Mariamman
மாரியம்மன்
Also Maari, Renuka, Yellamma, Shitala, Angalamman, Pidari.
Village and folkShakta
Who this is
Mariamman is the goddess of rain and of the diseases that come with heat, and the two are one office: she sends the pox and she cools it, and the cooling is what she is asked for. Her name is read as rain, maari, and the whole worship is about bringing temperature down. She is the commonest deity in the Tamil country by a long way, with a shrine at the edge of nearly every village, and her priests are more often not Brahmins. The great smallpox epidemics are inside her worship: the margosa leaves, the turmeric water, the cooling porridge are what a household did for a sick child before there was anything else, and they went on being done after vaccination ended the disease.
How to recognise them
A fierce face, often only a head, red or yellow with turmeric, with wide eyes and bared teeth, a trident, and margosa leaves over or around her. Frequently a stone or a simple painted figure rather than a carved image. In her temples she is often attended by a male guardian such as Karuppasamy, and the sanctum may be open to the sky.
Family and companions
Identified in the puranic layer with Renuka, mother of Parashurama, whose head was struck off at her husband’s order and joined to another woman’s body, which is why some images are a head alone and why Yellamma in Karnataka is the same goddess. In the village she needs no genealogy and is not usually given one.
How they are worshipped
The Tuesdays and Fridays of Aadi; the Aadi Thiruvizha; Masi amavasya for Angalamman.
The koozh, a cooling porridge of millet, is made in quantity and given to everybody. Margosa leaves are worn and hung. Turmeric water is poured. Fire walking, the mulaipari of sprouted grain, and the carrying of the karagam pot on the head are the vows. Aadi, the hot month before the rain, is her season, and the Tuesdays and Fridays of it are kept.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The head and the body
Renuka, wife of the sage Jamadagni, lost her purity for a moment at the sight of a gandharva, and her husband ordered their son Parashurama to behead her. He obeyed, and was granted a boon, and asked for her life back. In the haste of restoring her the head of a low caste woman who had been killed beside her was joined to Renuka’s body, or her head to the other’s body depending on the telling. The composite is the goddess, and the story is told in the villages as the reason she belongs to everybody and is served by priests of every caste, which is a conclusion the puranic version does not draw.
The pox as her presence
A household with a child in the pox did not say the child was ill; it said the goddess had come, and behaved as a host. The room was kept cool and dark, margosa leaves were spread on the bed, no oil or heat was used in cooking, the family ate plainly, and nobody was turned away from the door. When the fever passed she was thanked and seen off with koozh and a turmeric bath. Vaccination ended the disease and did not end the observance: the same rites are kept in Aadi by households that have never seen a case, as a courtesy continued after the reason for it was gone.
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
- Tamil Nadu
- A shrine at the edge of nearly every village, with Samayapuram the largest, and the Aadi festival with koozh, karagam and fire walking.
- Kerala
- Kodungallur Bhagavathy is the same stream, with the Bharani festival and its deliberate abuse songs, which the temple protects as part of the rite.
- Karnataka
- Yellamma of Saundatti is Renuka under her own name, and Kateel Durgaparameshwari is the coastal shrine.
- Andhra and Telangana
- Kept as Pochamma, Maisamma and Gangamma in the village, with Bonalu in Hyderabad and the Gangamma jatara at Tirupati.
- Sri Lanka
- The Tamil villages of the north and east keep her with the same koozh and fire walking, and the diaspora temples of Singapore and Malaysia carry the Thimithi fire walk.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Samayapuram Mariamman Temple Samayapuram, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
- Punnainallur Mariamman Temple Punnainallur, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
- Mel Malayanur Angalamman Temple Mel Malayanur, Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu
- Kodungallur Bhagavathy Temple Kodungallur, Thrissur, Kerala
What is said
From the mantra library