Death, Beauty, Struggle. Margaret Trawick
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a woman. Earth is the strongest and humblest of elements; it bears everything, accepting excrement, yielding fruit. People also say that Māriamman has a form of wind, that is, she has no solid body of her own and must take the body given by people, either by possessing them or by entering the stone or earthen images that they make for her. Wind is the embodiment of motion and restlessness and is associated in popular thought with free-wandering spirits and unsatisfied demons, and contrasted with the peaceful higher deities. Wind is also the form of breath and of the soul. It is invisible, and so its color is black.
The name of the smallpox deity, Māriamman, has different meanings. Amman means “mother” or “woman.” Māri means “rain.” The rain is cool, and Māriamman likes cool things, foods that are supposed to cool the body, such as milk, coconut water, buttermilk, turmeric, lemons, neem leaves. It has been suggested that she is named after rain because the pockmarks she leaves look like the craters left by raindrops in the dust. But smallpox is a disease of heat; it used to strike during the hot months, and people believe that it is caused by excess heat in the body or by the heat of Māriamman’s anger. The month sacred to Māriamman, when a large festival is held for her, is Āḍi, July–August. This is an inauspicious month, when nothing is supposed to be started, so no new houses are built, and young couples live separately during this month to avoid conception. The smallpox deity is said to hate the sight of a married couple. She is said also to hate the sight of a pregnant woman.6 According to the report of a Madras physician who studied the epidemiology of smallpox in that city, pregnant women who contracted smallpox invariably contracted the most lethal form of the disease (Rao 1972).
A homonym of the word māri is māṟi, “changed,” so that Māriamman becomes “the changed mother.” This is the interpretation of her name that our priestess chooses.
The origin story of Māriamman is an old and well-known one, with numerous variants told throughout Tamil Nadu. In one famous version of the story she begins as a Brahman woman, whose name is Rēṇukā Paramēswari, as noted above. She is married to a famous ascetic named Jatharagni. She is a perfect wife, possessing perfect chastity, as a consequence of which she has certain magical powers. She is able to hang her wet sari to dry in the air without a line. When she goes to fetch water, she is able to carry it without the aid of a pot, by forming it into a ball and rolling it back home.
One day when she goes to the river, she sees in the water the reflection of a beautiful male deity flying overhead (some say this deity is a divine musician or gandharva, some say it is the sun, some say it is an airplane pilot). She remarks to herself in her mind that he is beautiful. Then she tries to roll her water into a ball and return home. She finds that she is unable to roll it up any more. Because of her trivial and momentary mental lapse, she has lost her perfect wifeliness and with it her magical powers.
She returns home and her husband sees what has happened. In a rage, he orders her son to kill her. The son pursues her with his axe, while she flees, taking refuge in the hut of an untouchable woman. She embraces the woman in fear, and the son enters the hut and beheads both of them with a single stroke of his axe. He returns to his father with news that the deed has been done. The father in turn grants him a boon. The son asks that the mother be restored to life. The father acquiesces and the son returns to the decapitated bodies and revives them by putting the heads back on. But he switches the heads, attaching each to the wrong body. Rēṇukā Paramēswari awakes to find that she has her own head but the body of the untouchable woman. She returns to her husband, who sends her away because she has an untouchable body. Thereafter she dwells in the forest alone, but in dual form. In this form she has been worshipped by Tamils for many centuries as Māriamman of smallpox.
Not only the smallpox deity but other deities as well receive massive support in Madras. One of these is the Catholic Veḷḷāṅkanni (“the White Virgin” or “Virgin of the Tide”), who is famed for her healing and other boon-granting powers. Near the Veḷḷāṅkanni temple, a Vaishnava temple has been built to Lakshmi. Visitors to one temple may also stop at the other; there is evidently no rivalry between them.
Each of these large temples seems geared to urban, middle-class tastes. Māriamman is portrayed in posters sold at the Tiruvērkāḍu temple as a smiling, doll-faced, pink-skinned lady, despite the lion she rides on and the adjective karu, “black,” prefixed to her name. In the smaller temples and in the villages, however, the angry demeanor of Māriamman remains unhidden.
The blackness of Māriamman represents not only her anger but also her fertility. Often in pictures she is colored green. Her greenness is complementary to the redness of her male partner, the great deity Siva, whose name in Tamil means red, beautiful, and auspicious. Among Tamils, who are mostly dark brown, a light-skinned person is described as red. By the same token, the greenness of Māriamman represents her darkness. Green and black, the colors of vegetation, are the colors of Māriamman. Red and white, the colors of animal life, are the colors of Siva. Paradoxically, animal sacrifices are offered only to Māriamman, never to Siva. Siva’s whiteness also symbolizes his purity, the purity of fire; Māriamman’s darkness symbolizes the fruitfulness of water.
One of the most important attributes of Māriamman in India is her possession of many forms and many names. Thus the temple at Tiruvērkāḍu is decked with dozens of large paintings portraying the multiple forms of Māriamman, and the newly built Vaishnava temple is called the Ashtalakshmi temple, the temple of eight Lakshmis, each of which is given an equal place in the temple, like the many paintings of Māriamman in the Tiruvērkāḍu temple, and unlike the hierarchical arrangement of deities associated with the temples to the male gods. The multiplicity of Māriamman suggests not only that she embodies the changing nature of all life but also that she is found in all women, and that all women are equal.
Interview I: How She Became a Priestess
I was born in Mylapore.7 My age is thirty-eight. At sixteen I was married. I have two younger brothers, one younger sister, and I am one. I am the oldest.8 The oldest in the family is me. My name is Sarasvati.9
My father had a big business, a store. You know toddy? Liquor. That trade.10 That is gone. Afterward, the Hindu [newspaper] office, he worked in the Hindu office. He is retired.11 He retired in sixty-seven.12 Now he is just in the house. Two years have passed since Mother died. Two years have passed. Now there is only father.
From a small age, from the age of eight, I had devotion to the gods. Often I would eat only once a day. In the person of the mother I had much desire. In the person of the mother only. Murugan and the mother I liked very much.13 Often in the house I would fast. Friday and Tuesday I would go to the temple without fail. In Mylapore, the Kaṯpakambāḷ temple, the Muṇḍakkanniyamman temple, the Kaṯpakavalli temple, I would go there. After marriage, in Maṇḍaveḷi the Piḷḷaiyār temple. Every Friday I would put oil there, circle the temple and return. I did nothing else. In my sixteenth year. From the tenth year, some difficulty came to us. Then Kumāri Kamalā, the cinema actress—have you seen Kumāri Kamalā? She dances Bharat Natyam. In her house, our husband worked for her, as a driver.14 He was working as a driver, and my father had no work; it was very difficult. After that, the two of us, we followed our desire and got married. In my sixteenth year, as soon as I came of age, in my sixteenth year, the marriage took place.15 That happened, and in fifty-three Rukmaṇi was born. In fifty-three, May twenty-sixth. After she was born, the next one in fifty-six, this one, Vasanti, was born.
I had much devotion, I had very much devotion to the gods. Nevertheless, I thought that the mother was only in the temple. If she came into someone’s person (possessed someone) I had no belief in that. If some shaman beat a drum and danced and all that, I did not like that, I had no belief in that at all. I would come up to them and tell them. If someone becomes possessed by a god, they are pretending, it is not a real god.16 If I heard the sound of a drum and saw them dancing like this, I would wave my head and make fun of them.
In sixty-four, nine years ago, eleven years ago, we went to my father-in-law’s house to shave the heads of all the children.17 Thinking that we should go to that place and worship Māriamman, make an