Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/248

Rh shoot was placed in her hand: and she was mounted on a tall stag with branching antlers. Drums rattled and pipes squeaked in front of her image, while fierce Nagas slaughtered buffaloes at her altar. As the victims bled the priestess got up in a frenzy, shivering and dancing wildly, possessed with the spirit of Kâli, and shouted “The cattle stalls in the villages around us are full of oxen, but the yards of the Eyinar’s cottages are empty. Mild like the peaceful villagers are the Eyinar who should live by robbery and plunder. If you do not offer the sacrifice due to the goddess, who rides the stag, she would not bless your bows with victory!” Kâli being a female deity, her votaries offered to her balls, dolls, parrots, wild fowls and peacocks with which Tamil women used to amuse themselves. Perfumed pastes and powders, fragrant sandal, boiled beans and grains and oblations of rice mixed with blood and flesh were likewise presented at her shrines. The Nagas having been largely employed as soldiers by the Tamil kings, their goddess Kâli became in course of time the patron deity of the warrior class. The soldiers, officers of the army and even the kings joined in making offerings, to obtain her favor, before undertaking any military enterprise. It is said that some of the soldiers, in a fit of excessive loyalty, offered up their own lives at her altar, to ensure the success of the king’s armies. Kâli was also called Aiyai in Tamil, and was believed to be the youngest of seven sisters. She is said to have challenged Siva to a dance, and to have torn in two pieces the powerful body of the demon Târaka. So much was this ferocious goddess dreaded by the people, that it is related that on one occasion when the doors of her temple at Madura remained closed, and could not be opened, the Pandiyan king, believing it to be a token of her displeasure, fell prostrate before her shrine, praying for her mercy, and to appease the wrath of the goddess, granted the revenue of two fertile villages, for the expenses for her worship.

Some of the lower classes, as well as the Nagas, worshipped also stones and springs which were believed to possess miraculous powers. For instance, it is mentioned that in the city of Kâvirip-paddinam there, was a long stone set up in an open