The Murderous Bride: Tamil Versions of the Myth of Devī and the Buffalo-Demon

Author(s): David Shulman

Source: History of Religions , Nov., 1976, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Nov., 1976), pp. 120-146
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062239

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 David Shulman THE MURDEROUS
BRIDE: TAMIL
VERSIONS OF THE
MYTH OF DEVI AND
THE BUFFALO-DEMON

The myth of the slaying of the buffalo-dem

archetypal myth of the goddess in India. M
icons of the myth vary in their depiction of
he is entirely theriomorphic, as in the ear
at other times he appears as a human-buffalo
a human body but the head or horns of a
emerging from the neck of a slain buffal
entirely human. Among the first wholly ant
sentations of Mahisasura is an eighth-cent
from Kiancipuram (now in the National M
which the demon is shown standing, leaning
armed goddess who is about to strike him.
Mahisa becomes quite common; in a Cola bron
for example, Devi is shown seated with her fo

The author wishes to acknowledge the help received th

of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from the Mic
the Barnett Shine Fellowship, and the John Goodenday
Central Research Fund of the University of London
research in India in the winter of 1975-76.
1 For the early iconography of Mahisasuramardini, see R. C. Agrawala
Rare Mahisamardini Relief in the National Museum, New Delhi," East and W
16 (1966): 109-11; J. C. Harle, Gupta Sculpture (Oxford, 1974), p. 36 and p
16 and 17.
2 Agrawala.
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History of Religions

of a prostrate, human figure.3 One recalls the graceful figures from

Mahabalipuram of the goddess standing on the buffalo's head.
The closest iconographic analogues to these and similar images
are the well-known Tantric icons of Devi dancing on the corpse
of her husband, Siva.4
How are we to explain this correspondence? Is it simply by
chance that one of the first anthropomorphic figures of Mahisa
comes from the Tamil area? D. D. Kosambi has shown that the
buffalo-god Mhasoba (Mhatoba) appears in some villages in
Maharashtra as the victim of the goddess, while in others he is
her consort.5 Parallels to this pattern, felt Kosambi, should
exist in other parts of India.6 Such a parallel, which may be
relevant to iconographic developments, can be found in the
traditions of the Tamil area.
Like other areas of India, the south produced its own version
of the classical Hindu myths. The single most important sour
for these versions is the enormous corpus of literature in Sanskr
and Tamil attached to local shrines. No major shrine is without it
mahdtmya or sthalapurana, in which traditions which have grow
up around the shrine and its locale have been recorded. Often
several such works exist for a single site: for example, Tiruva
namalai (North Arcot District), the home of one of the mos
important Tamil versions of the buffalo myth, can claim both
Sanskrit mahdtmya which found its way into the printed editions-
the Skanda Purana7 and a sixteenth-century Tamil work, th
Arunacalapuranam of Ellappanayinar. They correspond fairly
closely, but such similarity is not always the case. Most Tami
Puranas claim to be based on Sanskrit originals, and in many case
the claim is demonstrably true; but the Tamil versions, like t
folk mythology which still exists orally in the area, sometim
preserve ancient elements and motifs more faithfully than th
more self-conscious Sanskrit renderings.

3 C. Sivaramamurti, South Indian Bronzes (Bombay, 1963), plate 50; F. H

Gravely and T. N. Ramachandran, "Catalogue of the South Indian Hindu Me
Images in the Madras Government Museum," Bulletin of the Madras Governme
Museum, n.s. 1, no. 2 (September 1932): 121; cf. W. and B. Forman and Mar
guerite-Marie Deneck, Indian Sculpture (London, 1970), plates 134-36.
4 See Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilizatio
(Princeton, N.J., 1946), plates 66-69; W. G. Archer, Kalighat Paintings (Londo
1971), figs. 13 and 45; Philip Rawson, The Art of Tantra (London, 1973), p. 13
and plates 89, 110-11.
5 D. D. Kosambi, Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Cultu
(Bombay, 1962), pp. 2-3, 85-91.
6 Ibid., p. 85.
7 Skanda Purana (Calcutta, 1959) 1.3.1-2.
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The Murderous Bride

The main features of the myth of Devi and the buffalo-demon

may be extracted from its locus classicus, the Devmadhdtmya of
the Markandeya Purana:
When Mahisa the buffalo-demon was lord of the demons and Indra lord
of the gods, the gods were cast out from heaven by the demon host. Fro
the energy (sakti) born from the anger of the gods, Devi became incarnat
The gods bestowed their divine weapons upon her and sent her to do bat
with Mahisa. Riding on a lion, she fought with the demon and finally plac
her foot on his neck and pierced him with a spear; he half came forth fro
his own mouth, and the goddess cut off his head and killed him.8

In many of the Sanskrit accounts, the war is preceded by a

episode in which Mahisa lusts for the goddess and tries to seduce
her; she encourages his desire as a means of weakening him
classic ploy in Hindu myths.9 Sometimes the battle is describ
by Devi as a suitor's test: "Hear, 0 Daitya, the bride-price
(sulka) in our family.... Whoever conquers a daughter of our
family in battle becomes her husband." 10 As we shall see, trial b
battle does indeed precede the marriage of Siva and Devi in t
myths of several Tamil shrines; but in the case of the classic
accounts of the Mahisa myth, Devi uses the idea of a suitor's test
simply to lure the demon to his doom.
Tamil mythology, however, carries further these hints of a
erotic link between Devi and her victim:

Siva and Devi quarrelled, made up, then started a game of dice. Sudden
Devi covered the two eyes of her husband with her hands, and the unive
was plunged into darkness. 8iva opened his third eye and drenched the
worlds with light.
Because she had brought untimely disaster on the universe and inter
rupted the rites of sages and ascetics, Devi was afflicted by sin. To expia
her sin the goddess was sent to Kaficipuram. There she made a lihga of
sand and worshipped it. To test her, Siva sent a flood, and she embraced
liniga to keep it from being washed away.
Siva, pleased with the goddess, directed her to Arunacala, where
continued her tapas in a hut in the forest. The gods found her there a
complained to her of the mischief caused by the demon Mahisa: "He ta
hold of Adisesa by the head and tail and flings the sleeping Visnu like a r
from a sling; he has stolen Agni's ram; he rides around on Indra's elepha
Airavata...." The goddess angrily instructed Durga to kill Mahisa in
battle. The war raged around the hut of the goddess at Arunacala; Durga,
aided by Arunanayaki, the four saktis, the eight Bhairavas, and the Seven

8 Markandeya Purana, Bibliotheca Indica, vol. 29 (Calcutta, 1862) 82.1-68,

83.1-41 (I have summarized rather than translated myths throughout).
9 Devibhagavata Purana (Benares, 1960) 5.9-11; Brahmavaivarta Purana,
Anandasrama Sanskrit Series, no. 102 (Poona, 1935) 2.16-20; Vamana Purana
(Benares, 1968) 20.1-36; Devi Purana 13, cited Rajendra Chandra Hazra, Studies
in the Upapurdnas, II: iakta and Non-sectarian Upapurdnas (Calcutta, 1963),
p. 45.
10 Vamana Purana 20.34.
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History of Religions

Mothers, defeated the demon armies and cut off the head of Mahisa. To
her horror and amazement, upon the severed neck of Mahisa she discovered
a bright [or, according to the commentary, crystal] linga.
Durga brought this linga back to the goddess, but when Devi took it it
stuck to her hand. To expiate the sin of killing a devotee of Siva, the god-
dess commanded Durga to strike the mountain with her sword; water
gushed forth, and Devi bathed in it for a month. Finally the linga dropped
from her hand. The goddess then circumambulated the holy mountain, and
Siva appeared and granted her request to become the left half of his body.l1

This version makes several radical changes in the myth, trans-

forming the characters of Mahisa and the goddess and imparting
new values to the mythic action. The killing of Mahisa has become
a sin, indeed a sin of a particularly serious kind. In one version
Devi is taught by the sage Gautama that it is wrong to harm any
living being (jivahimsd na kartavyd)12-an injunction thoroughly
exotic in the context of a myth wholly devoted to the violent
encounter between the goddess and the demon. The introduction
of this strain into the Arunacala myth attests to the enduring
influence of Buddhist and Jain ethics on South Indian Hinduism.
But there is a more specific reason for Devi's affliction: the
heinous nature of her crime stems from the transformation of
Mahisa into a devotee (bhakta) of Siva, as shown by the lihga on
his neck.
At first glance, our version of the myth would seem to fall into
the category of myths of dvesabhakti, the "devotion of hate"-
the extension of the bhakti idea to include any violent mani-
festation of emotion toward the god.13 Thus Sisupala, because he
so hated Krsna that he could never keep him from his thoughts
whether walking, sitting, eating, or sleeping, wins salvation when
killed by the god.14 Similarly, the ogress Piitana, who attempts to
poison the infant Krsna, attains heaven after Krsna drains her of
life;15 and a host of other demons or enemies of the gods-
Gajasura, Taraka, Andhaka, Ravana, Hiranyakasipu, Paundraka,
anikhacuda, etc.-are saved and blessed in their death. That love
and hatred are intimately related was well known to the creators
of Hindu myth. Another Tamil Purana makes it clear that Mahisa
benefits from his defeat and death: Devi trod on his head which

1 Arunacalapuranam of Ellappanayinar (Madras, 1907) 4.1-77, 5.1-67;

cf. Skanda Purana 1.3.1.3, 1.3. 1.10-13. In summarizing Tamil versions I have
Sanskritized the Tamil names for figures drawn from the common stock of Hindu
mythology (e.g. Siva for Civan, Durga for Turkkai, etc.).
12 Skanda Purana 1.3.1.11.69.
13 See Bhagavata Purana (Bombay, 1832) 7.1.25-30.
14 Mahabharata (Poona, 1933-69) 2.42.21-23; Visnu Purana (Gorakhpur, 196
4.14.50-53, 4.15.1-17; Bhagavata Purana 7.10.38, 11.5.48.
15 Bhagavata Purana 10.6.30-40, 10.i4.34.
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The Murderous Bride

she had cut off with her sword; if one is touched by the feet of the
Maiden (kanni), the Mother of the three worlds, can there be any
doubt that maya will be destroyed? If one but thinks of her feet in
his heart, all impurity departs and the sorrow of everlasting
rebirth comes to an end.16 Elsewhere the salvation of the demon
remains implicit:
The gods were winning in their war with the demons, so Diti sent her
daughter to the forest to give birth to a champion of the demons. The gir
took the form of a buffalo and seduced the sage Suparsva, and from their
union a son with a buffalo's head was born. He conquered the worlds. Siva,
hearing of the distress of the gods, fashioned from the fire of his anger and
the anger of the other gods a woman of terrifying splendour. They gave he
weapons and a lion to ride and sent her to fight Mahisa in the pdlai forest
After a long battle, the goddess jumped on the demon's head. At this the
demon screamed and ran south as fast as he could, with Devi in hot pursui
on her lion. Seeing he could not escape, Mahisa hid in the cakratirtha at
Ramesvaram. Devi could not find the demon, try as she might; she was
looking back over the path she had taken, facing north, when a voice said,
"He is hiding in the tank." Immediately she jumped in with her lion,
leaving Mahisa no room to hide. She put one foot on his body and one on his
head, and then she cut off his head. With a cry the demon died. Her hosts
feasted on his blood, and because her lion had dried up the tank, the goddess
caused it to be filled with ambrosia (cutai).17

The sanctity of the tank is marked by both blood (of the demon)
and the nectar of the gods-a recurrent symbolic pair in theo
origin myths of South Indian shrines. The drying up of the water
recalls Agastya's drinking the ocean in order to deny the demons a
refuge.18 Yet simply by entering the tank Mahisa may be presumed
to have gained what anyone who bathes there is promised-
release from sin, the fulfillment of desires, freedom from the cycle
of rebirth.19 Seduction by a buffalo-cow explains the birth of
Mahisa in Sanskrit Puranas as well,20 but other Tamil versions
agree on a different explanation: Varamuni was cursed by other
sages, angered by his lack of courtesy, to become a buffalo and to
be freed by dying at the hands of the goddess. While wandering in
the forest in the form of a buffalo, he once swallowed a sage who
carried a liiga in his hand; that liitga remained attached to his
neck.21
Death at the hands of his enemy is thus the condition for
Mahisa's liberation. Yet this myth does not belong to the classic

16 Tirunelvelittalapuranam of Nellaiyappapillai (Tirunelveli, 1869) 52.110.

17 Cetupuranam of Nirampavalakiyatecikar (Madras, 1932) 6.1-78; Skanda
Purana 3.1.6.8-77, 3.1.7.1-48.
18 Mahabharata 3.102.16-23, 3.103.1-28.
19 Cetupuranam 6.82; Skanda Purana 3.1.7.47-48, 63-64.
20 Vamana Purana 18.41-72; Devibhagavata Purana 5.2.17-50; Kalika Purana
(Bombay, 1891) 62.136-57.
21 Arunacalapuranam 5.46-49; Tirunelvelittalapuranam 52.112-16.
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History of Religions

type of dvesabhakti myths, for Mahisa is freed not because he

obsessively hates the god or goddess, as in the cases of Piitana and
Sisupala, but simply by virtue of being killed by Devi. If anything,
Mahisa appears to feel devotion for Siva, and the horror felt by
Durga at the discovery of the linga stems from the sense of having
killed not an enemy but an ally. In fact, this idea goes con-
siderably deeper. Mahisa as bearer of the liiga is said to partake
of Siva's own form (iraiyuruvam;22 annon meyyum accivan ran
rapam23), and it is the murder of Siva himself which is implicitly
attributed to Devi. This is perhaps the most suggestive strand of
myth in the Tamil versions and the one most closely linked with
the religious prehistory of the area. Truly ancient material has
been preserved in a more modern guise: the buffalo-god has
become a demon, while his essential identity with the male consort
of the goddess is affirmed. Another Tamil myth transfers Devi's
attack on her husband to a later stage:

Mahisa was granted a boon by Brahma to the effect that no god could
kill him. He destroyed the sacrifices of the sages, injured temples and tanks,
and committed other misdeeds. King Ciiriyavanni pleaded with Siva to
help, so Siva looked at Devi and said: "Take the form of Durga and go down
to earth with the Seven Maidens in order to destroy Mahisa."
Devi went to Arunacala and challenged the demon to a fight. He at first
refused to fight a woman. "If you are a man, come and show your mettle,"
she said. After a long battle, she stood on his head and cut it off with her
sword.
After the death of the demon, the goddess was followed by Brahminicid
She worshipped Siva at Ratnagiri (Tiruvatpokki), and Siva gave her a swor
with which to rid herself of the sin, but she did not know how to use it.
"Split the mountain in two," said Siva. She struck the mountain with the
sword; it split in two, and her sin departed. The goddess lives there still as
Khadga (Tam. Katkai-"The Sword").24

Although Mahisa is portrayed as wholly sinful, killing him is still

a sin. Precisely the same idea is developed in the myths of Indra's
slaying of the denion Vrtra and subsequent torture by Brahmini-
cide;25 like Vrtra, the demon Mahisa has become a Brahmin. The
water which cleanses sin is missing in the myth from Tiruvatpokki,
but the redemptive act remains the same as at Arunacala-
cleaving the mountain with a sword. Yet here the image is
more complex: splitting the mountain unites the divine couple,
for Devi is the sword (khadga), and the mountain, as we are told

22 Arunacalapuranam 5.49.
23 Tirunelvelittalapuranam 52.116.
24 Tiruvatpokkippuranam of Kamalainakar Vaittinatatecikar (Madras, 1911)
10.1-45.
25 Cf. Mahabharata 5.9-10, 5.13; ~atapatha Brahmana, Chow
Sanskrit Series, no. 96 (Benares, 1964) 11.1.5.7-8; 9.5.2.4.
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The Murderous Bride

throughout this Purana, is the body of Siva.26 Devi unites with

the god through the act of killing him. Note the reversal of roles:
usually it is Devi who must split in two before marriage, casting
off her dark "sheath" (Kausiki or Kali) in order to emerge as the
golden Gauri;27 here the god is divided, while the goddess rather
than Siva has the form of the phallic sword.
The split goddess is evident in the first version we have cited,
from Tiruvannamalai, where Devi sends Durg& along with other
forms of herself to perform the killing-although Devi must still
pay the price of expiation herself. Devi's sinfulness is symbolized
by the liiga which sticks to her hand, an image obviously derived
from the story of Siva's Brahminicide: Siva cut off one of Brahma's
five heads; the skull (kapala) stuck to his hand as he wandered over
the earth pursued by Brahminicide, until he reached the Kapala-
mocana shrine in Benares.28 At Arunacala Devi is released from
the liiga in order to marry Siva, thus creating the androgyn
the conjunction of episodes is not accidental, for the goddess
fact marries twice-first, symbolically, the dead demon and then
officially, the living god. The myth has distributed aspects of
single event between two male protagonists. The underlying
tendency is to suppress the murderous aspect of Devi's marriage;
and in yet another version, the dark murderess remains chaste s
that the golden goddess can wed:

The goddess killed Durga29 and was followed by sin. Siva said to her:
"It seems you do not realize that you have acquired a new form by killin
the wicked demon. Go, Nili, and perform tapas." Painniili went to Vima
aranya and worshipped Siva in her fierce, dark form.
Suddenly the Vimalaranya River rose like the sea and surged towards t
mountain where Siva dwells. The goddess blocked its path. She pressed he
foot against the earth, and at her command the river entered the neth
world at that spot. The gods and sages then complained that no river w
present at the shrine. Paififiili shot an arrow to the north of the golde
shrine of Uma; the arrow pierced the mountain and a river-the Nilivan-
anadi-poured forth. The goddess created the town of Tiruppainnili with
its ramparts and palaces, and with a shrine where Siva and Uma cou
happily dwell.30

26 In carukkam 11, for example, a puranikar recites to a king, stressing that t

mountain is the body of the Lord. The king is ordered to climb the mountain
but fears to tread on the body of the god.
27 ~iva Purana (Benares, 1964) 7.1.24.24-58; 7.1.25.1-48; 7.1.27.1-37; Skand
Pura.na 1.2.29.45-52; cf. Kalaiyarkoyirpuranam of Cuppiramaniya Ayar (Madr
1899) 6.1-43, 9.2-32, 10.2-45.
28 See Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of
Siva (London, 1973), pp. 123-27.
29 The anonymous commentator identifies this demon with Mahisa. He is, of
course, to be distinguished from the goddess Durga.
30 Tiruppaiiiiilipuranam (Madras, 1927) 4.1-23.
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History of Religions

Like nearly all South Indian shrines, Tiruppaififiili is said to have

survived a flood; here this ancient cosmogonic motif is associated
with the dark goddess Paififiili (Green-Dark Blue), to whom we
shall return later. The goddess first saves the god by diverting the
flood, then wounds him by piercing his mountain with an arrow,
just as she cleaves the body of the god at Tiruvatpokki. The
sacred water of the river substitutes for the blood of the slain god,
which other myths retain as the fertilizing blood of the demon.
The tapas of Paiiiiili creates a home for 8iva and Uma; the killing
of Mahisa is thus the prerequisite for the local marriage of the
peaceful aspect of the goddess.
The identification of Siva and Mahisa is-at its most explicit in a
myth from the Kalika Purina:
Ugracanda killed Mahisasura in one of his births, and Bhadrakali killed
him in a second. In his third birth as a buffalo, he had a dream in which he
saw the goddess drinking his blood after cleaving his head with her sword.
When he woke, he worshipped the goddess and told her of his dream, and
he also told her that he had been cursed by Katyayana to be killed by a
woman, since he had distracted a pupil of that sage with a beautiful image
of a woman. Mahisa asked the goddess for two boons: a share in the
sacrifice, and the joy of never departing from her feet. She said: "The
sacrifice has already been divided among the gods, and there is no portion
left; but I grant you your second wish." Then she struck him and cut off
his head. When he beheld his own buffalo-body pierced by the trident
and spurting forth blood, he was very frightened, and he cried to her:
"If the portions of the sacrifice have already been assigned, let me be killed
at another time, and may I never quarrel with the gods." She replied: "I
granted your former wish, and now you must be killed. You will not quarrel
with the gods, and since you have touched my feet, your body will not be
shattered and you will have a share of the sacrifice." 31

The exclusion from the sacrifice and the struggle to obtain a share
are classic Saiva themes, the underlying basis of the Daksa myth
(along with the associated theme of punishment of incest). But the
Purana then proceeds to make the implicit correspondence of
8iva and Mahisa explicit, for the listener (Sagara) asks: Many
demons have been killed by the goddess Maya without receiving
boons; why did this demon receive a boon? The narrator (Aurva)
replies:
Mahisa was granted his wish because he was giva. The demon Rambha
propitiated Siva, and the god promised that he would become his son in
three births. Rambha saw a buffalo-cow (mahisi) and made love to it;
that buffalo-cow was Siva, who gave birth to himself as Mahisa. This
happened in three separate births. Therefore the goddess accepted Mahisa,
who was Mahadeva himself.32

31 Kalika Purana 62.84-164.

32 Ibid., 62.136-57.
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The Murderous Bride

Siva as the buffalo is also said to have become the vdhana of the
goddess, for Visnu as lion was incapable of carrying her.33 Van
Kooij rightly notes that the point of this statement is to stress
the fierce character of the goddess, for the buffalo is usually the
vehicle of Yama, who rules the dead.34 For the same reason, the
myth of Devi's killing of Mahisa has been interpreted as a Sikta
parallel to Siva's destruction of Death (Siva as Kalantaka,
Mrtyufijaya).35 This interpretation finds no support in the myth.
It is not enough, however, merely to document the correspon-
dence between Siva and the buffalo-demon Mahisa in a number of
localized versions of the myth. Difficult questions remain: Why the
buffalo? What does the myth mean? Note that a striking reversal
occurs in Devi's role: we are accustomed to think of the goddess as
providing the god with power (sakti); but, if our reading is correct,
in the buffalo myth she drains the god of his strength. Surely this is
the significance of the closely related (though later) icons which
show K&li treading on the corpse of Siva, her tongue thrust out to
receive his blood.36 In the village rituals of the south, the blood of
the sacrificial victim-often a buffalo-is drunk precisely in order
to transfer its strength to the participants.
The ritual of buffalo sacrifice is undoubtedly an underlying force
in the Mahisa myth. In village sacrifices a special role is reserved
for the buffalo's severed head, which may be offered to the
goddess, carried in procession, or utilized in connection with
boundary rites;37 in the Tamil myths, Devi stands on the demon's
head as she decapitates him, and she discovers the crystal linga
on his neck. Let us recall that in the Devimdhdtmya the demon is
said to have been killed while half-emerging from his own mouth.38
The liiga on the neck appears in the southern versions as a symbol
of Mahisa's life and power, just as it suggests his true identity;
similarly, in a myth from Andhra Skanda is able to overcome
Taraka only by smashing the liga the demon wears upon his
throat.39 By taking the liiga Devi thus draws to herself the
33 Ibid., 62.153.
34 K. R. Van Kooij, Worship of the Goddess according to the Kdlikdpurdna
(Leiden, 1972), 1:33.
35 Sukumari Bhattacharji, The Indian Theogony (Cambridge, 1970), p. 166.
36 This feature has often been euphemistically misinterpreted; see, for example,
E. G. Thompson and A. M. Spencer, Bengali Religious Lyrics: iSkta (Calcutta,
1923), p. 36 n. 2; Jogendra Natha Bhattacarya, Hindu Castes and Sects (1896;
reprint ed., Calcutta, 1968), p. 322.
37 Henry Whitehead, Village Gods of South India (Calcutta, 1921), pp. 44,
50-54, 72-76, 93-94, 106-9; Wilber Theodore Elmore, Dravidian Gods in Modern
Hinduism (Lincoln, Nebr., 1915), pp. 19, 22, 38-39, 118-26.
38 Markandeya Purana 83.37-39.
39 N. Ramesan, Temples and Legends of Andhra Pradesh (Bombay, 1962),
pp. 91-92.
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History of Religions

concentrated power and vitality of the buffalo. Moreover, the

buffalo is itself a symbol of power in the earliest Tamil sources.
Attached to the poetry of war we find the theme of erumaimaram,
Buffalo's Valor, exemplified by the hero who takes a bold stand in
battle against a flood of enemies and weapons which threatens to
overwhelm him.40 Village and tribal rituals, and the myths which
grew up around them, would thus appear to have preserved a more
ancient image of the buffalo-which Brahminism has demoted in
favor of the present "great-tradition" focus on the cow and the
bull.41
The male god in many South Indian villages is still often a
Buffalo King (Potu Raja in the Telugu area and parts of Tamil
Natu). Sometimes he is the husband of the goddess.42 In the
sacrificial rituals a buffalo is married to the goddess, and after the
sacrifice the wedding ceremony is repeated with a new buffalo,
lest she be left a widow.43 The sacrifice of the goddess's consort
then has to be explained by a myth:

A Paraiyan passed himself off as a Brahmin in a foreign village and was

given the daughter of a blind karnam (accountant) as his wife. The Brahmin
wife discovered by chance that her husband was an Outcaste, so she burned
herself alive by setting fire to her house. After her death she appeared as a
goddess to the villagers and instructed them to behead her husband, put
one of his legs in his mouth, the fat of his stomach on his head, and a
lighted lamp on top. After being sacrificed in this manner, the husband was
reborn as a buffalo, and therefore a buffalo is sacrificed to the village
goddess at ceremonies in which the descendants of the couple play a part.44

Unlike the Puranic accounts, this myth attaches sin not to the
goddess but to her husband-victim, whose murder is thereby
rationalized. The blindness which causes Devi's descent to earth
in the first place in the Tamil Mahisa myths is here ascribed not
to her husband but to her father.
This plot motif is the final element of the Mahisa myths which
calls for comment in this context. It is by no means limited to
these myths-in fact, the blinding of the god is seemingly the
most frequently encountered cause for Devi's avatdra in South

40 See Purapp6rul venpamalai of Aiyanaritanar (Madras, 1955) 139 (tumpaip-

patalam 13); Purananuru, ed. U. Ve. Caminat'aiyar (Madras, 1894), secs. 80, 274,
275.
41 Cf. the Toda myths in M. B. Emeneau, Toda Songs (Oxford, 1971), pp. 14-23
(see also pp. xxxix-xlv).
42 Whitehead, p. 18; Gustav Oppert, On the Original Inhabitants of Bharata-
varsha or India (London, 1893), pp. 460-61.
43 Whitehead, pp. 72-73; Elmore, pp. 129-30; E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of
Southern India (Madras, 1909), 3:375.
44 Whitehead, pp. 117-19; cf. pp. 84-85.
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 The Murderous Bride

Indian texts.45 There are several variations upon this theme:

Devi steals up behind Siva and covers his eyes with her hands i
sport (sometimes in retaliation for a similar prank played on her
by her husband);46 Devi hides the god's eyes to prevent him from
seeing the naked saktis47 or Tilottama;48 she blinds him in order
to test the truth of his claim to support the world by the light of his
eyes;49 on her wedding night, Parvati is ashamed and puts he
hands over Siva's eyes, but to her distress his third eye gazes a
her.50 The blinded god gives birth to the blind demon Andhaka,
who is burned by 8iva's third eye because of his lust for Parvati;
reduced to a skeleton, Andhaka receives the form of Siva and
joins his hosts.51 Andhaka is punished for an excess of lust, while
his other form, Bhrngin, suffers the same fate for the opposite
reason: Bhrngin refused to worship Devi, so she withered his body,
but Siva gave him a third leg to support his weight.52 The third
leg, like Siva's third eye (which Andhaka also comes to possess),
has obvious erotic associations, and the Bhrngin story is told to
explain the origin of the androgyne.53
In the Andhaka myth blindness is a metaphor for lust, but it
more often has an antierotic force in the myths. Given the phallic
symbolism of eyes in Saivism-especially of the third eye, which,
as we shall see, is linked with the South Indian motif of the
third breast-blindness may be regarded as substituting for castra-
tion in some of these stories.54 The myth of Cyavana and Sukanya
lends support to this correspondence: Cyavana was performing
tapas in an anthill; Sukanya, the daughter of king Saryati, saw
his eyes glowing from within the anthill and pierced them with a
thorn. Cyavana cursed the soldiers of Saryati, and the king gave
45 Arunacalapuranam 4.2-9; Kinicippuranam I of Civafinnayoki (Kaficipuram,
1933) 63.20-46; Kaficippuranam II of Kacciyappamunivar (Madras, 1910)
1.263-80; Tiruppatirippuliyfirpuranam of Citamparan&tamunivar (Madras, 1896)
2.1-90; Tirunelvelittalapuranam 51.36-39; Kalaiyarkoyirpuranam 6.2-13;
Tiruccenikottuppuranam of Tenkaci Kavirajapantitar (Tirfccenkotu, 1932)
4.1-40; Tirukkovalurppura.navacanam of Ti. Vai. Catacivappantarattar (Kum-
pakonam, 1918) 1 (pp. 1-4), etc.
46 Mahabharata 13.127.26-38; Tirunelvelittalapuranam 51.36-39.
4 Kamaksililapirapavam (Kaiicipuram, 1906) 7 (pp. 43-44).
48 Skanda Purana 6.153. 2-20.
9 Kalaiyarkoyirpuranam 6.2-13.
50 Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa (Bombay, 1916) 8.7.
51 Matsya Purana, Anandasrama Sanskrit Series, no. 54 (Poona, 1907) 179.2-
Kurma Purana (Benares, 1972) 1.15.89-90, 125-38, 168-218; ~iva Purana 2.5.
13-40, 2.5.44.1-71, 2.5.45.1-53, 2.5.46.1-39.
52 T. A. Gopinatha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography (Madras, 1916), 2,
pt. 1:322-33.
53 Ibid.; cf. T. B. Krishnaswami, South Arcot in Sacred Song (Madras, 1937),
pp. 12-13.
54 On the eroticism of eyes, see O'Flaherty, pp. 247-51.
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History of Religions

him Sukanya as his wife. The Asvins tried to make her leave her
old, blind husband for one of them, but when she stood fast by her
husband they took him into the water, and he emerged young-
his sight and his virility simultaneously restored.55 Elsewhere
blindness is linked with death: devotees of Bhagavati walk to her
temple in Kallil with their eyes shut tight, for they die if they see
anything before they see the goddess.56 More common is the
reverse: all who beheld the carving of the goddess in the K6lli
hills were certain to die.57 A myth from Assam applies this motif
to the head sacrifice, a characteristic feature of Devi-myths:58
At the time of the evening prayer, the goddess danced within the closed
doors of her temple. A king desired to see her dance and asked the chief
priest to help him. The priest made a hole in the wall, and the king peeped
through. His eyes caught the eyes of the goddess, and she became furious
and tore off the head of the priest. Ever since the king and his descendants
never look even at the hill of the goddess; if they must pass by it, they cover
themselves with umbrellas.59

The penalty is transferred from the king to the priest, but

retains its force as a threat to the king's offspring. The punishme
is incurred by the king's attempt to overcome a form of blindness
his inability to see the goddess-and to achieve this he mu
destroy the wholeness of the goddess's protective enclosure.
Why does seeing the goddess entail punishment? The motif ma
be linked to the prohibition on witnessing the sexual act, a them
of considerable importance in Hindu mythology. Thus I
(Sudyumna) is transformed from a man into a woman (i.e
castrated) for stepping into a grove in which Siva had bee
making love to Parvati. The real cause of this transformation
put back in time and transferred to a group of sages: Sanaka and
other sages came upon Siva and Parvati while they were makin
love in that grove; Parvati was ashamed and hastily covered he
nakedness, and Siva promised that from then on any man wh
entered the grove would become a woman.60 There are many
55 Mahabharata 3.122.1-27, 3.123.1-23; Devibhagavata Purana 7.2.30-65,
7.3.1-64, 7.4.1-56, 7.5.1-57.
56 N. Sunkuni Wariar, "Kallil: A Famous Shrine in Southern India," Indian
Antiquary 21 (1892): 95-96.
57 Kuruntokai, ed. U. Ve. Caminat'aiyar (Madras, 1947), comments on sees. 89
and 100.
58 See J. Ph. Vogel, "The Head-Offering to the Goddess in Pallava Sculptur
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 6 (1931): 539-
H. A. Rose, "Sacrifices of the Head to the Hindu Goddess," Folkore 37 (19
90-92. Cf. Cilappatikaram of Ilafikovatikal (Madras, 1927) 5.76-88, 12.20.
59 Bani Kanta Kakati, The Mother Goddess Kamdkhya (Gauhati, 1948)
pp. 46-47.
60 Bhagavata Purana 9.1.3-36; Devibhagavata Purana 1.12.16-22; see the
discussion of these and other variants in O'Flaherty, pp. 302-10.
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The Murderous Bride

variations on this theme: Siva and Parvati die of shame when the
gods and sages surprise them in the act of intercourse;61 Arjuna
leaves for pilgrimage when he violates the pact of the Pandava
brothers and sees Yudhisthira with Draupadi.62 Closely allied to
the Ila myth is the myth of Ila's son Puriravas, deserted by
Urvasi when she sees his nakedness.63 In folk variants, the hero
steals the clothes of Indra's daughter; she calls to him to look
back, and when he turns to see the naked goddess he is paralyzed.64
Kubera is blinded in his left eye when he sees the goddess together
with Siva and asks who she is (or, in other versions, wonders what
she has done to merit being united with the god).65 The same
pattern obtains in a late temple legend from Andhra: The treasurer
of King Krsnadevaraya used the king's funds to construct a
temple at Lepaksi. While he was supervising the completion of
the kalydnamandapa, the king returned and found his treasury
empty. The king ordered that the treasurer be blinded in punish-
ment, and, being a loyal servant, the man dashed out his eyes on
the spot. The stains from his eyes are still evident on the wall
near the unfinished kalydnamandapa; hence the village is known
as Lepaksi-"Blinded Eye" (literally, "eyes of the staining").66
The appropriation of a king's treasures by a devotee of the god
who uses them for pious purposes is a common motif.67 Yet it is
hardly by chance that the treasurer is blinded while constructing
the kalydnamandapa, the site of the wedding of the god and his
consort. The union of the divine couple is not to be witnessed,
even by their devotees.68

61 Abbe J. A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, trans. and ed.
Henry K. Beauchamp, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1924), pp. 629-31.
62 Mahabharata 1.205.1-30; cf. Alliyaracdnimdlai, ascribed to Pukalenti
(Madras, 1884), pp. 39-40. The popular attribution of this work and the related
folk narratives mentioned below to the thirteenth-century poet Pukalenti is
certainly wrong.
63 Rg Veda (London, 1890-92) 10.95; Satapatha Brahmana 11.5.1.1-17; cf.
Kosambi, pp. 42-81; J. C. Wright, "Puriravas and Urvasi," BSOAS 30 (1967):
526-47.
64 Matanakamarajankatai (Madras, 1848) 5 (p. 77).
65 Valmikiramayana (Benares, 1956) 7.13.22-31. Cf. Ikkatu Irattinavel
Mutaliyar, AstdstalBlaiy ennum tevipardkkiramam (Madras, 1923), pp. 30-34.
66 Ramesan, pp. 40-41, a summary.
67 Cf. Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam of Parafcotimunivar (Madras, 1965) 30.1-
58.1-86, 59.1-127, 60.1-45.
68 The motif is reversed but the punishment remains the same in a gloss in the
Talmud (Niddah 31A) on Numbers 24:3: Bil'am is blinded (shetum ha'ayin) for
asking how the Holy One, who awaits the birth of the righteous from the seed of
Israel, can watch their intercourse (after Numbers 23:10). Here physical blindness
punishes failure to perceive the sanctity of union (of men and women rather than
of gods); the reversal of human and divine is sustained by Bil'am's attempt to
project blindness on to God.
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History of Religions

The myth from Assam has taken this idea a step further, for
here it is the erotic goddess alone who must not be seen. She dances
without a consort within the confines of her shrine; and, although
our version of the myth fails to state this plainly, we may deduce
that here, as in several South Indian shrines,69 the source of her
attraction-and her power-is her virginity, which must not be
defiled even by sight. One way to safeguard her virginity and at
the same time to circumscribe the terrible energy she derives from
it is to lock her in an invulnerable enclosure. The bolted doors of
the sanctuary may themselves symbolize her virginity, as in the
earliest Tamil love poetry, where the lover must break down the
locked door of his beloved.70 For it is the virgin goddess who is
the true siren, seductive, powerful, dangerous. The god who desires
her must face the threat of death at her hands; in the end, either
he dies-as in the myth of Mahisa and in several of the folk
variants from other shrines-or he tames his fearful bride.71
The choice of the motif of blinding as the introduction to the
Mahisa myth now seems more intelligible. There is no reason to
believe its use here was an accident; in effect, the Tamil versions
have prefixed a weakened multiform of the myth to a rendering
characterized by the survival of archaic elements. It remains to
outline the permutations of the components of the myth as
isolated in our analysis. In particular we will briefly trace the
theme of the locked sanctuary of the goddess, which the folk
tradition knows as the sealed shrine of the dangerous Kali. This
image provides an important clue to understanding the myths
of the main goddess of Maturai, Minaksi, who, as we shall see,
may be directly linked with the murderess of Mahisa from
Tiruvannamalai.
The image of the locked shrine may be traced back in Tam
to the classical epic, the Cilappatikaram: A Brahmin was unjustl
thrown into prison in the Pantiya land, so the goddess Aiy
would not open the doors of her temple. The king investiga
the matter and made amends, and the heavy doors of the shrin
69 Cf. Kanyaksetramahatmya, Burnell MS B.486, India Office Library, Lon
cantos 2-5 and 22, passim; Teviparakkiramam, pp. 277-78; Tiruvarirppura
of Campantamunivar (Madras, 1894) 16.2; Whitehead, p. 132.
70 Kurunt6kai 244; Akananfru (Madras, 1965) 102.13; 311.1-5; cf. the crys
palace (palikkoaraimantapam) in which Manimekalai hides from the prin
(Manimekalai of Cittalaicattanar [Madras, 1951] 4.86-88); and cf. Song of Son
4:12.
71 Note that Kamakhya, the erotic goddess who dances within the closed door
of her shrine in Assam, is pictured standing on the corpse of Siva when it is tim
for love (kama) (Kalika Purana 60.58, and cf. the buffalo-myth from this text
above).
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The Murderous Bride

opened with a noise heard throughout the streets of ancient

Kutal (Maturai).72 The closing of the shrine is also associated with
a miscarriage of justice in the story of one of the most violent of a
Tamil goddesses:
A Brahmin squandered his wealth on a dancing girl in KSnici, neglecting
his wife. When he ran out of funds, he coveted the ornaments belonging t
his wife; he coaxed her to come with him from her parents' home to Kanic
and on the way he killed her and the child in her womb by pushing her in
a well. On his way to hide the jewels he had taken from her, a serpent bi
him and he died.
The Brahmin was reborn as a merchant with a magic sword to prot
him from all evil. Parvati took the form of Nili, a demoness roaming
forest of Alaiikatu, in order to take revenge for the murder of his
Although advised never to go north, the merchant went to Palaiyan
buy jewelry, leaving his wife in the forest when she grew tired on th
Nili made his wife reveal the name of her husband and, armed with this
information, appeared before a court of seventy Velalas in Palaiyanur
to lay claim to the man as her husband. She convinced them of her identity
by uttering his name, but the merchant knew her for a demoness determined
to take his life. "No wife of mine would thus utter my name," he cried in
despair to the Velalas; and, since the sun was setting and no decision had
yet been reached, they locked the couple up in the temple of Kali for the
night, having first made the merchant relinquish his magic sword to Nili,
and having signed a document giving their own lives as surety for his.
Nili killed the merchant and escaped by way of the gopura. When the
Velalas came to the temple in the morning, they were unable to open the
door. They prayed to Kali; suddenly the door opened, and inside they
found the disembowelled body of the merchant. Nili took the form of an old
woman claiming to be the merchant's mother; the Velalas were forced to
produce the document they had signed, and, true to their word, all seventy
entered the fire.73

Nili, a dark goddess like Paiiniili of the Mahisa myth, is locked in

her temple by the community rather than locking herself in,
although the Velalas are unable to open the door in the morning
without the aid of Kali/Nili. The stimulus is an act of injustice,
and the closing of the doors brings revenge-at the distance of a
generation from the crime. There is a link with the appearance of
this theme in the Cilappatikaram, for mention there of the closing
of the temple of Aiyai is immediately followed by the story of the
curse of Nili, the wife of a man unjustly killed in the presence of the
king of Kaliiga; Nili cursed the perpetrator of the deed to suffer
the same fate in a future birth.74 Hence, according to this passage,
the events narrated in the Cilappatikaram:

72 Cilappatikaram 23.99-125.
73 Priyapuranam of Cekkilar (Madras, 1916) 4.5.3; Cekkilarpuranam of
Um&pati Civacariyar (in the same volume) verse 15; Tirufiianacampantar-
tevaram (Tarumapuram, 1953) 1.45.1 (with commentary); cf. the modern retellings
by Cnici Ekamparamutaliyar, Nilikatai (Madras, 1922), passim; and Aru.
Ramanatan, Palaiyanur Nili (Madras, 1954), pp. 5-50.
74 Cilappatikaram 23.138-69; cf. Manimekalai 26.5-34.
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History of Religions

Kovalan was married to the beautiful Kannaki, but he spent all his wealth
on the dancing-girl Matavi. After a quarrel with Matavi, Kovalan returned
penniless to his wife. Together they set out for Maturai, where Kovalan
hoped to sell Kannaki's anklet (cilampu). A goldsmith who had stolen a
similar anklet belonging to the Pantiya queen accused Kovalan of the
theft; the Pantiya king believed his false testimony and ordered Kovalan's
execution. Kannaki, learning of his death, came to the court of the king
and proved his innocence. The king died of grief at the injustice he had
committed. Then the furious Kannaki tore off her left breast and hurled
it at the ancient city of Maturai, and the city was destroyed by fire.

Kovalan is identified by the epic with the murderer of Cafikaman,

the husband of Nili, by whose curse he was forced to undergo the
same punishment. There are other close similarities between the
story of the epic and the myth of Palaiyanur Nili: both share
the motif of a husband's impoverishment by a prostitute; in both
the husband dies as he is disposing of his wife's jewelry, and false
accusations are believed with fatal consequences.75 There is
also a Jain story about yet another Nili, again in a South Indian
source. Here Nili is a chaste wife falsely accused by her (Buddhist)
husband; she proves her chastity with the help of a friendly
devatd, who closes the gates of the city and informs the king in a
dream that only a chaste woman will be able to cause them to
open; Nili, alone among the women of the city, is able to pass
through the gates.76 The locking of the temple of the goddess is
replaced in the Jain story by the sealing of the city gates.
Nili, or Nilakeci,77 was the ancient goddess of Palaiyanur near
Tiruvalafikatu. Her shrine is still referred to as the milasthdna,
the original center of worship, by the priests of the Siva temple
there. Her name was apparently so closely linked with violence that
the tenth-century Jain author of the book Nilakeci chose her to
represent an extreme example of successful conversion: When a Jain
sage persuaded people to stop offering blood sacrifices to Kali, that
goddess called upon Nilakeci of the south to act against him-but
Nilakeci was herself converted to ahimsd! 78 The Jain polemical
poet clearly wanted to present as striking a success story as
possible. For our purposes here it is important to note that it is as

75 For a discussion of the parallels between the two stories, see K. P. S. Hameed,
"The Structural Pattern of Two Traditional Narratives in Tamil," Proceedings
of the Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies (Madras, 1971),
2:196-204.
76 Ratnakarandakasravakacara of Samantabhadra, cited by A. Chak
Neelakesi (n.p., 1936), pp. 15-18.
77 Also Bhramaralakambika, Tam. Vanf'arkulali, "Lady in whose tres
the] bees." For Nili as a name for the fierce goddess generally, see Cilap
12, palikkotai 1.3; Takkayakapparani of Ottakkfttar (Madras, 194
Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam 3.43; Oppert, p. 494.
78 Nilakeci, ed. A. Chakravarti (see n. 76) 1.27-65.
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The Murderous Bride

the wife of the protagonist that Nili claims his life in the final form
of the major myth from Palaiyanur. In other myths from this site
the conflict is between Nili and Siva, who overcomes the dangerous
destructive goddess by challenging her to a dance contest; Siv
wins by the unfair trick of thrusting one leg straight into the sky
while continuing to dance-a position which Nili is supposedly too
modest to imitate.79 The fierce goddess of Palaiyanur must be
tamed by her husband.80 In a hagiographical variant of this myth
the ancient demoness (pey) of this region is identified with
Karaikkalammaiyar who, as a withered, skeletal devotee of Siva
is the eternal witness to his dance.81
The closing of the Kali shrine is one variety of a basic type of
myth in which the dangerous goddess or woman is shut into a
container. Thus the goddess Kulumayiyamman committed such
atrocities that her worshipers put her in a box and dropped her in
the Kaveri;82 Saflkara is said to have thrown the goddess of
Tiruvorriyuir into a well;83 Durga was set adrift on the river in an
iron box which miraculously did not sink;84 a Brahmin caused a
Paraiya girl he was fated to marry to be shut in a box and floated
down the river after having a nail driven into her head.85 Alli, the
Amazon Queen of Maturai, was caught in a tiger's cage by
Sahadeva during her war against the Pandavas; thus trapped, she
was forced to become Arjuna's bride.86 According to a Telugu folk
version of the Rdmdyana, Sita was born in a lotus pond in Lanka
and discovered by Ravana; the astrologers predicted that the city
would be destroyed if Sita remained there, so the child-goddess
was locked in a box and pushed into the sea.87
Shutting the goddess in a container is one solution to the

79 Tiruvalankattuppuranam (Madras, 1864) 10-14. The dance contest forms the

central episode of this Purana. See also Tirukkfvappuranam of Turaimaikalam
Civappirakacacuvamikal (Madras, 1908), 7:242-75; Arthur F. Cox (rev. Harold A.
Stuart), North Arcot District Manual (Madras, 1894), 2:386; Kar&velane, Kdrei-
kkalammeiydr (Pondicherry, 1956), p. 44.
80 It is thus fitting that Sri Saila, the Tamil translator of Shakespeare's Taming
of the Shrew, called his book Nilivacikaram (Madras, 1912).
81 Periyapuranam 5.4.1-50. The motif of the dance contest, though located in
the traditions of Tiruv&lafnkatu, became widespread (cf. Hermann Kulke, Cidam-
baramdhatmya [Wiesbaden, 1970], pp. 121-26).
82 Puttfir kulumayiyamman cintu of Murukatas (Maturai, 1912), pp. 4-5.
83 T. V. Mahalingam, "The Pasupatas in South India," Journal of Indian
History 27 (1949): 47.
84 Manasakavya of Manakar, cited by Pradyot Kumar Maity, Historical Studies
in the Cult of the Goddess Manasd (Calcutta, 1966), p. 120.
85 Thurston, 6:120-21.
86 Alliyaracdnimdlai, pp. 119-20.
87 C. R. Sarma, The Rdmayana in Telugu and Tamil: A Comparative Study
(Madras, 1973), pp. 52-53.
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History of Religions

problem of her dangerous energy. Often, however, the motif is

reversed, as in the following folktale from Ramnad District:
The king of Tevai had a son named Subuddhi and his minister had a son
named Durbuddhi. The two boys were close friends, although the prince
believed that "Virtue alone conquers," while the minister's son's motto
was "Evil alone conquers." While they were still boys, Durbuddhi exacted a
promise from his friend that if he ever married, Durbuddhi would have the
right to spend a night with his wife. One day the lads followed a deer deep
into the forest. There, by the side of a tank, Durbuddhi tore out his friend's
eyes, filled the sockets with sand, and ran away.
Subuddhi crawled to the far side of the tank, where he discovered by
touch the entrance to a temple of Kali. He entered the shrine and locked
the door behind him. When KSli returned to find herself locked out of
her own temple, she threatened to kill the usurper. Subuddhi refilse
allow her entrance until she restored his sight; having no choice, she f
agreed.
After some months Kali sent the prince to the kingdom of the KSveri,
whose princess she had stricken with smallpox and blinded because the
king had lapsed in his devotion to the goddess. With KSli's aid Subuddhi
cured the princess and married her. Years later Durbuddhi happened to
come to the Kaveri kingdom; the prince forgave him and made him his
minister, but Durbuddhi once again plotted against him, slandering him to
the old king. The king believed Durbuddhi and ordered the execution of his
son-in-law and his daughter. Learning of this, Durbuddhi hastened to claim
his right to spend a night with his friend's wife, before the opportunity
passed forever; but the princess substituted her foster-sister for herself, and
by mistake the king's executioners killed Durbuddhi and the surrogate-
bride.88

Kali is locked out of rather than into her shrine, but the opening
of the doors still leads to the restoration of vision and the consum-
mation of a marriage-and thus our interpretation of the sym-
bolism is supported. Note the doubling of the blinding/restoration
sequence, which applies to both Subuddhi and his bride. Note, too,
the motif of the Liebestod: Durbuddhi dies through satisfying his
lust. In another tale, a prince wins the Pomegranate Maiden by the
same device used by Subuddhi: he enters Kali's shrine by night,
while the goddess is out wandering in the forests, and locks the
door; when she returns at sunrise, she has to promise to help him
before he will let her in.89 The dark, virgin goddess is forced to
provide her devotee with a bride.
Yet in one crucial point the folktale deviates from the myth-
by failing to identify the dark goddess herself as the bride. The

88 S. M. Natesa Sastri, Folklore in Southern India (Bombay, 1884), 1:63-83

(condensed); retold by Veronica Ions, Myths and Legends of India (London,
1970), pp. 151-55.
89 P&lasarasvati Tevakuncariyammal, Karndtaka yokinikkatai (Madras, 1917),
pp. 5-22. For an Oriya variant of this motif, see Laksmi Purana of Balarama Dasa,
cited Mayadhar Mansinha, History of Oriya Literature (New Delhi, 1962), pp.
229-31: Jagannatha locks Laksmi out of the shrine.
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 The Murderous Bride

folktale abstracts elements of myth and uses them for its own
purposes; the Puranas, in giving local myths their final, "san-
skritized" forms, distort ancient images and blunt their force.
Where, then, do the archaic strands of myth survive? Sometimes
the hints retained in the Puranic versions can be elucidated with
the help of the remarkably conservative substratum of popular
variants-the living, usually unexplored folk versions of the myths.
Let us look, for example, at one such version of the goddess myth
from Maturai:

Once the wicked, arrogant Pant.iya king closed the temple of Minatciyam-
man, the local goddess. Enraged, the goddess took the form of a child
wearing a bracelet exactly like one which belonged to the queen. The king
found the child in the palace and wished to adopt her, but the astrologers
warned that evil would result, so she was put in a basket and cast into the
river. She was fished out by a merchant, who named her Kannaki and
brought her up. Siva became incarnate as a merchant from Kavirippumpat-
tinam; hearing of the girl's mysterious origin, he married her. He became
poor and, ignoring his wife's pleas, went to Maturai to sell her bracelet;
some days before this, the queen had lost her bracelet, and the merchant
was therefore accused of stealing it, brought before the king and executed.
Kannaki learned of his fate and came to Maturai to take revenge; assuming
the form of Durga, she killed the king. "Since then she has been wor-
shipped by the people. The slaughter of the Pandian created in her a
desire for bloodshed, and she is now a deity whom it is thought prudent to
propitiate." 90

The locked enclosure of the goddess appears twice, first as the

closed temple of Minaksi, then as the basket in which the infant
is sent down the river; other versions substitute a golden box
for the basket, possibly through the influence of the important
motif of the golden seed in a pot.91 The locking of the shrine
has become a prelude to a truncated version of the Cilappatikaram
story 92--and Minaksi, the goddess of Maturai, is equated with the
epic heroine Kannaki, who takes the form of Durga.93 The first
victim of Minaksi-Kannaki's plan of revenge is none other than
Siva, who has become Kannaki's earthly husband (Kovalan). So,
indirectly, the goddess kills her consort-but let us go a step at a
time. The slaying of Kovalan-Siva is doubled in other folk versions.
In addition to his execution for allegedly stealing the anklet (or

90 Whitehead, pp. 112-13 (my summary).

91 M. Frere, Old Deccan Days (London, 1870), pp. 252-53; cf. Brenda E. F.
Beck, "The Study of a Tamil Epic: Several Versions of ilappadikaram Compared,"
Journal of Tamil Studies 1 (1972): 23-38. For the golden-seed motif (which is an
important element of the origin myths of many Tamil shrines), see O'Flaherty,
pp. 107-8.
92 See summary above.
93 Kannaki is identified with Durga already in the Arumpatavurai on Cilap-
patikaram 12.47-48 (referring to her description as konka ccelvi).
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History of Religions

bracelet), there is a similar episode which serves to introduce the

story:
An oil merchant vowed to light a lamp for Kali with a pot of oil if he
managed to sell 999 pots of oil. He succeeded in selling the required number,
but he discovered the Kali temple locked by the king because his wife had
been childless for twelve years. The doors were not to be opened, on pain of
death. Because of his vow, the merchant went in anyway to light the lamp;
consequently, both he and his wife were beheaded before the goddess by
royal command. The king's wife then became pregnant-Kali herself placed
the seed in her womb. The oil merchant was reborn as Kovalan, and his wife
was born as Matavi.94

Once again death (by beheading!) is the penalty for opening t

shrine of the goddess and for lighting her lamp (i.e., for conquer
blindness/darkness). The slain oil merchant is identified wi
Kovalan, the next victim, whom these versions also associate wit
8iva.95 This episode, built around the pattern of the intrusi
into the inviolable sanctuary, thus strengthens our suspicion th
an older level of myth is involved. But this is not all. The k
locks the goddess out for a reason other than simple pride
jealousy (which explains his action in Whitehead's account): K
has refused him offspring from his wife.96 Although the king'
act is ostensibly hostile to the goddess, in effect he overcomes t
curse of barrenness by sacrificing the oil merchant to Kali. There
a precedent for his action in the uraiperukatturai, which w
prefixed to the Cilappatikaram by an anonymous editor. The
sacrifice to Kannaki releases not seed but rain: The Panti
kingdom was stricken by drought, famine, fever and plague; Ki
Verriverceliyan pacified (cdnti ceyya) the Lady (nankai,
Kannaki) with the sacrifice of a thousand goldsmiths, and ra
came.97

The Pantiya king is clearly a pivotal figure in the folk versions

of the Maturai myth; it is by his orders that the oil merchant and
Kovalan are killed, while he himself remains the final and principal
victim of the goddess's revenge. It is in this light that we must
note the myth of Minaksl's marriage as recorded in the "official"
Puranic accounts from Maturai:

The king of Maturai had no children. He performed 99 horse-sacrifices,

and Indra, alarmed lest he be driven from heaven, advised the king to
94 Beck, pp. 26-27; Kovalankatai, ascribed to Pukalenti (Madras, 1914),
pp. 4-7.
95 Specifically with C6kkecar, Siva as worshipped at Maturai, the husband of
Minaksi (Kovalankatai, pp. 7 and 8; Beck, p. 27).
96 See the destruction of Ganesa's shrine for the same reason by Divodasa,
King of Kasi: Brahmanda Purana (Delhi, 1973) 3.67.28-64.
97 Cilappatikaram, uraiperukatturai 1; cf. 27.127-30.
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The Murderous Bride

perform a sacrifice to obtain a son. The sacrifice was carefully execute

according to the rules, but to the amazement of all a girl with three bre
appeared instead of the longed-for son. "What have I done wrong?"
cried the king; "all my enemies will laugh when they hear of the third
breast on this girl." A voice from heaven reassured him: "Perform all the
ceremonies as if she were a son. Her breast will disappear when she finds her
husband."
The girl was brought up as if she were a boy and, when her fath
she ascended the throne, to the delight of the fierce goddess who
seeks the flesh of enemies. She set out to conquer the world. Havin
come several armies, she came with her troops to Kailasa. The arm
giva fought with her and began to lose. Siva himself took the
battle. As soon as she caught sight of him, her third breast disappe
overcome with modesty, innocence and shyness, she began to scr
ground shyly with her toe. One of the attendants who remembere
voice from heaven which had spoken at her birth approached her a
"Lady, this man is your bridegroom." The princess took Siva to M
and married him there, and they reigned as Minaksi and Cuntarapa.n

The goddess is emphatically said to have preceded the g

Maturai; indeed, she attracts him to the site, which is he
and kingdom. Here, as in the traditions of other Tamil shrin
chthonic, ancient character of the goddess is proclaime
significant that Minaksi discovers her husband in battl
marriage she is transformed from a violent multiform of K
the goddess of war, into a gentle wife, just as Nili of Tiruv
is tamed by the dance.99 And it is as the Pdntiya king th
is the husband of Minaksi.
Here, then, is the missing link with the folk versions of the
myth, which have conflated Siva's role as Pantiyan with his
identification with Kovalan, the slain protagonist of the epic.
Siva as Pantiyan dies for locking the sanctuary, while as oil
merchant he dies for entering it. Again the male is split and his
role distributed, as in the buffalo myth from Tiruvannamalai-
but here all suffer the same fate. Still we may ask why the folk
variants never explicitly identify the king with Siva, since after
all the Pantiyan remains the direct object of Kali's wrath. Two
partial answers may be suggested. In the first place, the Puranic
myths of Minaksi and Siva-Cuntarapantiyan, which supply
Siva's role as king of Maturai, always end with the defeat of the
goddess by her divine spouse; historically this description may be
98 Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam 4.1-42, 5.1-44.
99 See above. The process of transformation from violent goddess to docile wife
or mother is attested at other shrines; sometimes the goddess is known as Santa-
nayaki or Santagunanayaki (as at Tiruvettakkuti, Tirumayilatuturai, etc.). The
change may be effected by adorning her with golden earrings (Tiruvanaikka),
drawing the sricakra at her feet (Kfaci), stationing her sons in her sight (Bhagavati
of Kerala), shading her with trees (Kannaki-Pattini [cf. Cilappatikaram 28.218-
21]), or, perhaps most frequently, by the dance.
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History of Religions

accurate, but the folk versions of the myth prefer the older image
of the slaying of the god, as in the Mahisa cycle. Hence the identity
of Siva and the king remains implicit; the Puranic reworking of
the myth has itself affected the folk versions. In addition, the
popular accounts have drawn from the recorded tradition that
Minaksi was the anomalous daughter of the Pantiya king. However
we may interpret the insertion of a local goddess into the royal
lineage of Maturai, the result in the folk tradition is that Minaksi
murders her father, not her husband.
One distant offshoot of the Minaksi myth in fact describes the
anomalous princess as threatening both father and husband:
In Madhupura on the northern trade-route, there was born to a king
a daughter with three breasts. The Brahmins warned the king never to
look at the child, lest he die an early death. The king avoided the sight of
his daughter, and he offered 100,000 gold coins to anyone who would
marry her and take her out of the country. A blind man and his friend, a
hunchback, decided to take up the offer; the king married his daughter to
the blind man on the river bank and sent the couple together with the
hunchback down the river in a boat.
The three set up house together in a foreign land, and after some time
the princess began to deceive her husband with the hunchback. She asked
her lover to find a means of poisoning her husband. One day the hunchback
brought a dead black snake to the princess to cook and feed to the blind man.
She cut it up, put it in a pot to cook, and asked her husband to stir it,
telling him it was his favorite fish dish. As he was stirring it, the poisonous
vapor caused the film over his eyes to peel away, and he regained his vision.
Seeing a snake cooking in the pot, he became suspicious and hid his re-
covery from his wife. Soon the hunchback came and embraced the princess.
At this, the husband took hold of the hunchback and threw him at the
princess. From the force of the collision, the hunchback's body became
straight, and the lady's third breast was forced in.100

The blindness of the husband is duplicated by the self-imposed

blindness of the father, who knows death will follow a vision of the
three-breasted princess. The bride coolly premeditates the murder
of her husband, but her poison is transformed into medicine, and
her restored husband restores his murderous wife to normalcy by
an act of violence. Similarly, in the Minaksi myth the goddess is
subdued and her third breast made to disappear in the course of a
war. The container which carries the dangerous goddess down the
river in several of the folk versions has here become a ship (ydna-
pdtra) which takes the princess to exile with her sightless husband.
Although the text places the story in the north (uttardpathe), there
can be no doubt that we have here a development of the Minaksi
myth from Maturai. The softened dental of the Tamil name is

100 The Pancatantra (Pirnabhadra's recension), Harvard Oriental Series, no.

11 (Cambridge, Mass., 1908), 5:10 (pp. 285-89).
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The Murderous Bride

preserved in the name Madhupura, and we should recall that t

Maturai tradition itself explains the city's name as deriving from
madhurd, "sweet"-because serpent's poison was converted the
to nectar, as it is, in a sense, in the Paicatantra story.101
There is another direct link between Minaksi of the Maturai
Puranas and Kannaki of the epic and its folk retellings-both los
a breast. Kannaki burns the city of Maturai with her wrenched
off left breast; Minaksi's transformation from warrior-queen to
wife is symbolized by her loss of the anomalous third breast
The motif of the lost breast appears elsewhere in the south: a
Kotunikoluir (Cranganore, on the west coast) Bhagavati has only
one breast;102 at Nakapattinam the serpent-goddess originally
had three, and one vanished when she caught sight of her husband,
Nagaraja-Siva.103 The oldest examples of the motif, however, say
nothing of a third breast: in Purananuru 278, a mother threatens
to cut off her breasts if her son has shown cowardice in battle.
Narrinai 216.9 refers to tirumdvunni, who cut off one breast; this
is probably a reference to Kannaki-or to her ancient prototype!-
since similar terms (orumdmani, tirumdmani, and tirumdpattini)
are attached to her in the Cilappatikaram, usually in connection
with her casting off her breast.104 And suddenly we are returned to
our starting point-for the phrase tirumdmani ("the great jewel")
appears in the first verse of Tiruinnacampantar's first patikam on
Tiruvannamalai, the home of the Tamil buffalo myth, in which the
fierce goddess is joined to Siva in the androgyne after killing the
demon. Now the goddess of Tiruvannamalai is known as apitakucd,
which has become in Tamil unndmulaiyammai, "the lady whose
101 Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam 28.1-23. The correspondence of the Paicatantra
story with the Minaksi myth was first noticed by Theodore Benfey, Pantschat-
antra (Leipzig, 1859), 1:511. The story is first found in the Jain recensions of
the Paicatantra (Pfirnabhadra and the Vulgate) but is missing from the Southern
Recension, the Kashmiri, and even from the late, much-contaminated southern
"Amplior." Did the ancient and important Jain community of Maturai preserve
the story and transmit it to the Jains of western India? The nineteenth-century
Tamil version of Tianavaraya Mutaliyar, Paicatantiram, 3d ed. (Madras, 1862),
pp. 176-79, substitutes a third eye for the anomalous third breast; we will return
to this association in a moment. Folk etymology notwithstanding, the name
Maturai is presumably a Tamil form of Mathura.
102 Kamil Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of South India
(Leiden, 1973), p. 173, n. 4.
103 Multiple-breasted goddesses appear elsewhere as well: Artemis at Ephesus
has "a multitude of protuding breasts" (James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough
[London, 1936], 1:37). The Mexican goddess Coatlicue-who is both benign and
fierce, the nourishing earth-mother who slays her lovers-has 400 breasts (see
Lewis Spence, The Gods of Mexico [London, 1923], pp. 14, 16, 183-87; I am indebted
to Dr. J. R. Marr for this reference). On Nakapattinam, see R. K. Das, Temples
of Tamilnad (Bombay, 1964), p. 166; Tirunakaikk&ronappur&nam of Minatci-
cuntarampillai (Tiruvavatutarai, 1970) 19.1-147.
104 Cilappatik5ram, patikam 5; 12.49-50; 15.93; 23.14; 27.129.
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History of Religions

breasts have not been sucked." There is a considerable mythology

capable of explaining why Parvati, the wife of the yogi-Siva,
should be considered unwilling or incapable of nursing her
children;'05 but apitakucd can also mean "woman whose breast
has disappeared" (from api-/i-), and the androgyne, whose origin
is now put at Tiruvannamalai, has only one breast. Has the
iconography of this shrine, supported by local myth, retained in
the androgyne the ancient image of the goddess who casts her
breast-the seat of her sacred power106-at her enemy (i.e., her
husband)? As a head rhyme with Annamalai, unndmulai seems too
good to be true, and one cannot help feeling that the older term,
apitakucd,l07 was Tamilized in this way for purely metrical
considerations. Let us return for a moment to the verse on Tiruvan-
namalai in Tiruiinanacampantar's Tevdram. This verse begins with
a reference to the androgyne but then seems to stray from the usual
image: "This is the mountain of the great lord, the One who,
joined with Uma whose breasts have not been sucked, became
wholly woman; the mountain where the Great Jewel [of chastity-
tirumdmani] is resplendent..." (unndmulaiy umaiydlo.tum utan
dkiya oruvan/ p?nndkiya perumdn malai tirumdmani tikala . . .).108
The commentator struggles vainly to explain how the androgyne
can become "wholly woman."
Of course the text of Tiruiinacampantar's poem could be
corrupt, and the appearance of tirumdmani there a coincidence.
There would still appear to be ample reason to infer that the
androgyne at Tiruvannamalai is another example of "icono-
trophy"-the misreading of ancient pictures 09-or of the
sanskritization of a purely local motif. The murderous goddess has
been neutralized through the myth of the androgyne.
But how did the myths of Maturai and Nakapattinam arrive at
the idea of a third breast, which the goddess loses at the sight of her
husband? Precisely, we would suggest, through the same process,
and because of the same wish to suppress the stark image of the
Murderous Bride. First, one must note the relation of the third

105 See O'Flaherty, pp. 265-70; to these examples one may add the folk myths
about Cutsalaimatan, the son of Parvati, who took to eating corpses because he was
unsatisfied by his mother's milk (Cutalaimditacuvdmi vilpdttu of M. Muttucamipillai
[Maturai, n.d.]), pp. 1-6.
106 On breast symbolism in early Tamil literature see George L. Hart, "Woman
and the Sacred in Early Tamilnad," Journal of Asian Studies 32 (1973): 238-41.
107 Cf. Skanda Purana 1.3.2.21.25-26.
108Tirufinnacampantar Tevaram 1.10.1, lines 1-2. This poem is probably the
oldest piece of literature connected with this shrine (seventh century?).
109 See Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (reprint ed., Harmondsworth, Middle-
sex, 1973), 1:21.
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The Murderous Bride

breast to the third eye. Eyes and breasts are often associated in the
myths: a crow-demon drew blood from the breast of Sita and was
half-blinded by Rama in punishment.ll0 Visnu worshiped Siv
with a thousand lotuses each day; when one was missing, he offered
one of his eyes instead and was given the discus Sudarsana as
reward (a pun on the name Sudarsana may be intended);1l th
same story is told of Laksmi, who offers not an eye but her breast
which becomes the bilva.1l2 The nipple is called mulaikkan
("breast-eye") in Tamil.113 Minaksi loses her violent nature when
she loses her breast at the sight of her spouse, just as the village
goddess ]llamman is drained of menacing energy when deprive
of her third eye by Siva.ll4 Note that it is seeing her husband tha
causes Minaksi's breast to disappear (kantav ellaiyil oru mulai
maraintatu).ll5
Both the third eye and the third breast, however, may be related
to the phallus."6 Breast milk and the seed of the phallus are
equated in the origin myths of many shrines, and there are exten
sive links in the mythology between the breast (often of the cow
and the phallus. The Minaksi myth has been interpreted in thi
light: the loss of the breast represents castration (i.e., the trans-
formation from a man into a woman)."7 The same motif leads to
a reversal of sex in a story from the Divyavadana: Riupavati cu
off her breasts in order to feed a woman reduced by starvation t
the point of eating her own child; Rupavati's breasts were restored
and Indra came to test her; "if it is true," she declared, "that
abandoned my breasts for the sake of the child, not to attai
sovereignty, heaven or pleasure or to become Indra, then let my
female nature disappear and let me become a man"-and at onc
she became Prince Rupavata! The prince is eventually reborn as a
child who lets a bird pluck out his eyes.118 Riipvati loses tw
breasts and becomes a man; Minaksi loses the anomalous third

110 Valmikiramayana (Baroda, 1960-71), 5.36.12-32; Stanley Rice, Occasiona

Essays on Native South Indian Life (London, 1901), pp. 211-12; cf. Cafikaranara
yanacamikoyirpuranam of Civalamarapantiyan (Maturai, 1909), 11.1-15.
111 Siva Purana 4.34.4-32; Kficippuranam 1.44.1-13.
112 Brhaddharma Purana (Bibliotheca Indica, vol. 668 [Calcutta, 1888-97]) 1.10
cf. Charles A. Kincaid, The Tale of the Tulsi Plant and Other Studies (Bombay,
1908), pp. 22-23.
113 E.g. Tiruvacakam of Manikkavacakar (Madras, 1954) 29.5.
114 Oppert, pp. 464-71; cf. Whitehead, p. 133.
115 Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam 5.43.
116 For the third eye, see n. 54 above; material on the correspondence of breast
and phallus in Indica has been collected by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty in Th
Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley, 1976).
117 Philip Spratt, Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psychoanalytic Stud
(Bombay, 1966), p. 268.
118 Divyavadana (Cambridge, 1886), sec. 32, pp. 470-76.
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History of Religions

breast and becomes a woman. That the three-breasted goddess is a

male-female hybrid we also learn from the popular ballads on
Arjuna's marriage to the Queen of Maturai. The Southern Recen-
sion of the Mahabharata tells us that Arjuna married Citrinigada,
the daughter of the king of "Manaliiru" in the south; there is no
mention of a third breast, but the girl is regarded by her father as
a son (putro mameyam iti me), and it is through her that the
dynasty must be perpetuated.119 In the folk ballads from Maturai,
Citrangada has become Alli, the Amazon Queen:
Siva withheld offspring from the Pantiyas for twelve years. On the death
of the king, the throne was inherited by a slave-girl's son, Ninmukan.
The Pantiyas paid him 6000 pots of milk in tribute each year. They
performed tapas to overcome the curse of barrenness, and Parvati had
mercy on them; she tore a piece of flesh from her shoulder and threw it on to
the leaf of a water-lily (alli) in a tank and then called to the P5antiyas:
"This is a male and a female." They found a child in the tank and took it
home, crying "The Piantiyas have given birth." The child grew into a girl
named Alli. When she was seven, she noticed the pots of milk collected
for Ninmukan; she spilled the milk and had snakes put in the pots, which
were then delivered to the king. Ninmukan came with an army against her,
but she fought with him and killed him, thus assuming the crown of Nili
and the throne of Maturai.l20

The slaying of Ninmukan-whose name ("Blue-Face") and histor

suggest that like Kovalan (> Gopala) he may be an allotrope o
Krsna-is but the start of Alli's career. The rest of the story i
devoted to Arjuna's wooing of the queen, who tries several times
to kill her suitor-by having him rolled in burning sand, hang
from a tree, sacrified to Kali, etc. In the end she is captured in a
tiger's cage and subdued.l21 Alli is regarded as an incarnation
Minaksi, and her story is an obvious multiform of the Minak
myths. Indeed, the Alli ballads dwell in detail on the theme of th
goddess slaying her consort, expanding what is compressed in the
Minnksi cycle. The link with Nili is thus natural, a further rein-
forcement of the relationship noted above between the traditions
of Maturai and Tiruvalankatu. Moreover, color sustains the lin
although Alli is sometimes said to be light except for her black hair
she is a multiform of the dark Kannaki /Kali/ and of Minaks
who even today is usually painted green. From birth Alli is an
119 The Mahabhdrata (Southern Recension), ed. P. P. S. Sastri (Madras, 193
1.203.15-30. The "critical" edition from Poona adopts the southern reading
(Manalifra) in 1.207.14-23 but, with better judgment, rejects it in favor of th
northern Manipura in 14.78-82 (the story of Babhruvahana, the son of this union
who slays his father in battle). The southern tradition appears to have conflat
two separate stories.
120 Alliyaracanimalai, pp. 20-38 (condensed).
121 Ibid., pp. 39-120. This summary hardly does justice to this rich an
neglected source of the folk tradition of Maturai. I hope to discuss the myths
Alli at length in a separate study.
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The Murderous Bride

Amazon, physically female but masculine in instinct and actio

her double nature is clearly stated by Parvati at her birth, a
the Pantiyas at first mistake her for a son. Here, then, is dire
confirmation of Minaksi's bisexual character as symbolized
her three breasts. In the case of Alli, even marriage fails to sup-
press the masculine component of the androgyne; in the sequ
to the Alliyaracdnimdlai, after her marriage to Arjuna, we again
find her setting out to slay her spouse.122
Thus the Puranic myths of Tiruvannamalai and Matura
represent nearly identical solutions to the problem of the Murde
ous Bride. Only the sequence is reversed. In Tiruvannamalai t
goddess joins the androgyne after slaying Mahisa-Siva; at Matura
she begins as the androgyne and is made a woman in the course o
the battle. The terrifying, one-breasted goddess is in one shri
assimilated to the single-breasted ardhandri icon; in the other sh
goes down in defeat, and her husband survives. Let us note i
conclusion the irony of this resolution-for it must be emphasize
that the god, far from fleeing the deadly encounter, seeks a Death
in-Love at the hands of his bride. Siva knows the price of enteri
the sanctuary; if the lover's sacrifice is averted, it is because the
god's devotees refuse to allow him to die. Paradoxically, only
a demon can the god achieve union and self-effacement. Sm
wonder, then, that later poets sing to the goddess of Siv
jealousy: "Feet that Siva longs for, these in your fear you ha
given to Mahisasura." 23
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

122 Pavalakkotimalai, wrongly ascribed to Pukalenti (Madras, 1912), passi

In the light of the Tamil myths, the etymologizing myth of the Amazons w
cut off one breast "in order to shoot better" may seem less fantastic; so is t
tradition that it was the Amazons who set up the image of the many-breaste
Artemis at Ephesus (Graves, 1:355 and 2:125, 130-31).
123 Ramprasadsen, cited in Thompson and Spencer, p. 34.

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