The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2). William Crooke
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Название: The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2)
Автор: William Crooke
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066400101
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In the Panjâb he49 is usually represented as an inferior deity, a stout black figure, with a bottle of wine in his hand; he is an evil spirit, and his followers drink wine and eat meat. One set of ascetics, akin to the Jogis, besmear themselves with red powder and oil and go about begging and singing the praises of Bhairon, with bells or gongs hung about their loins and striking themselves with whips. They are found mainly in large towns, and are not celibates. Their chief place of pilgrimage is the Girnâr Hill in Kâthiawâr. That very old temple, the Bhairon Kâ Asthân near Lahore, is so named from a quaint legend regarding Bhairon, connected with its foundation. In the old days the Dhînwâr girls of Riwâri used to be married to the godling at Bandoda, but they always died soon after, and the custom has been abandoned. We shall meet later on other instances of the marriage of girls to a god.
As a village godling Bhairon appears in various forms as Lâth Bhairon or “Bhairon of the club,” which approximates him to Bhîmsen, Battuk Bhairon or “the child Bhairon,” and Nand Bhairon, in which we may possibly trace a connection with the legend of the divine child Krishna and his foster-father Nanda. In Benares, again, he is known as Bhaironnâth or “Lord Bhairon,” and Bhût Bhairon, “Ghost Bhairon,” and he is regarded as the deified magistrate of the city, who guards all the temples of Siva and saves his votaries from demons.50
But in his original character as a simple village godling Bhairon is worshipped with milk and sweetmeats as the protector of fields, cattle and homestead. Some worship him by pouring spirits at his shrine and drinking there; and on a new house being built, he is propitiated to expel the local ghosts. He is respected even by Muhammadans as the minister of the great saint Sakhi Sarwar, and in this connection is usually known as Bhairon Jati or “Bhairon the chaste.”51 But as we have seen, he is becoming rapidly promoted into the more respectable cabinet of the gods, and his apotheosis will possibly finally take place at the great Saiva shrine of Mandhâta on the Narmadâ, with which a local legend closely connects him.52 All over Northern India his stone fetish is found in close connection with the images of the greater gods, to whom he acts the part of guardian, and this, as we have already seen, probably marks a stage in his promotion.
He has, according to the last census, only five thousand followers in the Panjâb, as compared with one hundred and and seventy-five thousand in the North-Western Provinces.
Worship of Ganesa.
On pretty much the same stage as these warden godlings whom we have been considering is Ganesa, whose name means “lord of the Ganas” or inferior deities, especially those in attendance on Siva. He is represented as a short, fat man, of a yellow colour, with a protuberant belly, four hands, and the head of an elephant with a single tusk. Pârvatî is said to have formed him from the scurf of her body, and so proud was she of her offspring that she showed him to the ill-omened Sani, who when he looked at him reduced his head to ashes. Brahma advised her to replace the head with the first she could find, and the first she found was that of an elephant. Another story says that Ganesa’s head was that of the elephant of Indra, and that one of his tusks was broken off by the axe of Parasurâma. Ganesa is the god of learning, the patron of undertakings and the remover of obstacles. Hence he is worshipped at marriages, and his quaint figure stands over the house door and the entrance of the greater temples. But there can be little doubt that he, too, is an importation from the indigenous mythology. His elephant head and the rat as his vehicle suggest that his worship arose from the primitive animal cultus.
GANESA.
The Worship of the Great Mothers.
From these generally benevolent village godlings we pass on to a very obscure form of local worship, that of the Great Mothers. It prevails both in Aryan and Semetic lands,53 and there can be very little doubt that it is founded on some of the very earliest beliefs of the human race. No great religion is without its deified woman, the Virgin, Mâyâ, Râdhâ, Fâtimah, and it has been suggested that the cultus has come down from a time before the present organization of the family came into existence, and when descent through the mother was the only recognized form.54
We have already met instances of this mother-worship in the case of Gangâ Mâî, “Mother Ganges,” and Dhartî Mâtâ, “the Earth Mother.” We shall meet it again in Sîtalâ Mâtâ, “the small-pox Mother.”
In the old mythology Aditî, or infinite space, was regarded as the Eternal Mother, and Prâkritî was the Eternal Mother, capable of evolving all created things out of herself, but never so creating unless united with the eternal spirit principle embodied in the Eternal Male, Parusha. There appears to have been a tendency on the part of the Indo-Germanic race to look upon their deities as belonging to both sexes at once, and hence the dualistic idea in Brâhmanism of Ardhanari, or the androgynous Siva.55
We shall meet later on with the ghost of the unpurified mother, the Churel, which is based on a different but cognate association of ideas. Akin to this, again, is the worship of the Satî, or model wife, to which we shall refer again, and that of the Châran women of Gujarât, who were obliged to immolate themselves to prevent outrage from the Kolis and other freebooters.
This worship, probably derived from one of the so-called non-Aryan races, was subsequently developed into that of the female energies of the greater gods, a Brâhmânî of Brahma, Indrânî of Indra, and so on; and thus the simple worship of the mother has developed and degenerated into the abominations of the Tantras. These mothers are usually regarded as eight in number, the Ashta Mâtrî, but the enumeration of them varies. Sometimes there are only seven—Brâhmî or Brâhmânî, Maheshvarî, Kaumârî, Vaishnavî, Vârâhî, Indrânî or Aindrânî, or Mahendrî and Châmundâ. Sometimes the number is nine—Brâhmânî, Vaishnavî, Raudrî, Vârâhî, Narasinhikâ, Kaumârî, Mahendrî, Châmundâ, Chandikâ. Sometimes sixteen—Gaurî, Padmâ, Sachî, Medhâ, Savitrî, Vijayâ, Jayâ, Devasenâ, Svadhâ, Svâhâ, Sântî, Pushtî, Dhritî, Tushtî, Atmadevatâ, Kuladevatâ.56 They are closely connected with the worship of Siva and are attendants on his son Skanda, or Kârttikeya, and rise in the later mythology to a much greater number.
Mother-worship in Gujarât.
But it is in Gujarât that this form of worship prevails most widely at the present day. Sir Monier-Williams enumerates about one hundred and forty distinct Mothers, besides numerous varieties of the more popular forms. They СКАЧАТЬ