anoints with it each of the Mothers, recites verses of praise in their honour, pours a libation of butter and sugar over the figures, waves a lamp before them, and offers flowers. The rite ends with the recital of a hymn in their honour, the celebrant receives his fee, and in return places a flower from the offering on the head of the person at whose expense the ceremony has been performed.[1] In another form of the ritual the Mothers are symbolised by a series of earthen pots in which they are supposed to dwell, reared in piles, and placed in the marriage shed as dispensers of fertility.[2] In southern India we meet a special Pot goddess, and at the Durgā Pūjā festival in Bengal the installation of the goddess in a pot is a prominent part of the rites.[3]
It is at present impossible to give even a summary sketch of the cultus of the Mothers. Much has been done in southern India by workers like Bishop Whitehead and Mr. F. J. Richards: but much further enquiry is necessary before this interesting phase of Indian popular religion is thoroughly explored. The personality of these deities is still imperfectly known. In many places the goddess is at once maid and mother, like Demeter and Kore, and year by year, as Hera did by bathing in the Canathus spring, she renews her virginity, only to lose it again when she performs a ritual marriage at the sowing or harvest festival.[4] In the case of Demeter and Kore it has been assumed that the former represents the true Earth goddess, her daughter being the impersonation of the young earth and vegetation in spring.[5] This is probably true in the case of the Hellenic goddesses, but it may be suggested that in India the personification of mother and virgin is based on the perio-
- ↑ Atkinson, op. cit. ii. 834 et seq. For a full account of the rites at the temple (if the famous Baroda Mother goddess, Bechrājī, see Bombay Gazetteer, vii. 609 et seqq.
- ↑ See a photograph in Thurston, op. cit. vi. 19.
- ↑ Oppert, op. cit. 503; Pratapa Chandra Ghosha, The Durga Puja, 32 et seqq.
- ↑ Pausanias, ii. 38, 2.
- ↑ Farnell, op. cit. iii. 116.
