developed. Mr, F. J. Richards, who has made a special study of Dravidian religious beliefs, informs me that, in his opinion, most cases of the sacred marriage in Southern India are due to Brāhman influence. Thus, Mīnādchī, “Fish Rule,” the Tanjore goddess, a true Dravidian deity, is now married to Siva.[1] Some of the goddesses of the Meithei tribe are married, but this, too, seems to be a Brāhman rite.[2] The goddess Tulasī, the impersonation of the sacred basil plant, is married annually in Kāthiāwār to Vishnu, or to his embodiment in the sacred ammonite, the Sālagrāma.[3] The same goddess in the Bhandāra District of the Central Provinces is married to the Sālagrāma: sugar-cane, onions, garlic, and wild plums, from which the people abstained during her four months’ sleep, are offered to her and then eaten.[4] In the Bījāpur District the goddess Pārvatī is annually married to Sangameswar, the presiding deity of the sacred river junction.[5] We reach a lower animistic stage in the marriage of the goddess Dyamavvā in the Dharwār District to the holy sacrificial buffalo, which represents her husband, a man of the menial Mahār caste.[6] In the northern plains we meet with few cases of this kind, or they are obscured by elaborate Brahmanical rites, but in the Himālaya, at the Nandashtami festival held in the month Bhādon during the rainy season, the hill Mother Nandā or Pārvatī is solemnly wedded to Siva.[7] The rites of the sacred marriage form a favourite
- ↑ Thurston, op. cit. iii. 85; Madras Manual of Administration, iii. 499.
- ↑ T. C. Hodson, The Meitheis, 97 et seq.
- ↑ Bombay Gazetteer, vii. 527, viii. 667.
- ↑ R. V. Russell, Gazetteer Bhandāra District, i. 49.
- ↑ Bombay Gazetteer, xxiii. 676.
- ↑ Ibid. xxii. 810. For this sacred buffalo, called Devarā Potū, see Bishop Whitehead, op. cit. 88.
- ↑ E. T. Atkinson, op. cit. ii. 792. For a full account of the sacred marriage, see Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. The Magic Art, ii. 120 et seqq.
