices. The Brahmins would neither take part in it nor look after the holy places of the goddess. Instead, they tried to redirect the worship of the goddess to the worship of the main gods Shiva or Vishnu .
Mariyamman is also associated with fertility and prosperity, her husband in this context is Muniyanti .
Mariyamman is revered in the dispersed communities of the Tamil diaspora around the world, and particularly among the Hindus on the Malay Peninsula . The Sri Muthumariamman Temple has stood in Hanover since 2007 .
ritual
Mariyamman needs to be appeased in rituals. Her cult includes a ritual of fire running , in which men run over glowing coals and finally throw themselves to the ground in front of the image of the goddess. The goddess are in some regions also bloody, male animal sacrifice (pigs, chickens, goats), Bali's called, offered to be beheaded in front of her shrine. In the past human sacrifices are said to have been made to her, especially in the region around Karnataka. The most popular offering, however, is the pongal , a mixture of rice and green beans that are mostly cooked in the temple complex or shrine, in terracotta pots with firewood. A celebration in her honor is the flower festival in Pudukkottai . Some shave their hair off while others perform ecstatic dances accompanied by drum beats or roll themselves on the floor. Men and women wear bright yellow saris and in the hot summer months also walk for miles with pots of water filled with turmeric and neem leaves or burning pots on their shoulders, while relatives place gifts on bamboo poles. Various vows ( vratas ) are also taken, with believers showering one with water. The so-called matangis , women from the lower castes ( called Madiga ), who are believed to be in a kind of trance state and possessed by the goddess , also play some important role . These are unmarried and hold office for life. The Matangi embodies the goddess and during this time she dances around wildly, drinks intoxicants and hits her backside on the people standing around. Passers-by in or in front of the temple, especially members of the higher castes, seek contact with her and are spit on and verbally abused by them with great joy and thus blessed with happiness. What would otherwise be unthinkable and would be considered the worst pollution is expressly desired here, believers seek the proximity of the Matangi. During this festival, the usual barriers of the various castes and all social norms are temporarily lifted and thwarted. The purpose of the festival is to confirm the roots of the village and the lower castes. At her annual wedding celebrations in Kannapuram , Mariyamman is seen as a widow, at least for a short time during one night. She is usually worshiped in the shape of a stone in the earth to represent her face and head, while the whole village forms her body. According to their understanding, villagers live on or in the body of the goddess. One of their biggest festivals takes place in Samayapuram . There ritual self-flagellation is performed with sacred weapons through the tongue and cheeks to appease the goddess. A carriage with the image of the goddess is attached to their cheeks by the believers with ropes and is pulled through the village and around the temple of the goddess. At some festivals in honor of the Mariyamman, processions with light lamps take place. At night, believers carry oil lamps in procession.
List of Mariyamman temples
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The following temples of the mother goddess Mariyamman were built by Tamil Hindu communities - some names begin with the sacred address Sri ( Muthu in Tamil ):
| Surname | place | country |
|---|---|---|
| Mariamman Temple | Bangkok | Thailand |
| Mariamman Temple | Ho Chi Minh City | Vietnam |
| Mariamman Temple | Pretoria | South Africa |
| Mariamman Temple | Samayapuram ( Trichy ) | South india |
| Muththumari Amman Temple | Negombo | Sri Lanka |
| Punnainallur Mariamman | Thanjavur | South india |
| Sri Mahamariamman Temple | Sulzbach- Altenwald | Germany |
| Sri Mahamariamman Temple | Kuala Lumpur | Malaysia |
| Sri Mahamariamman Temple | Penang | Malaysia |
| Sri Mariamman Temple | Medan | Malaysia |
| Sri Mariamman Temple | Singapore | Singapore |
| Sri Muthumariamman Temple | Hanover- Badenstedt | Germany |
| Sri Muthumariamman Temple | Matale | Sri Lanka |
See also
- Shitala ("Mother Shitala": North Indian goddess of smallpox, measles and diseases in general)
literature
- Brigitte Sebastia: Māriyamman - Mariyamman: Catholic Practices and Image of Virgin in Velankanni (Tamil Nadu). French Institute of Pondicherry, 2002 (English).
- Margaret Egnor: The changed mother or what the smallpox goddess did when there was no more smallpox. In: Contributions to Asian Studies. 1984 (English).
- Hans Manndorff: The village goddess Maramma and other female deities in South India. In: Archives for Ethnology. Volume 15. 1960, pp. 17-33.
- Anne van Voorthuizen: Mariyamman's sakti: the miraculous power of a smallpox goddess. In: Anne-Marie Korte (Ed.): Women and Miracles Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (= Studies in the history of religions. Volume 88). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2001, p. 248 ff. (English; page previews in the Google book search).
- Henry Whitehead: The Religious Life of India - The Village Gods of South India. 2nd, expanded edition. Oxford University Press, London a. a. 1921, pp. 29–33, 115/116 and 161 (English; a Right Reverend , Bishop of the Anglican Church ; online at archive.org).
- Paul Younger: Playing Host to Deity: Festival Religion in the South Indian Tradition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-803221-8 (English; Extract in the Google Book Search).
- Paul Younger: A temple festival of Māriyammaṉ. In: Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Volume 48, No. 4, December 1980, pp. 493-517 (English; study on the Samayapuram Temple Festival, Tiruchirappalli ; doi: 10.1093 / jaarel / XLVIII.4.493 ; JSTOR 1463443 ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Gerhard J. Bellinger : Māri, Māriyammā (n). In: The same: Knaurs Lexikon der Mythologie: over 3000 keywords to the myths of all peoples. 3. Edition. Knaur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-426-66415-1 , p. 314 ff.
- ^ A b c Henry Whitehead: The Religious Life of India - The Village Gods of South India. 2nd, expanded edition. Oxford University Press, London a. a. 1921, pp. 115–116 (English; online at archive.org).
- ↑ a b c d Anne van Voorthuizen: Mariyamman's sakti: the miraculous power of a smallpox goddess. In: Anne-Marie Korte (Ed.): Women and Miracles Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (= Studies in the history of religions. Volume 88). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2001, p. 248 ff. (English; page previews in the Google book search).
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↑ Eveline Meyer: Aṅkāḷaparamēcuvari: A goddess of Tamilnadu, her myths and cult (= . Contributions to South Asia Research Volume 107). Steiner, Wiesbaden / Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-515-04702-6 , pp. 15-19 (English).
Quoted from Anne van Voorthuizen: Mariyamman's sakti: the miraculous power of a smallpox goddess. In: Anne-Marie Korte (Ed.): Women and Miracles Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (= Studies in the history of religions. Volume 88). Brill, Leiden / Boston 2001, pp. 252–254 (English; page previews in the Google book search). - ^ Henry Whitehead: The Religious Life of India - The Village Gods of South India. 2nd, expanded edition. Oxford University Press, London a. a. 1921, pp. 19 and 30 (English; online at archive.org).
- ^ A b Paul Younger: A temple festival of Māriyammaṉ. In: Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Volume 48, No. 4, December 1980, pp. 493-517 (English; study on the temple festival of Samayapuram, Tiruchirappalli ; doi: 10.1093 / jaarel / XLVIII.4.493 ; JSTOR: 1463443 ).