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Village Gods of the ancient South Indians

One of the most ancient practices employed in South Indian villages was the worship of their gods. Before the Aryan invasion, which probably took place in the second millennium BCE, the Dravidians, who were the original inhabitants with religious beliefs and customs similar to other primitive races. They believed the world to be peopled by a multitude of spirits, good and bad, who were the cause of unusual events, especially disease and disaster .They hoped that through their worship they could propitiate these innumerable spirits .  Every village was seen to be under the protection of one spirit or the other, and this spirit was also its guardian deity. Where the family developed into a clan, and the clan into a tribe, and the tribe into a nation, and the nation into a conquering empire, the god of the family naturally developed into an imperial deity. Very similar to the ancient civilizations in Nineveh, Babylon and Egypt where the agricultural communes gradually developed into n
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Different Gods 2

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I have been observing that there are 2 different kinds of headless Statues. Koothandavar Cult statue Notice the difference. This one  has both feet planted firmly on the ground. That belongs to the Koothandavar Cult - the history I wrote about in my earlier blog http://sridhardoss.blogspot.in/2012/12/different-gods.html Draupadi cult statue Draupadiamman as she is called is peculiar to Tamil Nadu and also in some parts of Karnataka.The major difference between the Aravan and Draupadi cults are that there is no wedding ceremonies with Hijras or Alis. Men do not wear women's clothing as in the Koothandavar belief. Here the major focus is on the sacrifice. Remember Iravan asked for two boons. One was that he wanted to get married before his sacrifice or Kalaballi (sacrifice in a battlefield) as it is known in Tamil. The second was that he wanted to kill as many Kauravas as possible and even if he died he wanted to watch the rest of the war.There are contradicto
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Different Gods

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O ver the past year my job has taken me through the length and breadth of Vellore and Thiruvanamalai districts of Tamil Nadu. What kept fascinating me  were the village temples and enormous statues in their outskirts. Being city born and bred,  the temples I have been to were invariably the ones which housed one of the three pantheons of orthodox Hindu faith. They would be a Shiva, Krishna ,Vishnu or of their consorts. Without exception they were run by Brahmin priests. On one of my trips I saw this statue. It was kept outside of a small temple. Not much attention seemed to have been paid to it’s upkeep.At that time I could not elicit any answers from any of the locals I asked.   Subsequently I saw at least 3 of the same kinds of headless images on the outskirts of different villages. When I again pressed the locals, the  answers were very ambiguous . Most of them liked to believe the tale that if the head was put back on, the statue would come to life and become a dem
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