Ritual Space and Ritual Dominance: Garbagrha

Ritual Space and Ritual Dominance
Maheshvari Naidu
University of Durban-Westville, South Africa
The Temple That Houses The Gods

While thegod(s) Meenakshi and Siva are felt as present throughout the
length of Madurai, their presence, as far as the devotee is concerned., is
more tangibly experienced within the temple precincts and more precisely
defmed in the garbagrha (inner sanctum, literally wombhouse). If one
had to translate in lay terms the exigencies of the sacrality of temple
space perhaps the words of one of my informants whom I caught just as
he was about to enter the temple best sums it up. The informant, referring
to the temple exclaim:
Reproduced by Sabinet Gateway under licence granted by the Publisher (dated 2010).
"You know, it may be that god is everywhere, but he is more so in the

temple."
It is not so much the former part of the sentiment as the latter, that god is
more so in the temple, that is more revealing. In other words it is not so
much the god's (possible) universal (but invisible) presence that is of
concern in as much as the adherents' perception and experience of the
local deity's concentrated (visible) presence inside the clearly defmed
inner spatial reahn of the temple. Merely affirming the god's
omnipresence does not account for the pervasiveness and indeed
popularity of worship in the temple. Agamic textual tradition also tells us
that the temple is the place where the god 'lives'. The temple is thus
accepted by the different categories of believers as being the dwelling
place of the god.
The image that is to be installed in the temple is also meant to be

beautiful since it will be the abode of a god in which the god will take up
residence. While Diana Eck does not elaborate as to exactly what she
means when she says 'ordinary' Hindu, she is of course quite right in
Nidiin, Vol. 14, December 2002
saying that for most Hindus, the idea of god as invisible is foreign, and
that it is the Semitic religions that place a greater faith in what is referred
to as the 'Word' as opposed to the image.
Quite aside from what any neo-Vedantic interpretation that one might be
tempted to impute to them, the images of the gods in the Meenakshi
Temple do not refer to any transcendent reality beyond themselves. This
is apparent from the connotation of the terminology surrounding the
images. For the Sanskrit word pratikrti according to Eck, suggests the
"likeness" of the image to the deity it presents. 1 Furthermore murti is
defined in Sanskrit as that which has defmite shape and limits, "a fonn,
body, figure, an embodiment, incarnation, manifestation.,,2 The image of
the gods Meenaksru and Sundaresvara are thus not merely images. Rather
as the agamiC ritual texts construe it, the image "is a body-taking, a
manifestation, and is not different from reality itself,,3 In other words if
we had to understand the ritual texts, it is deemed that worship to the
images of Meenakshi and Sundaresvara is worship to the deities
themselves. This is something that the two categories of adherents lay and
specialist alike take very much for granted. The ritual process that is said
to allow for the god to inhere not only in a particular place but more
specifically in the particular image is the enlivening ritual that
consecrates and animates the presence of the god in the murti. It is thus
not merely in popular memory fed by tales of sacred games of the god
that the lay believer is made to acknowledge the intimate presence of her
god, but by the enlivening ritual which is the act that is seen as taking
possession of the god. The image is now not merely an image but the god
itself And as custodians of the ritual texts, the brahmin is the one who is
ritually empowered to facilitate the god taking up his residence in the
image through nyasa or the mantric imposition of the form of the deity
onto the murti.
In a visually orientated culture Hindu images thus become visual

"theologies," and they continue to be "read" as such by Hindus today.4
One example is of course the image of the fish-eyed goddess Meenakshi
and the devotees' exegetical understanding of these eyes as being those of
a maternal mother.
Worship of the Image in the Temple

hnage worsrup for the Indian theistic traditions appears to have been
known prior to the time ofPanini (6C BCE) who speaks of two kinds of
images, one for living and one for sale. S Bhatt states that Panini speaks
2
Naidu / Ritual Space
very lightly about image worship by claiming that one worships the
images merely for ones maintenance.
Appukuttan Nair in an article entitled "Siva Temple Worship In Kerala",

unfortunately adopts an hieratic henneneutic in his explanation for the
use of image worship. Reminiscent of the romanticist hermeneutics of the
early Orientalists he explains it thus:
"During Krtayuga, when human mind-control was of a very high order,

worship took the form of meditation.... "
According to this writer, by the time of the Dvaparayuga, ''man required

more familiar forms of concentration and this led to Vigraharadhana or
image worship.,,6
It is however wholly different as far as the agamic texts go. Image

worship is what the agamic tradition is all about. Here image worship is
considered to be obligatory and it is seen as the duty of the priest to
perform the daily worship at temples for tlle benefit of the kingdom and
the devotee.' The worship of a deity in an image is the central ritual
concern of the agamic litemture, 8 and this is very much the vein in which
the participants come to understand worship offered to the image housed
in a temple.
At the centre of (most) temples is the garbhagrha or wombhouse within

which the god is said to reside and which is a small dark space that is
enclosed on all three sides by the walls of the sluine. And the image,
especially the image in the garbhagrha to which worship and rituals are
offered is especially powerful as it is supposed to house the concentrated
presence of the main deity.
The Inner Sanctum of the Temple

The spatial definition inside the temple thus desclibes the concentration
of the god's presence read in terms of the god's power at that particular
place. Shulman (and also Kinsley) does not speak of space in terms of
sacred and profane. Rather, Shulman verbally couches his understanding
of demarcated spaces in terms of complementary dichotomies of chaos
(or impurity) and order (purity). Order is that which reigns within the
'sacred' space while chaos prevails beyond the limits of the demarcated
space. There is an echo of this notion of order (and by implication the
inverse, chaos) in Kmmrisch's description of the square space, which she
3
sees as being "literally the fundamental fonn of Indian architecture.,,9

Kramrisch claims that the square (which is the shape of both the temple
as well as the city of Madurai) is a mark of order.
To Shulman the locked shrine (which, one might add is also in the shape
of a square) marks the limits imposed on a concentration of power and he
points out that this idea is expressed in the structure of the south Indian
temple at the centre of which lies a focus of violent power. This violent
power he says is circumscribed by the temple walls and located within a
ritually ordered universe. It is in the inner sanctum- or "womb" that the
deity is supposed to be "conceived anew.,,10
Shulman goes on to describe what he tenns to be the qualitative

difference in the spaces as a sense of separation, detachment and control.
Says Shulman:
The strict limits applied to the sacred force detach the shrine from the
sun"ounding, less ordered sphere, which is saturated with impurity and
evil in contrast with the pure, hannonious realm within the temple walls
... The idea oflimita60n is joined to the guiding principle of separation in
this scheme; the sacred power is controlled, and in this way... its
separation from the outside world creates a zone of purity. 1\
The sacred power is described as a violent power. The god and goddess in
the inner spaces of the temple are described as possessing a power that
can be construed as violent. I have to admit that I'm not so sure I accept
that the Meenakshi devotees order their own understanding of spaces in
explicit tenns of order and chaos. None of my infonnants made use of
terms in English or in their native Tamil language, that closely or even
vaguely came near capturing the dichotomies of chaos and order
expressed by Shulman. However, Shulman has worked extensively with
the Sanskrit myths where the metaphors of order and chaos are indeed
strongly articulated and appear as sustained throughout many mythic
narratives.
Although the devotees did not speak in tenns of order and chaos, they
nonetheless did emphatically speak of the power of the gods housed in
the garbhagrha. And especially that of the goddess whose power was
conceived by the devotees as being potentially violent.
4
Naidu I Ritual Space
Fear as a Means for Understanding the Goddess

I had occasion to experience this sense of fear of the goddess in vivid
tenus while compiling a tape recording of the devotees attending a float
festival, the Teppukulam Marieammanvila, one of the fourteen festivals
celebrated by the temple. Here I was able to record several of the
devotees, while straining and pushing to catch a glimpse of (both) the
deities, exclaim to themselves and to those around them that:
"We should never do anything to offend Amman (Mother)" and "Amman

would take care of us".
It was also clear from one of the groups that I interviewed regarding the
dominance of the respective gods that the religious community of
Madurai, Saiva as well as Vaishnava, saw the goddess Meenakshi as
responsible for every facet of their well being. As such she was also
perceived to be responsible for any misfortune that might befall them. in
which case special propitiation to her was required to reverse the tide of
events.
It would often emerge during the course of my interviews that, as the

presiding deity of the city of Madurai, the power of goddess Meenakshi
was tangibly experienced by her devotees. I recall recording an
informant's story that he knew of someone who had come from another
part of India and settled in the city of Madurai. This individual had
apparently failed to understand the power of the goddess Meenakshi.
According to my informant, this person was as a consequence of this
irreverence perpetually visited by misfortune. The infonnant went on to
say that it was only when the individual acknowledged the power of
Meenakshi and showed deference to her, that his long spate of ill luck
abated.
The veracity of this story becomes something of a moot point. The point
being, the meaning that this particular recounting of events held for the
believer. This recounting belied the informant's implicit belief of the part
that his goddess played in the existential reality of the Madurai
community, and the fear that the goddess might wreak misfortune on her
devotee if she were to be offended in any way.
It thus appeared that with regard to their relationship to Meenakshi, the

devotees' symbols and practices were more readily grasped by
acknowledging their sense of fear of transgressing the goddess. I believe
5
Nidan, Vol. 14, December 2002
that it is more appropriate to read this fear not as a fear of the goddess as
such, but rather a fear of offending her.
O'Flaherty, referring to goddess in general, points out that although the

goddess also brings with her elements of destruction, the devotee does not
merely desire to placate the goddess but also wishes to have her never
leave him. She claims that "if the essential function of the Goddess is to
be there for you, you want her there even when she is in her shadow
aspect", and that "the only unbearable harm that the Goddess can inflict
on the worshipper is to abandon him ... 12
In the instance of the Madurai devotee, this fear is that one may offend
Meenakshi and that she may choose to unleash some sort of misfortune
on the devotee, or worse yet, to abandon the devotee. Abandoning the
devotee means that the devotee no longer has access to the concentrated
power of the deity housed in the image which stands in the recesses of the
inner sanctum.
The fear that this goddess elicited together with the reverence and awe the
devotee appeared to feel toward her appeared to connect her with the
(more capricious) village goddesses who were at once responsible for
averting major calamity as well as bringing it on, both in the life of the
villager or 'devotee', as well as for the village as a whole.
What was most interesting for me was what tillS element of fear possibly
pointed to. After all, Meenakshi was still the aesthetically pleasing image
that I described in the opening lines of tile previous chapter. What
emerged however was the possible connection between the emotion of
fear and the earlier personality of the goddess.
The Place as the Body of the Divine or Place as Goddess

I was led to enquire from some of the priests about the lingam (phallic
Siva), which in terms of Madurai history was discovered as a natural
structure. This question itself was prompted by my observance of the
numerous occasions that devotees would point to the svayambhu (self
manifest) nature of the Iingam using this 'fact' as some kind of
legitimisation for the power of the god. To my question as to whether the
Jingam was found attached to a yon; (that is tile lower half or base of the
lingam and which was symbolic of the goddess), the priest's reply was
no. When I asked whether this was usual, the reply was that:
6
"It was not unusual, especially in the case of Madurai where the ground
to which the lingam was attached was itselftheyoni".13
This point was reiterated by some of the lay devotees with whom I spoke.
These devotees were elderly gentlemen retired from their respective
professions who spent their afternoons at the temple. From my
discussions with them it was apparent that the conceptualisation of the
holy ground of Madurai as the yoni portion of the svayambhu lingam was
shared also by them.
The belief that the earth contains or holds Siva finds something of a
parallel in the story of the goddess Sati. The Sati myth narrates that Sati's
dismembered body falls to the earth and wherever a piece is said to fall, a
pitha (sacred space), is consecrated. The version in the Siva purana
depicts the grief-stricken Siva who is the spouse of Sati as following her
to earth and "finding her yoni established in Assam, he plunges into
her.,,14
Here the space upon which the piece of Sari's body falls becomes
sacralised earth and in Assam it comes to be represented in the fonn of a
yoni. Interestingly, at Madurai the city as a space was perceived to be the
yoni. And Siva in the fonn of the svayambhu lingam is claimed to be
standing in this sacred yoni. For the informants the land was further
personified as Meenakshi. ls
Whether one can safely see a convergence between Hudson's thesis l6 that
the city of Madurai is Meenakshi and my research where the informants
identified the goddess as the land of Madurai, is somewhat premature.
However there is enough of a semblance between the literruy sources in
Hudson's research l ' and the data that emerged from the field, in terms of
the perceptions of the present devotees for me to conclude that the
informants' reference to Madurai as the yoni was not merely metaphoric.
And that Meenakshi, personified as the land of Madurai is indeed one of
the ways in which the believer understands the goddess. TItis
understanding may well allude to the complex folk character of the
goddess.
For David Kinsl ey l8 writes that in the case of village goddesses the
goddess is sometimes represented by merely the form of a head placed
directly on the ground. He points out that this may in fact imply that the
goddess' body is the village itself, and that she is in effect rooted in the
7
soil of the village. Thus while in the Sanskritic tradition the land oflndia,
as a whole, is revered as the feminine Divine, in the popular traditions the
land is seen as being divided into individual villages, each with it's own
local grama devata (village deity). Whitehead 19 states that before the
coming of the Atyans, the population was divided into small agricultural
and pastoral communities and that each village seems to have been under
the protection of some spirit or deity, which was more often than not a
goddess. One adds that here the goddess is the earth, but not through a
narrative that tells us of some kind of divine adventure with Siva as with
the Sati narratives related earlier. In the context of village goddesses, she
is the earth in her own right.
As Shubnan notes, the local goddesses of south India can also be seen to
be the earth or the "universal womb from which life issues.,,2o This thesis
of Shubnan makes sense, but only if we take "universal womb from
which life issues" to be life in very real agricultural tenns as opposed to
theological or philosophical. Seen in this way, the devotees'
understanding of Meenakshi as the land ofMadurai may not be so much
off the mark if we start to consider her as a local goddess from the folk
tradition.
Meenakshi in Folk Sources

Thus, the way the goddess is understood by her lay worshippers points to
the possibility of older elements of the goddess' personality before she
comes to be installed as the brahmanic deity in the main temple. TIlese
elements appear to survive together with the 'official' version found
historically later. This aggregate of different layers in the mythic structure
of the goddess' identity and ancestrage does not form part of the concern
of the local devotees as I discovered through my many interviews.
However from a history of religions point of view it is clUciai to our
understanding of the goddess, and what marriage, in brahmanic tenus,
does to her. For this we are compelled to unpack the various older strands
of the goddess's personality in order to sift out residual beliefs that lie
alongside later 'intrusive' traditions.
Henry Whitehead who, although criticised by subsequent anthropologists

and historians of religion regarding some of his theoretical assumptions
about the origin of the worship of village deities, remains nevertheless a
valuable reference especially for the vividness of his ethnographic writinfi
which derives as he puts it, from "purely his own observations."2
Another reason that writers like Whitehead, Elmore, Srinivas et al. are
8
important, is because, aside from their work being largely ethnographical,

they write from the standpoints of the folk traditions. This is unlike
writers like say, Shulman and Kinsley, (although excellent scholars,
especially the former who I have used extensively) who work mainly
with the Sanskrit based traditions and what they see as the local variants
and 'localised' versions of the original Sanskritic myths.
Whitehead's account of a popular shrine to the goddess Meenakshi is

interesting and worth repeating. Whitehead narrates:
At Cuddalore I visited a shrine of Minachiarnman at the village of

Devananpatnam. It stands on the seashore on a low ridge of sand. There
is no building, but an oblong space about 20 by 12 feet is enclosed on
three sides by rows of clay figures, the eastern end towards the sea being
left open. On the western side of the oblong, facing the sea, there were
two small clay figures, apparently a man and a woman, seated in the
centre. They were about a foot high with the remains of old garlands on
them. To the left and right of them were figures of seven virgins (or
Saptakannigais). very well modelled in clay and about nine inches high.
In front of and beside them were the figures of male guardians and
attendants. On each side of the images of the virgins was a figure of a
large round fish with open mouth and staring eyes and seated on the back
of each fish were the figures of a man and a woman. The pujari [non
brahmin officiating priest] of the shrine told me that the woman was
Minachi the fish-goddess. and the man Madurai-Viran. Beside each fish
were figures of guardians and attendants ....
Animal sacrifices, consisting of goats, cocks etc. are offered to these

deities once a year at an annual festival ... the goddess Minachi, who is
seated on it ~e fish], is commonly worshipped by fishermen who swear
by her name.
Whitehead ends what has been up to then purely a descriptive account of

the seashore shrine with a theologically derived conclusion. stating, "She
[Meenakshi or Minachi as it is read in Tamil] is the goddess worshipped
in the great temple of Madurai together witll the god Siva.'.23 However,
while Meenakshi in the main temple in Madurai is housed within the
confmed sacred enclosure of the dark inner sanctwn, Whitehead's
Minachi is in an open shrine, easily accessible to her worshippers, and
with an altogether different more and liberal dietary preference. And
while at the main temple her guardian Munisvar is well outside the
temple precincts on the side of the north tower, here Minachi sits next to
her guardian, the divine-hero, Madurai-Veeran. Indeed they take their
meals together. As Whitehead tells us, blood sacrifices are offered to
them both at the annual festival.
There are also 'pieces' of a popular story that tell us that Meenakshi is
actually a fisher-king's daughter, as opposed to being the daughter of the
Pandyan king. The tala puranic text in another chapter however, makes
out that this is in fact the goddess Meenakshi incarnate in the fisher caste
because of a curse placed on her by Siva.
According to this understanding Meenakshi is herself the incarnation of

Parvati. Siva marries Meenakshi again, incarnate as the fisher-king's
daughter and this is to be understood as the god's second marriage. These
are however again theological issues that are SUbjective. What does
emerge though is that in terms of textual structure the puranic version of
the Meenakshi marriage myth has absorbed and modified many of the
early traits of Meenakshi's personality, leaving us to tease out what must
be certain strands of the original folk story. It is quite possible that the
older fisher-king story is a folk tale that became assimilated into the
puranic myths where the fisher-king's daughter Meenakshi comes to be
identified with Parvati. This would perhaps explain the reason why
Meenakshi is especially revered by the fishing conununities in some parts
ofTarnilnadu. Whitehead's description of the seashore shrine would then
be the popular worship of the goddess Meenakshi that survived even
though Meenakshi had been absorbed into the brahmanic tradition.
Unfortunately it was outside the limited scope of this study but it would
have been interesting to have undertaken some fieldwork in a fishing
conununuy where a Meenakshi-like goddess was being propitiated. And
although there does not appear to be any in-depth study of the folk origins
of the goddess Meenakshi many writers point to the possibility of an
older personality of the goddess.
W. T. Ehnore24 writes in a footnote that Meenakshi was originally a

powerful queen in the Pandyan dynasty, who comes to be deified after
her death. He states that Meenakshi in turn comes to be worshipped by
the subjects in her kingdom. Elmore claims that the Oliginal god of
Madurai was Chokkalingam. Indeed some of the lay devotees would
insist to me that Siva's proper name at Madurai was not Sudaresvara but
Chokkalingam. Elmore judges from this name as well as the attributes of
this god that the god was one of the local demons. He states that the
10
brahmins adopted this local deity into the Hindu pantheon and turned him
into an avatar (incarnation) of Siva. Elmore continues that:
... there was another powerful local deity, a goddess, who was much
more feared by the people than was Chokklingam, as a Sakti is always
more terrible than male god. Her name was Minakshi. The Brahmans
(sic) wished to attach this powerful cult also, and accomplished this by
arranging a marriage between Minakshi and Chokkalingam, [by] now
called Siva?5
Harman26 cites Subramanian as looking at the contrast between the

mythology and the ritual and concluding that the Meenakshi was
originally a local goddess. Harman27 also cites Jan Gonda as contending
that Meenakshi's marriage to the god Siva was a way to incorporate a
powerful, locally important Dravidian goddess into the brahmin Saiva
pantheon and that she was originally unrelated to the northern male,
Sanskritic import Siva.
It is also said that in the early and middle Cola periods that there are no
separate shrines to the goddess. The notable exceptions being, that of
goddess Durga at Mahabalipuram, goddess Kanya Kumari at Kanya
Kumari Temple and goddess Meenakshi at Madurai. 28 When a so called
Dravidian goddess marries into the brahmanic tradition, she retains a

separate shrine for herself This appears to be the pattern in Saiva
temples. A few of my informants, who were traditionally trained scholars
and appeared to be die-hard Siva supporters maintained that the goddess
shrine was a much later addition to the temple. However the original
mythic narrative in the tala purana tells us that Kulecekara Pandyan
ordered that two shrines be built, and that one would be for the goddess. 29
Of course Meenakshi does not have quite the destructive nature of the
village goddesses Sitala or Manasa. However there are surviving
elements of the devotees' perception towards Meenakshi from which one
may speculate that she too has roots to a pre-aryan goddess that is able to
evoke fear in her adherents. The people I interviewed although well
aware that the goddess ought never be transgressed, seem long since to
have forgotten earlier versions of the folk story.
This in large part is as a result of the ,ala purana which would have us
believe that where as before the marriage Meenakshi was merely a queen,
she comes to be deified after the marriage to Siva The legitimacy of this
11
claim however cannot be sustained in the light of the overwhelming

evidences that point to her status of goddess in the folk tradition. The
classical tradition appears to have merely assimilated the goddess while
effectively taming her character to fit the description of a normatively
acceptable divine consort. This brahmanic device of taming the wild
goddess from the outside tradition through marriage is however,
somewhat undermined by the devotee's attitude towards the goddess. For
the behaviour of the lay devotees resident in Madurai as shown earlier
appears to reflect strands of folk elements of the Meenakshi cult.
The element of fear on the part of devotees may well answer the possible
theological dominance of the goddess, if not in the brahmanic text,
certainly in the religious realty of the devotees. The reality is that while
the TiruviJaiyadaJ Puranam constructs the perception that the space
belongs to Siva, the lay devotees understand that as presiding deity of
Madurai, the city is under the control of the goddess. This paradox
between the goddess's textual status and the way she is understood by her
lay worshippers, one suggests, points to the possibility of older and
popular elements of the goddess that predate the Madurai marriage myth
in the tala purana.
EUtualPrerogative
This sense of fear of the potentially violent power of the goddess in the
inner chamber surfaced early on in the course of my research when, on
the first occasion that I visited the temple I was cautioned by my
companions that I ought to always proceed to the shrine of the goddess
before entering that of Siva. I recall making a mental note wilen told by
my informants that all rituals were first offered to Amman (Mother
goddess) before being offered to the god Siva. I remember catching
myself reacting to this unusual practice not practised at the other major
Saiva temple in South India, Chidambaram and which appeared to be
peculiar to the Saiva Meenakshi Temple. For in all other major Saiva
temples in India "the worship of the Mother follows the worship of
Siva.,,30 In other words, in the Meenakshi Temple, ritual prerogative is
vested with the goddess.
To me this peculiarity had significant implications in terms of the

theology of the gods themselves. It was also clear from the behaviour of
my companions that the ritual protocol, what Laidlaw would describe as
"ritual commitment,,3l of proceeding to the shrine of the goddess first was
not to be made light of and that any indiscretion on their part, or mine for
12
that matter would anger the goddess and we in turn would be visited upon
by grave misfortune.
While these two companions were brahmin the rule that the goddess'
shrine was to be visited first was widely pervasive and certainly not
restricted to the brahmin classes in the Madurai community. I found that
regardless of which class or which of the Hindu traditions I observed that
even a child of five was conversant with this religious protocol.
One would naturally be led to assume that because the male god was
deemed by the tala puranic text to be the primary deity the devotees
would seek out Sundaresvara-Siva over and above that of the goddess.
However, my informants (both brahmin as well as non brahmin) would
often point out that on the occasions when they were rushed, or during the
season of pilgrimage when the traffic at the temple was even denser than
is usual, they would not leave before receiving the darshan (literally
'sight') of Meenakshi. And if things were really rushed, they would leave
even before visiting the shrine of Siva. But they were emphatic that they
would not leave without offering worship at the shrine of the goddess. In
a survey conducted some twenty years ago it was estimated that the daily
visitors to the temple, on average numbered fifteen thousand. The average
number of daily visitors on a Fridar, a day considered to be sacred to the
goddess, was twenty five thousand. 2
Catherine Bell claims that ritual acts are articulated and are to be
understood within a semantic framework. The significance of the act
depends on where it is articulated, and the context of all other ways of
acting, that is to say, ''what it echoes, what it inverts, what it alludes to,
what it denies...33 If one has to extend this to the articulation and the
sequential ordering of the daily public worship to the gods in the
Meenakshi temple we see that it can facilitate a heuristic interpretation of
the theological import of these deities. The order of worship between the
two main deities is itself simple. The daily ritual public worship is first
offered to Meenakshi and thereafter to Siva or Sudaresvara. This
arrangement prevails even though scholars like Kasirajan contend that
according to the architectural features of the Meenakshi Temple, the
Sundersvara shrine is the main and more ancient of the shrines in the
temple. 34 This claim is based on the sizes of the respective shrines both
of which face the auspicious east. The inner sanctum of the male god is a
square structure measuring 33 feet on all sides while that of Meenakshi
which lies south-east of that of Siva's, measures only 25 square feet. The
13
fonner is thus obviously the larger, and one asswnes, in terms of temple
architectural exigencies, the more important of the twO. 35
Both the shrines however have the essentially the same basic design.
Fuller tells us that in tenns of temple plan the Meenakshi Temple
complex is not exceptional to the other Saiva temples where the male god
is prominent. 36 In the Madurai temple however, Meenakshi is seen as the
pre-eminent deity.
It thus made sense for the Meenakshi devotees at Madurai to offer

worship at the goddess shrine before proceeding to Siva's shrine. To the
devotees this behaviour mirrored the fact that all rituals were themselves
offered to the goddess fIrst. The temple's head musician Ponusami Pillai
revealed to me that although the exact time varied, usually all rituals to
the goddess (accompanied by the full complement of temple musicians).
were offered approximately fifteen to thirty minutes before being offered
to Siva. He did add though that there were times when the priests began
to offer worship in Siva's shrine before the worship to the goddess had
been fully completed. All this was confirmed in a subsequent interview
with the temple priests.
My informant Gnana Sastrigal quite rightly pointed out that in all the
other major Saiva temples in south India, ritual was always offered first
to Siva and only thereafter to the goddess. 111is point was borne out by
another infonnant, this time a young scholar by the name of Sankarasastri
who also maintained that as far as the Saiva agamic texts are concerned
ritual was prescribed to be perfonned fIrst to the male god and only
thereafter to the female goddess. He too stated that for the order of
worship to be any other way at the Meenakshi Temple meant that the
order had been somehow inverted.
Bell states that priestly control of sacred texts promotes a kind of

standardisation of what comes to be accepted as the orthodox ritual
practices in textual fonn, establishin~ in turn a basis for a type of
interpretative and exegetical discourse. Of course as Bell herself shows,
this sort of discourse functions to create a class of experts, and the experts
function to sustain the standardised texts, which in tum validate their (the
ritual specialists) behaviour towards the deities. The one feeds off the
other, authenticates and perpetuates the other in a mutual relationship.
The distinction though is that it is the ritual specialist or the gurukuls at
the Meenakshi temple that actively maintain both the past and their
14
access to it through the elaborate medium of rituals in public worship and

their particular interpretation of the order of that worship.
What is even more interesting in the case of the officiating priests at the
Meenakshi temple is that they were in any case not following the agamiC
texts (the Karana and Kanika which they claimed to mainly use). These
Saiva agama by all accounts prescribe that rituals are to be performed to
the male god Siva and only thereafter to the goddess. What had come to
be standardised was the inverse of this agamic prescription. Here the
priests' particular interpretation granting pre-eminence to the goddess in
the ordering of the public worship to the gods in the inner shrines was not
culled from these texts.
There are two reasons that one is able to adduce for the relative
importance of the goddess over the god, in terms of ritual dominance as
well as theological import.
(1) The devotees' attitude towards the goddess which alludes to certain
features of the goddess' personality, who if we accept as an ancient
goddess from the local Madurai folk tradition appears deeply embedded
in the religious consciousness of the devotees. Alongside the obvious
reverence felt towards the goddess (seen as the mother who takes care of
her children, epitomised by the devotees) is the strong element of fear
that the goddess must not be transgressed. My informants were all

emphatic that they would not leave the temple without having received
the darshan (sight) ofMeenakshi.
(2) The ordering of the public worship offered to the two main deities in
the Meenakshi Temple which reinforces the primacy and centrality of the
goddess in the existential welfare of the Madurai devotees. AU daily
pujas from four thirty in the morning, from the tiruvananta/ puja (waking
up the deity) to the palliyarai puja (putting the deity to bed) at nine thirty
in the night is first offered to the goddess housed in the inner shrine,
before being offered to Siva.
While (I) is a reflection of the devotees' religious feeling towards the

goddess, (2) can be suggested more as a result of a political strategy on
the part of the ruling Nayaks of the thirteenth century.
What emerges from a few scarce literary sources 38 and informants like
Gnana Sastrigal was that Tirumala Nayaka in the thirteenth century, who
was a Vaishnavite, that is a worshipper of the god Vishnu rather than
15
Siva, was also a strong follower of Mother goddess worship. And

interestingly, although we come across the names Cokkar, Somasundera,
etc., well established in the literary works during the Nayak period (1600-
1750 BCE), the name Meenakshi Temple, although not found in the
literary tradition is used in popular tradition from the days of the Nayak
rulers.39 One suggests then that it was during this period that the original
order (as would have been prescribed by the Saiva agama texts) of
performing the puja at the Sundersvara shrine was altered to afford the
mother goddess a more prestigious place thereby affording her the ritual
prerogative to grant the first darshan to the devotees. This was
colLabomted by my interview with Gnana Sastrigal which revealed that
the old scholar felt very strongly that the ritual order had been inverted by
the priests at the Meenakshi Temple. He said that he believed that the
daily pujas were as a rule to be performed initially to Sundaresvara and
thereafter to Meenakshi. While he was not able to explain coherently as
to why the order of the daily rituals would have been changed around, he
remained adamant that this was indeed the case.
The order of the public worship thus alludes to the ritual (and theological)
importance of the mother goddess. It is also reflected off tlle order in
which the devotee will now visit the shrines of the gods (even at times
other than that of the eight periods of prescribed public worship) to offer
their worship and seek darshan. It further reinforces the manner in which
the Madurai devotees view their goddess, as the primary divinity in their
lives and inverts the (textual) superiority of the male god.
If we had to apply the argument that relations of power are rarely

engendered from only the top down, but from the bottom up as we1l40 to
the Madumi devotees it is clear that ritual behaviour is not only structured
from the top, by the texts and brahmin specialists, but also engendered by
the devotees themselves. The devotees seek out the darshan of
Sundaresvara-Siva, but only after they have had the sight of the goddess
Meenakshi.
Re-ordering of Public Worship

King Tirumala Nayaka who ruled the city of Madurai during the
thirteenth century, being a Vaisbnava (like the Vijaynagar rulers before
him) appears to have been more comfortable with promoting the ritual
dominance of Meenakshi over that of Siva, who is traditionally
considered to be the rival of Vishnu. Saivism and Vaishnavism as
16
sectarian schools of thought are considered to be rival and competing

theologies in the late classical and medieval periods.
In the tala purana however, Vishnu (although nowhere spoken of as the

son of Malayadvaja Pandyan, Meenakshi's father) is made to be the
brother of Meenakshi. Maladvajaya Pandyan's early death is thus
fortuitous in that it makes possible for the bride to be given away in
marria~e by the brother, as is the custom in traditional Tamil marriage
ritua1. 4 While in the local lay myth42 in the Madurai's popular tradition it
is meant to be the local god Alagar (Vislmu) who is to hand over the
bride to Siva, in the brahmanic ritual re-enac1ment of the divine marriage,
Vishnu as Pavalakkanivay Perumal (according to the official as opposed
to the lay myth) is one of the chief actors as he represents the bride's
family. Through the divine marriage, Siva and Vishnu are now brothers-
in-law.
The point is that., affording ritual prominence to Meenakshi translates to

the fact that now both the shrine and the city hold significance for the
local Vaisnavas as well as Saivas. According to many of my lay
informants who were Vaisnavas, paying homage to Meenakshi was
deemed fitting as the goddess was accepted as the sister ofVishnu. 43
Victor Turner is said to have worked out a description of ritual whereby

ritual, as a mechanism, periodically converts the obligatory to the
desirable. 44 This statement is a wonderful illustration of the devotees'
attitude towards the ritualised action of visiting the shrine of the goddess
first. As I've mentioned, it has become obligatory that the devotees offer
worship first at the shrine of the goddess. In this instance what is
obviously Obligatory and what as far as the priests (who in the period of
the Nayaka kings would have facilitated his relationship to the deities in
the Meenakshi Temple) here are concerned, what oUght to be done, is
turned into what is desirable for the devotee.
The devotee now wishes to see Meenakshi first and obtain her darshan
before proceeding to the shrine of Siva. This sequence of ritualised action
is what is deemed as correct., and just as importantly, is seen as desirable
by the socialised devotees. The devotees come to believe that the
goddess' shrine is to be visited first. A few attempted to explain to me
that it made more sense at home to first approach the more approachable
and less formidable father if they wanted their wishes met. They added
that it was the same in the temple.
17
Nidlin, Vol. 14, December 2002
While as far as I'm aware there is no literary evidence that supports my

suggestion that the order of public worship was inverted during the period
of Tirumala Nayaka, there is both oral evidence as well as written
sources4S that indicate that another strategic change was effected by
Tirumala Nayaka who is said to have changed the date that the wedding
of the gods is celebrated from the montll of Maci (February-March) to
that ofCittirai (April-May).
The other festival held by the AJagar Temple outside Madurai in the
month of Cittirai is that of the god Alagar's Journey. As the month of
Cittirai was that of the harvest, Tirumala is said to have found a shortage
of manpower to draw the two massive festival cars on their ten day ritual
journey around the city streets. He is said to have altered the date of the
marriage and the car pulling to Maci, which was a time when the
harvesting was traditionally over. Large numbers of people were now
able to attend both the festivals and were available to draw the cars. 46
While this move sounds sensible and highly pragmatic, it is nevertheless

a manipulation of the previous timing and it appears to have also been
politically motivated. Hudson suggests that to Tirumala (a Vaishnava) the
union of both the festivals, that of Meenakshi-Sundaresvara's marriage
and AJagar's (Vishnu'S) Journey would have allowed his expression of
devotion to Visnu in the predominantly Saiva area of Madurai. Moreover,

it also allowed for a public statement and ritual expression of the unity of
the northern region of Madurai, over which the king was sovereign. This
is said to be a vital public political statement as Tirumala Nayaka was the
first Madurai Nayaka to have gained political independence of the old
kingdom of the Pandyas from the previous Vijayanagara dynasty.47
There thus appears sufficient evidence to support the contention that

TirurnaIa Nayaka altered the period of celebration of the Marriage
festival. This move seems to have been motivated by reasons of
devotional allegiances as well as political. There is however, merely a
small body of oral testimony that suggests that Tirumala Nayaka was also
responsible for inverting the order of the public worship to the deities,
Meenakshi and Sundaresvara.
This claim is itself based on the testimony of some of my (brahmin)

informants. The claim is though premised upon other realities. According
to the readings of most traditional scholars ritual puja in the Saiva
agamas is prescribed as being offered to the god and thereafter to the
18
goddess. Both categories of informants, the traditionally trained scholars

as well as the many officiating priests at the Meenakshi Temple were
unanimous about this. What is also true is that at present, the ritual order
is not what is prescribed by the Saiva agamas.
Summary: Assigning Ritual Prerogative

It has been pointed out that Tirumala Nayaka, aside from being a
Vaishnava, was also an ardent worshipper of Mother goddess. While as
the king he would have had to sponsor and act as patron to the
predominant Saiva faith of the kingdom., he would have also wished to
express his faith to Vishnu. Promoting the ritual dominance of Meenakshi
would have allowed the expression of his Vaishnava leanings as
Meenakshi is made out, in the classical tala puranic text to be the sister
of Vishnu.
In addition, as a worshipper of the matriachical centred Mother goddess
cult, Tirumala Nayaka would have been familiar with the aspect of
protective personality of the goddess. It is interesting that Dennis Hudson,
whose article on the Marriage Festival I have referred to, in another
publication refers to Meenakshi, not only as the presiding goddess of
Madurai, but also the city's protective goddess. 48 If Meenakshi is, as
Hudson claims, not merely the city's presiding goddess, but also its
protective deity, Tirumala Nayaka might well have sought to actively
promote the goddess' pre-eminence. For while the distinction between

protective and presiding might well appear superfluous to some, it is I
believe legitimate while 'presiding' is an appellation applied to both gods
and goddess, the epithet 'protective' is especially used in the context of
(village) goddesses. Although there are male guardian deities like
Munisvar, Aiyanar, and Karpanasvami who stand guard at certain temple
gates, it is the goddess who is perceived as protecting the village from the
attacks of spirits that reside, spatially outside the village. 49 As the
warrior-queen who ruled Madurai prior to her marriage to Siva,
Meenakshi was vested with the protection of the kingdom and its
subjects. Describing Meenakshi as protective goddess thus further defines
her character over that of presiding goddess.
When the priests were questioned as to why the public worship at the
Meenakshi Temple did not follow the agamic rules, they all pointed out
that this was because Meenakshi was the presiding deity of Madurai.
While all the priests I spoke to were in concert that this was the reason,
there was no consensus among them as to when, if at all, the order of
worship had been changed.
19
As none of the priests could with any certainty claim that this was the
order of worship since the time Madurai was consecrated as sacred space
and the temple was erected, there exists some groWlds for believing that
the order had indeed, somewhere along the line been inverted. More
importantly the priests also did not deny the possibility of this having
happened. Their many responses indicated that they had never sought to
question the status quo, implicitly accepting that this was just the way it
was.
And Wllike most other events in a city like Madurai that could be
explained or justified by pointing referentially to a mythic story, here
none of the priests (or lay devotees for that matter) made recourse to a
story offering divine (as an instruction from the gods) justification
explaining the Wlique arrangement at this particular temple.
In the final analysis, however it has come to be, it is Meenakshi who

reigns superior within the sacred inner spaces of the temple. She has been
granted the prerogative, not shared by the other main female deities in
other Saiva temples, to be the deity who devotees look upon first, and to
whom she is able to offer the first darshan. Conjecturally, one adds that
perhaps that is this interesting connivance of circumstances and events
that take us back to the earlier folk roots ofMeenakshi. For in the context
of the older popular worship of Meenakshi, there would have been no

first or second ordering of worship. There would have been no equal male
god cOWlterpart holding rival court in an adjacent inner sanctum. The
male god would have been assigned the task of guarding access to the
goddess. If you offered worship to him it would have been with tlle aim
of seeing the goddess and having her see you.
20
1 Eck, 1981: 27 (Footnote no. 51)

2 Ibid. Eck states that the uses of the word murti (image) in the Upanisad and the
Bhagavad Gita suggest that the fonn is its essence. 'The flame is the murti of fire
(Svetasvatar Upanisad I. 13), or the year is the murti of time (Maitri Upanisad 6.14).
3 Eck. 1981: 27-8
4 Ibid:: 30
s Bhatt, 1988: 28
6 Nair, 1988: I
1 Bhatt, 1988: 33
8 Surdam, 1988: 54
9 Krarnrisch, 1976: 22
10 Shulman, 1980: 192
11 Ibid.
12 O'F1ahertv, 1980b: 280
13 Intervie~ with the gurukul Ugra Pandiyan, one of the senior priests at the
Meenakshi Temple.
14 Kinsley, 1987: 38.
IS One of my infonnants, Chandrasekharan maintained 'Siva would never, and could
never exist in any ksetram [Place) ,,,ithoutambal [mother goddess) '.
16 Dennis Hudson, as I've mentioned elsewhere, has written extensively from both
textual sources as well as his own obsen'ations about the Meenakshi-Sundaresvara
marriage. I was thus curious to leam from him as to whether he had, during his own
field research, come across the notion of Meenakshi personified as the land of
Madurai. In our correspondence Hudson infonned me that he had put forth such a
thesis himself in his article, 'Madurai : City As Goddess.' He added that this was
however based solely on literary data, and that he was thus interested to leam from the
writer that this idea of Meenakshi as city (or land) is alive in contemporary Madurai.
11 I am grateful to Dennis Hudson, who, following an e-mail correspondence with me,
was kind enough to send me his article entitled, 'Madurai : City as Goddess' (Hudson,
1993).
18 Kinsley, 1987: 199
19 Whitehead, 1983: II
20 Shulman, 1980: 139 Shulman points out that the earth is an incarnate goddess. He
states that 'Bhurni (Earth) is, in classical puranic mythology linked specifically with
Vishnu.' This, theologically speaking, means that bhu (Earth goddess), as the consort
of Vishnu has no relation to (the spouse of) Siva. They come from different
typologies, and reducing them to one another makes for unwarranted theological
conclusions. However by recounting the manner in which the devotees perceive the
land of Madurai, that is to say as Meenakshi personified, is not meant to be
interpreted as an attempt on my part or that of the infonnants as identifying the two
goddesses. It is merely the recounting of the way several of the devotees understood
Meenakshi, an understanding that might appear to conflate the identities of the two
~oddesses who belong to two rival sectarian streams of thought
1 Whitehead, 1983: 7 in the preface of Village Gods ofSouth India.
22 Ibid.: 24-5
21
Njdiin, Vol. 14, December 2002
2J Ibid.
24 1984: 84
25 Elmore, 1984: 84 See also Rarnananyya according to whom Meenakshi the local
goddess of Madurai, married Chokkalingarn, a local demon who comes to be
identified with Siva (Rarnananyya, 1992: 70).
26 1989: 65
27 Ibid.
28 Balasubrahmanyarn, 1975: 27 Balasubrahmanyarn also mentions the possibility of a
~oddess shrine at Kanchipurarn, that of Karnashi.
Periyaran, 1996: 20 Translated for me from the Tamil Tiruvilaiyadal Puranam by
Mahavishnu Naidu.
30 Subrarnaniarn, 1988: 77
31 Humphrey and Laidlaw, 1994: 88
32 Fuller, 1984: 5 This survey was carried out by C. J. Fuller in 1977 as part of his
research on the Meenakshi temple priests. My own observations in 1996 would
indicate that these numbers have risen substantially.
33 Bell 1992' 220
34 Kas~aj an, '1985: 523
35 Kasirajan, 1985: 524-5 and Fuller, 1984: 3
36 Fuller, 1984: 3
37 Bell, 1992: 137
38 Kasirajan and Hudson refer to the Vaishnava Nayaks (Kasirajan, 1985: 523) and
(Hudson, 1985: 104).
39 Kasirajan, 1985: 523
.jQ Bell, 1992: 201
41 Harman 1989' 61
42 Both H~dson ~d Harman refer to it as such (Hudson, 1971) and (Harman, 1989).
43 The Saiva brahrnins confirmed this. The Smarta brahrnins went on further to point
out to me that although the Vaishnava brahrnins did not openly offer worship to Shia,
the mere fact that they (the Vaishnavas) revered Meenakshi, the wife of Siva meant
that obeisance was also being paid to Siva
44 Bell, 1992: 141
45 Most of the informants that I spoke with were aware of this point. It is also
mentioned by Hudson and Harman (Hudson, 1982) and (Harman, 1989).
46 Hudson, 1882: 137
47 Ibid.: 138
48 Hudson, 1993: 125 Hudson puts forward this suggestion in his article 'Madurai:
City as Goddess'.
49 Kinsley, 1983: 199
22
Bibliography
Balasubbramanian, S. R. 1975. Middle Chola Temples: Rajaraja I to
Kulottunga 1. India: Thomson Press Limited.
Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bhatt, N. R. 1988. Development of Temple Rituals. In S. S. Janaki Siva
Temple Rituals. Madras: Kuppusami Sastri Res. Institute.
Eck, Diana. L. 1981. Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. USA:
Anima Books.
Elmore, W. T. 1984. Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism. Delhi: Asian
Educational Services.
Fuller, C. J. 1984. Sen'ants of the Goddess: The Priests ofa South Indian
Temple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hannan, William. P. 1989. The Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess.
Indianapolis. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hudson, Dennis. D. 1982. Two Citra Festivals In Madurai. In G. R.
Welbon and G. E. Yocuum (eds.) Religious Festivals in South
India and Sri Lanka: Studies on Religion in South India and Sri
Lanka. Delhi: Munshilal Manobar.
Hudson, Dennis. D. 1993. Madurai: City As Goddess. In H. Spodek and
D. Srinivasan (eds.) Urban Form and Meaning in South Asia: The

Shaping of Cities from Prehistoric to Precolonial Times. USA:
Washington, D. C. National Gallery of Art.
Kasirajan, R. 1985. Minakshi Temple. In S. V. Subramanian and G.
Rajendran (eds.) Heritage Of The Tamils Temple Arts. Madras:
International Institute of Tamil Studies.
Kinsley, David. 1986. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine
in the Hindu Religious Tmdition. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Kramrisch, Stella. 1976. The Hindu Temple, Vol. I and 2. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass.
Nair, Annuputtan. D. 1988. Siva Temple Worship in Kerala. In S. S.
Janaki (ed.) SivaTemple And Temple Rituals. Madras: Kuppusami
Sastri Res. Institute.
O'Flaherty, Wendy, Doniger. 1980. Women, Androgynes, and Other
Mythical Beasts Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Periyaran. (Translator). 1996. Tiruvilaiyadal. Madras: Ravi Raja Press.
Shulman, David. D. 1980. Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine
Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
23
Nidlin, Vol. 14, December 2002
Subramaniwn, R. 1988. Parartha Puja. In S. S. Janaki (ed.) Siva Temple

And Temple Rituals. Madras: Kuppusami Sastri Res. Institute.
Surdam, Wayne. 1988. The Vedicization of Saiva Ritual. In S. S. Janaki
(ed.) Siva Temple And Temple Rituals. Madras: Kuppusami Sastri
Res. Institute.
Whitehead, Berny. 1982. The Village Gods of South India. New Delhi:
Cosmo Publications.
GLOSSARY
Sanskrit
arati --- sacred flame offered during ritual worship

avatar --- incarnation
bhakti --- devotion
darshan --- divine sight
diksha --- initiation
garbagraha --- inner sanctum, literally wombhouse
lingam --- phallic form of Siva
mahapuranas --- major puranas or narratives
murti --- image, form, body, embodiment

nyasa --- mantric imposition of the form of the deity onto the image
paliyarai puja --- nightly public ritual where the gods are put to the
conjugal bed
parartha puja --- public worship
pithas --- seats of the (usually) female divine
pratikrti --- likeness of the image to the deity
prasada --- right to blessing of deity
puja --- ritual worship to deity
svayambhu lingam --- selfmanifest phallic form of Siva
stala purana --- local myth or old narrative, place-history
tirthas ---literally, sacred fords
tiruvanantal puja --- daily ritual waking up of the deity
upapuranas --- minor puranas or narratives
vigraha --- sculpted image
vigraharadhana --- image worship
yajna --- vedic fire sacrifice
yoni --- base of the lingam symbolic of the goddess
24
Tamil
amman -- mother
tala --- place
tala purana ---local myth or old narrative, place-history
tiruvilaiyadal --- divine play
vilaiyada/ --- play
25

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Ritual Space and Ritual Dominance

The Temple That Houses The Gods

"You know, it may be that god is everywhere, but he is more so in the

The image that is to be installed in the temple is also meant to be

In a visually orientated culture Hindu images thus become visual

Worship of the Image in the Temple

Appukuttan Nair in an article entitled "Siva Temple Worship In Kerala",

"During Krtayuga, when human mind-control was of a very high order,

According to this writer, by the time of the Dvaparayuga, ''man required

It is however wholly different as far as the agamic texts go. Image

At the centre of (most) temples is the garbhagrha or wombhouse within

The Inner Sanctum of the Temple

sees as being "literally the fundamental fonn of Indian architecture.,,9

Shulman goes on to describe what he tenns to be the qualitative

Fear as a Means for Understanding the Goddess

"We should never do anything to offend Amman (Mother)" and "Amman

It would often emerge during the course of my interviews that, as the

It thus appeared that with regard to their relationship to Meenakshi, the

O'Flaherty, referring to goddess in general, points out that although the

villager or 'devotee', as well as for the village as a whole.

The Place as the Body of the Divine or Place as Goddess

Meenakshi in Folk Sources

Henry Whitehead who, although criticised by subsequent anthropologists

important, is because, aside from their work being largely ethnographical,

Whitehead's account of a popular shrine to the goddess Meenakshi is

At Cuddalore I visited a shrine of Minachiarnman at the village of

Animal sacrifices, consisting of goats, cocks etc. are offered to these

Whitehead ends what has been up to then purely a descriptive account of

According to this understanding Meenakshi is herself the incarnation of

W. T. Ehnore24 writes in a footnote that Meenakshi was originally a

Harman26 cites Subramanian as looking at the contrast between the

Dravidian goddess marries into the brahmanic tradition, she retains a

claim however cannot be sustained in the light of the overwhelming

To me this peculiarity had significant implications in terms of the

goddess, was twenty five thousand. 2

It thus made sense for the Meenakshi devotees at Madurai to offer

Bell states that priestly control of sacred texts promotes a kind of

access to it through the elaborate medium of rituals in public worship and

that the goddess must not be transgressed. My informants were all

While (I) is a reflection of the devotees' religious feeling towards the

Siva, was also a strong follower of Mother goddess worship. And

If we had to apply the argument that relations of power are rarely

Re-ordering of Public Worship

sectarian schools of thought are considered to be rival and competing

In the tala purana however, Vishnu (although nowhere spoken of as the

The point is that., affording ritual prominence to Meenakshi translates to

Victor Turner is said to have worked out a description of ritual whereby

While as far as I'm aware there is no literary evidence that supports my

While this move sounds sensible and highly pragmatic, it is nevertheless

devotion to Visnu in the predominantly Saiva area of Madurai. Moreover,

There thus appears sufficient evidence to support the contention that

This claim is itself based on the testimony of some of my (brahmin)

goddess. Both categories of informants, the traditionally trained scholars

Summary: Assigning Ritual Prerogative

promote the goddess' pre-eminence. For while the distinction between

In the final analysis, however it has come to be, it is Meenakshi who

of the older popular worship of Meenakshi, there would have been no

1 Eck, 1981: 27 (Footnote no. 51)

.jQ Bell, 1992: 201