Absent Lord: The Conversion of the Goddess

An Osval Jain acquaintance in Jaipur had been out of town for some days. When I asked him where he had been, he told me that he had gone to Osiya to worship the goddess Saciya Mata, who is his lineage goddess (kuldevi). And why was that? To get rid of a dos (fault, blemish), he said, and to get "peace in the family." He never did explain the exact nature of the problem, but never mind; what is of interest here is the fact that, in addition to Tirthankars and other lesser entities and deities, Jains also worship the tutelary goddesses (devi s) of patrilineages (kul s), who are believed to protect lineages and families.

The veneration of lineage goddesses is an institution shared by the Jains and Rajputs of Rajasthan, and probably by most other caste communities as well.^[1] Among Jaipur's Svetambar Jains, they are found among Osvals and Srimals alike. Members of a lineage over which such a goddess presides should have their tonsure ceremonies (called mundan and done for boys) performed at her temple. Also, a bride and groom should worship the groom's lineage goddess as a postlude to marriage. In essence, a woman changes her lineage goddess at the time of her marriage, although in some families she is invited (though not required) to attend rites of worship of her natal lineage goddess. Jain families in Jaipur commonly worship their lineage goddess annually or twice yearly. This usually occurs in conjunction with either or both of the twice-yearly Navratri periods (below), but this varies greatly. There is typically a physical epicenter for a given family's or lineage's goddess consisting of a temple which is a place of family pilgrimage and the preferred locale for tonsure rites and other special observances. In the household itself the lineage goddess is commonly temporarily represented for purposes of worship by a trident, svastik, or similar emblem executed in red on a wall. In rural areas households frequently keep permanent images of their lineage goddesses (Reynell 1985: 149), but this seems to be uncommon in Jaipur. These goddesses can also be (as we have seen) propitiated in times of trouble. One might make a vow to the goddess to go to her temple to take darsan and perform puja if the trouble is alleviated, a promise that must be kept at the risk of further troubles.

It needs to be stressed that attitudes and practices relating to lineage goddesses vary enormously in Jaipur. Some families have simply lost contact with these traditions, in most cases as a result of physical or social separation from their places of origin. In other cases the widespread feeling that there is something disreputable about lineage goddesses from a Jain standpoint has corroded patterns of lineage goddess worship. When this is so, the family can go to a nonlineage goddess temple or dadabari for the tonsure rite. In the family of a Sthanakvasi friend,the custom is to have the tonsure rite performed in a local Bhairav temple (a Hindu temple), and when he and his new wife were married they paid a postnuptual visit to a Jain nun instead of to a lineage goddess. Another friend took his bride to the Dadabari at Malpura for this purpose.

The mother of the above Sthanakvasi friend told me the following story of how her family (that is, the family into which she had married) lost their lineage goddess.^[2] It seems that at some time in the remote past this family (belonging to the Bothara clan) lived in Bikaner, and once - at the time of Dasehra - theyand other families were about to worship their lineage goddesses.^[3] While the food offerings were being prepared, a yati came around. He saw the preparations and angrily returned to the community hall where he was staying. There, by magical means, he drew to him all of the images of the lineage goddesses from the households in which they were kept and slapped his alms bowl over them. When the people began their puja they realized what had happened and went to the yati. He said, "If the goddess is more powerful than I am, then let her escape." He then threw the images into a well. From that time onward there have been no lineage goddesses for the Botharas (or at least in this branch of the Botharas).

Lineagegoddesses vary in their degree of territorial or social inclusiveness.^[4] Saciya Mata, for example, seems to be a generalized Osval lineage goddess; her votaries are widespread, and her image can even be seen in one of the principal Svetambar temples of Ahmedabad.^[5] Others are of far more local or socially parochial renown. Many, in fact, are sati s - that is, women who became deified after burning themselves alive on their husbands' funeral pyres; this is true of lineage goddesses in non-Jain castes as well. The essential idea in these instances is an amalgam of martial heroism and feminine purity. An illustrative example is provided by the story of a goddess named Satimata - despitethe name, not a sati in the narrow sense - whose temple is located in Fatehpur (in Sikar District) and who is a lineage goddess for at least some lineages belonging to the Duggar clan (of the Osvalcaste). Fatehpur, the story goes, was invested and Overrun by the Mughals. A widow and her grown daughter fled the scene and retired to a certain place where they were protected from the searching Muslims by a mysterious power. In the end they died there, but with their womanly purity intact. They then became the goddess Satimata; here the term sati carries only its primary meaning of a virtuous and chaste woman. When Satimata is worshiped by the Duggars (which they do annually on Dasehra), she is presented with a red and white cloth; the white cloth represents the widow, who is one-half of her composite persona.

A good example of a strong, functioning lineage-goddess cult is provided by a family of Osvals I know who happen to belong to the Bhandari clan. Although I initially came into contact with this family in Jaipur, their deepest roots are in Jodhpur. Moreover, as is the case with some Jodhpur Osvals, this is a family located somewhere on the frontier between Jainism and Vaisnavism; that is, their knowledge of Jainism is rather limited, and their religious practices are somewhat more Hindu in flavor than one would expect of knowledgeable and orthoprax Jains. Others told me that this is the case of a family that probably used to be unambiguously Jain but became Vaisnavized under the influence of the local rulers whom they have served for generations.

Their lineage goddess is Durga. She is housed in a temple located on the outskirts of Jodhpur next to a temple of Parsvanath. This temple is supported by a group of Bhandari families of Jodhpur comprising about 400 individuals. When I was shown the temple, it was pointed out to me that the tiger on whom the image of Durga sits faces east rather than west, and that this indicates that she is a "vegetarian" Durga. A patriarch of the family said to me that when they were transformed from Rajputs into Bhandaris, they kept many Rajput traits: they "eat like Rajputs, "he said (though of course they are vegetarian), and they are "hospitable" like Rajputs. And, he added, they continued to worship Durga, who is the lineage goddess for many Rajputs and an inheritance from their own Rajput days.

Among this family's numerous Jaipur connections was the marriage of one of their daughters into a Jaipur Osval family. Because of the rule of clan exogamy, her husband's clan is different from hers; it is Bhurat. And his lineage goddess is different as well. His family considers their goddess to be Saciya Mata, and the Saciya Mata temple at Osiya was where his tonsure ceremony occurred.

All of this is by way of introducing the fact that the Osiya version of the origination of the Osvals is more than the story of the conversion of Rajputs into Jains; it is also about a goddess and the founding of a temple. The temple is the selfsame temple of Saciya Mata (often spelled Sacciya Mata and also known as Saciya Devi) to which reference has been made. This is the temple where many Osvals have tonsure rites performed for their male children, and of course pilgrims also visit this temple to pay homage to the goddess after marriage ceremonies. Special observances take place here twice per year on Navratri.^[6] The story of the temple is extremely important, for it restates the symbolically central theme of warrior-kingship in a special frame of reference. Saciya Mata is not the lineage goddess of all Osval Jains. Still, she is an excellent representation of an important paradigm: the taming of the goddess as a concomitant to the conversion of Rajputs into Jains.^[7]

As retold by Bhutoriya (1988: 72-75), the story of Saciya Mata begins before the conversions of Utpaldev and the others. At that time (and as we have already learned) there was a temple of the goddess Camunda Devi in the town of Upkespur.^[8] As is the Hindu practice, the sacrifice of goats and buffaloes was performed at this temple during the festival of Navratri. These practices are abhorrent to Jains, and so Ratnaprabhsuri put a stop to them. As a substitute for sacrificing animals, he instituted the practice of offering various sweets to the goddess. But the goddess was a meat eater and was infuriated by the deprivation of her customary sacrifices. In retribution she produced an ailment in Ratnaprabhsuri's eye. The monk, however, bore the pain with such fortitude that the goddess became fearful and asked him for forgiveness. She said that there would no longer be animal sacrifice in her temple and that thenceforth she would be known as "saccidevi." Since then she has come to be known as Saciya Mata and what was previously the temple of Camunda at Osiya came to be known as the Saciyadevimandir.^[9]

The Hindu goddess Camunda is a sacrifice-demanding, meat-eating goddess, and is in fact one of the most ferocious of the goddess's many forms, created for the purpose of destroying the infamous buffalo demon, Mahisasur. As such, her nature is in many ways identical with that of the Rajputs, who are warriors and meat eaters themselves. The link between her character and that of the Rajputs is explicit in the fact that meat-eating goddesses are commonly the lineage goddesses of the Rajputs. Clearly, therefore, the story of the transformation of the goddess is a significant element in the Osiya legend of Osval origin. The goddess Camunda is a projection of Rajput character. If this character is inimical to Jain vegetarianism - as it incontestably is - then a plausible account of how Rajputs become Jains should include an account of how a meat-eating goddess becomes transformed into a goddess who is the vegetarian functional equivalent of the meat-eating Rajput lineage goddesses. To use Meister's apt phrasing (1993: 15), the "de-fanging" of Camunda is what the story of Saciya Mata is basically about, and it is a theme that is, as we shall shortly see, susceptible to many different elaborations.