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The worship of the goddess at Kodunggallur Bhagavati temple inKerala, India, includes the annual Bharani or Cock Festival. This includesmuch behavior that outsiders consider scandalous, including screamingepithets, singing 'obscene' songs, ritually self-inflicting wounds,and other behavior. This behavior may derive from earlier worship of graingoddesses, in which their sexuality was propitiated to ensure the regularcycle of life.
The Cock Festival (or Minam Bharani Festival) at Sri Kurumba Kavu incentral Kerala is known for the raucous, erotic, and insulting devotionalpractices of its participants. Thousands of devotees take part annually inthe singing of highly explicit sexual songs and in the ceremonial pollutionof the goddess Sri Kurumba's shrine. This festival is controversial butpopular, and resembles in many ways descriptions of the ecstatic cults of theancient Near East that spread throughout the Greco-Roman empire. Oracles ofthe goddess, called veliccappatus (illuminators), reveal her wishes throughtrance and in their possessed state cut their foreheads with swords as theydance. The veliccapptus, along with the atikals, play major roles in themonth-long, non-Brahminical Bharani Festival. Many Hindus find the treatmentof the goddess during the festival reprehensible, while devotees feel she ispleased and sated by their amplification and celebration of her sakti(power). This paper presents firsthand descriptions of the temple andfestival and discusses various ways of making sense of the activities ofdevotees.
As in most Bhagavati shrines, the entrance at Sri Kurumba Kavuopens on the north side so that the devotee faces southward toward the mainicon of the goddess when entering. The icon, placed at the south end, facesnorthward. South is the direction of the tip of the subcontinent and thelocation of the temple of the virgin goddess at Kanyakumari, a goddessrelated by type to Sri Kurumba. Besides the north door and its broad portico,a second major doorway, ritually significant in the Bharani Festival, openson the east. Most Siva shrines face cast, and at Sri Kurumba Kavu thesubsidiary sanctum of Siva opens on the axis leading to the eastern doorway.The temple, or kavu,(5) at Kodungallur consists of several buildings,including administrative offices, residences, and a central sanctuary wherethe icons of the goddess and other deities are located. The spacious groundsare covered with sand and there are a number of tall, old banyan or peepultrees in raised, circular planters, as well as a large pond, or kulam, in thenorthwest corner of the grounds used for ritual bathing. If a kavu issupposed to resemble a verdant forest or glade, the shrine grounds are starkand dry in comparison. The beige sand sets off the striking, extensive roofstructure of the central shrine building (srikovil). The towers and planes ofthe copper-plated roof with its many intersecting angles dominate the view onapproach. From afar the shrine building looks top-heavy, but up close itlooks light and airy.
Tarabout quotes several descriptions of the devotees and theiractivities by Malayali scholars. The devotees constituted an army of thegoddess carrying batons or sticks and singing obscene songs as they marchedtoward the temple. The Bharani Festival was a time of the overturning of theordinary social order and behavioral codes. No one was spared from theinsults and direct affronts of the dancing devotees in procession, but thefestival context protected the pilgrims from prosecution.
In present-day Kerala, the controversy surrounding the ritualpractices and attitudes exhibited in the Bharani Festival is deeply felt bymany Hindus. Demonstrators against the festival have mounted campaigns foryears in an effort to have them banned. They march in the streets withbanners in direct opposition to the dancing devotees. Each year theconfrontation is reported in the newspapers and a dialogue takes place in theletters-to-the-editor section. The task of keeping the demonstrators andworshippers apart in the street falls to the local police. The objections ofthe demonstrators center on the barrage of insults directed at the goddess,the obscene songs, the wild, confrontational attitude of worshippers, and theceremonial pollution of the shrine. The worshippers, on the other hand, arguethat the goddess finds their behavior pleasing and stimulating: she likes it.The long-lived tradition they are following glorifies her sexuality. If sheis not feted and satisfied, disasters, such as smallpox, may result.
The behaviors, understanding of the goddess, and role of devoteesin the ritual life of the community differ significantly. The BharaniFestival is a context in which a different set of ritual specialists becomesthe central actors. They share and transmit a tradition of songs to thegoddess, specific practices, a set of ritual symbols, and a performanceexpertise grounded in trance. The success of the festival demonstrates thelarge size of the clientele who choose to approach the goddess in this wayand use the services of the oracles of the goddess, the veliccappatus.
Because of their relationship with the goddess, theveliccappatanmar are attributed a certain authority among the devotees andwere in charge of restraining the crowd before this large group dashed aroundthe shrine with their sticks and swords in the air. The veliccappatanmar alsopreserve and perform the lewd songs, "insult" the goddess andallegedly take part in orgiastic rites in worship of Bhagavati at the BharaniFestival. One of their primary objectives in making the pilgrimage to the SriKurumba Kavu is to have the power of their ritual swords recharged by contactwith the goddess.
At Sri Kurumba Kavu, two narrative traditions depicting the lifeand characteristics of a goddess exist side by side. One of these goddessesis Bhadrakali. Her icon in the main sanctum receives Brahminic worship andher myth is recited in songs. These hymns praise the goddess for her victoryover Darukan, for his decapitation, and for placing his head on Mt. Kailasanear her father Siva. Another corpus of songs at Sri Kurumba Kavu concernsthe heroine/goddess Kannaki of the epic Shilappadikaram. The songs that extolKannaki's virtues are used as evidence to identify Sri Kurumba Kavu asthe very shrine described in the ancient Tamil work that was built by theChera king Sengottuvan to honor Kannaki. This identification also proves thatthe original shrine was a Jain sanctuary. As bhagavatis, Kannaki and Kalishare some traits and are assimilated together at Sri Kurumba Kavu, butseparate traditions also have been preserved in the mythologies and ritualpractices.
Although the activities of the Bharani Festival are not aduplication of those in the Cybele cult, the worship at Sri Kurumba Kavu andthe institution of the veliccappatu bear enough resemblence in a general wayto the Cybele cult to indicate that further investigation of this link wouldbe fruitful. The important ritual relationship of the veliccappatus withgrain, demonstrated in their performance of the offering of the nine grains(ari eriyuka) to the goddess (Choondal 1978, 30), must be further studied. Iwitnessed this rite at another Bhagavati festival but did not see it atKodungallur. The veliccappatu used the sickle end of his sword to scoop apile of mixed grains out of a bucket and pour it into the hands of a devotee.This was repeated three times as the devotee tossed the handfuls of graintoward the goddess's icon. The pallival (sword) and sticks carried bythe veliccappatus and devotees resemble the sickle, the shepherd'scrook, or stick that Attis holds in sculptures and paintings. The annualfestivals of both goddesses are (were) held in March-April and are (were)related to a dry period before the engendering of agricultural life at thecoming of the monsoon and the planting of the first rice crop. The sexualsongs sung to the goddess at Kodungallur may share the erotic nature of thoseof the dea syria or magna mater tradition. These songs identify the plowingof the earth and the planting of the seed with the union of the goddess andher lover. The act of love between the anthropomorphic bodies of the deities(or goddess and human) is a metaphor for the fecundation and fertilization ofthe soil. The amorous and demanding nature of the Mesopotamian fertilitygoddess is described vividly in the songs.(12)
The worship of Bhagavati and the building of a temporary kavu toher was part of the traditional talikettukalyanam ceremony. The young girlsat on a plank within the pantal or temporary kavu and was treated as aliving representation of the goddess, receiving offerings and being feted bysongs. The male partner, sometimes dressed as a warrior and carrying a sword,was brought to her and given gifts. The couple was secluded for several daysin the girl's house, ate a special meal, and then went through apurifying bath.(16) From the ceremony onward, the girl was considered areproducer of the matrilineage and, when physically ready, could takesambandham partners (the partners would who produce children and bring her toa new status in having replaced herself in the lineage). Thetalikettukalyanam enacted the "polluting" of the girl andcelebrated her sexuality and new role; not as "wife," however, butas one who has the power to create and withhold life. I think the distinctionin ways of thinking about the tali necklace-tying ceremony is tremendouslyimportant. A tali union may facilitate a young woman's claiming of hersakti (power) and role and her control of her own chastity (in the SouthIndian sense) without expressing it as a dissolution of her life into that ofa man's. The talikettukalyanam verifies her "goddesshood" andtells her she is empowered to choose her sexual destiny and not acceptsubjugation to a male, whether god or human. As a necessary ceremony it marksand values the young females of the lineage and society as a whole.
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