Igguthappa
ಇಗ್ಗುತ್ತಪ್ಪ
Also Iguthappa, Padi Igguthappa, Subrahmanya.
Village and folkSaiva
Who this is
Igguthappa is the tutelary deity of Kodagu and the god a Kodava household names when it names one. His temple is at Padi near Kakkabe, under the Thadiyandamol ridge, and it is the temple of the district rather than one among many: an okka that keeps no other temple keeps this one. He is held in Kodagu to be the giver of the rain and of the rice crop, which is why he is named at Puthari and at Kailpodh, the two days the crop turns on. Kodavas widely identify him with Subrahmanya, the son of Siva, and they also tell him as one of a company of divine brothers and a sister who came into these hills and divided the country between them; the two tellings sit side by side in Kodagu and this entry does not choose between them.
How to recognise them
There is no distinctive Kodava image of him. At Padi he is served as Subrahmanya, in a sanctum of the Malabar and coastal Karnataka kind, and what a Kodava remembers of the place is the hill, the flight of steps and the lamps rather than a form. What is carried is the offering rather than a likeness: rice, a measure of the new crop, a coconut and money, put there by families who have vowed it.
Family and companions
In the telling the Kodavas keep he is one of a company of brothers and a sister who came into these hills and parted, each taking a territory, with Igguthappa taking Kodagu; the names in that company and the number of it vary from one okka to the next. In the identification with Subrahmanya he is the son of Siva and Parvati and the brother of Ganesha, which is the parentage the Padi temple itself follows. No consort is told of him in Kodagu.
How they are worshipped
Puthari and Kailpodh above all, with Kaveri Sankramana beside them, and the temple's own annual days at Padi, which are set there and are not computed in this almanac.
At Padi above all, and by the okka at home. A family going to Padi carries rice, a coconut and a share of the new crop, and what is asked for is rain, a crop and the health of the house. There is no brahmin and no mantra in most of what a Kodava family does at home, so Igguthappa is named rather than invoked by a formula, and he is named at Puthari when the kadir is cut and at Kailpodh when the arms come out. A vow made to him is worked off by walking to Padi.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The brothers who divided the hills
The account the Kodavas keep is that a company of divine brothers and one sister came into this country, out of the sea in some tellings and down from the north in others, and that they parted and took a territory each: Igguthappa took Kodagu, and the rest took the hills and the coast around it. The names on the list and the number on it change from one okka's telling to the next, and so does the order of their arrival. What does not change is the division itself, which has the same shape as the territory a Tulu daiva holds and the same shape as the land an okka holds, so that in Kodagu the god's country and the family's country are described in one language.
The god who is also Subrahmanya
Kodavas speak of Igguthappa and of Subrahmanya as one, and the Padi temple is served as a Subrahmanya temple. Whether that identification is old, or was made as the district came into the orbit of the Haleri rajas and then of Karnataka, is not settled here, and both things are said in Kodagu. What can be said plainly is that a Kodava family does not experience the two as a substitution: the god of the hill is theirs, the Sanskrit name is the one the sanctum uses, and nobody in the house is troubled that there are two names. The same double naming runs the length of the Western Ghats, where a lord of a place and a puranic god are held together without either being dissolved into the other.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Kodagu
- The deity of the district and the one a Kodava household names first. Padi near Kakkabe is the temple every okka has some tie to, and he is named at Puthari when the kadir is cut and at Kailpodh when the arms come out of the kanni kombare.
- Karnataka
- Over the ghat the same god is served as Subrahmanya, and Kukke Subrahmanya in Dakshina Kannada draws pilgrims from Kodagu; the Margashira Shashti is kept at both.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own