Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/134

PARAIYAN (Nerium odorum by preference), burns a bit of camphor, and circumambulates the shrine, keeping his right side towards it. On special occasions he breaks cocoanuts, kills fowls, goats or sheep, of which the two last must be killed at one blow, pours out their blood, perhaps offers a little money, and goes his way, satisfied that he has done his best to propitiate the dēvata whom he has honoured.

Special shrines attain very great fame. Thus the goddess Bāvaniyammāl of Periyapālayam, some sixteen miles from Madras, is well known, and crowds come to her annual festival. Paraiyans, Pallis, and Chakkilians form the majority of the worshippers, but of late years Sūdras and even Brāhmans are to be found at her shrine. The homage rendered to her is twofold. Her worshippers sacrifice some thousands of sheep on the river bank outside her temple, and, entirely divesting themselves of their garments, and covering themselves with bunches of margosa leaves, go round the temple. Except on the five Sundays, usually in July and August, on which the festival is held, the shrine is forsaken, and the goddess is said to be a vegetarian; but on the five festival Sundays she is said to be as greedy for flesh as a leather-dresser's (Chakkiliyan) wife.

Two goddesses hold a position distinct from the mothers as a group, or as tutelary goddesses. These are Gangammāl and Māriyattāl, and their peculiarity is that they are itinerant deities. Gangammāl is often described as the goddess of cholera, and Māriyattāl, as the goddess of small-pox, though both diseases are frequently ascribed to the latter. Māriyattāl is worshipped under the names of Poleramma and Ammavāru by Telugus. For instance, near Arcotkuppam in the North Arcot district, a festival is held in honour of Gangammāl in the Tamil month Vaikasi (May-June), in which Sūdras join.