Death N Deification

Death and Deification: Folk Cults in Hinduism
Author(s): Stuart H. Blackburn

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Feb., 1985), pp. 255-274
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Stuart H. Blackburn D E A T H AND
DEIFICATION: FOLK
CULTS IN HINDUISM
Were it not better to give death the place to which it is en

reality and in our thoughts ... ? [Sigmund Freud]
As a source of Indian religious thought, death is p

passed; no matter which historical period or cultural l
to examine, concepts lead to or from the problems it p
their cosmic purposes, Vedic sacrifices were designed t
temporarily and attain a full life span for men. A mor
of death was the goal in the philosophies of the U
dhism, and Jainism; it is this secret that Naciketas (in the Katha
Upanishad) asks Yama to divulge to him. And even the process of
samsira, the foundation of Indian thought, was first understood not as
a rebirth but as continual "redeath" (punarmrtyu). Later, in the Pura-
nas, death becomes a force (Time and Fate) that controls men as much
as karma and that Siva absorbs into his array of qualities. A final and
very different attitude develops in the devotional cults that enlist the
intervention of a god to sidestep the problem altogether; there is Mar-
kandeya, who, by clinging to a lingam, was able to remain sixteen
forever when Siva kicked Yama in the chest and prevented him from
The germinal idea for this essay was presented in a paper read at the annual meeting of
the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, 1983. Field research drawn on in this
article was carried out in 1977-79 and in 1980 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala with grants
from the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the
Fulbright Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.
? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/85/2403-0001$01.00
256 Death and Deification
taking his devotee. The problem of death is so pervasive that one

recent study concludes: "Much-some might even say all-of Indian
religion is dedicated to the attempt to achieve immortality in one form
or another."' After all, it is death (along with blinking, sweating, wear-
ing garlands that fade, and standing with one's feet on the ground) that
separates us from the gods.
In the social world, if purity and impurity have anything to do with
the way Hindus perceive and organize it, death is all the more central
because it is the single most polluting human experience. And even if
the pure/impure dichotomy is not the organizing principle of Hindu
life, an opposition between death and life may be; this is the conclusion
of several important studies of Sanskrit ritual and literary texts, and
one confirmed by my own work with an oral tradition.2
This kind of rapprochement between classical and folk streams of
Hinduism is the guiding light behind this essay. To date, discussions of
the problem of death have been based almost exclusively on classical
traditions, the mythological and philosophical texts.3 Now, however,
there is enough published research on folk Hinduism (and tribal reli-
gions in India) to broaden the basis for discussion. As even the follow-
ing select and limited examination of this new data will show, the
popular streams of Hinduism, no less than the high-status ones, are
centered on death. Looking at narrative, ritual, and iconography in
cults of the dead in folk Hinduism, we will see a variety of relations
with classical Hinduism; in some places there is continuity, in others
I Wendy D. O'Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press, 1976), p. 214.
2 See J. C. Heesterman, "Brahmin, Ritual, and Renouncer," Wiener Zeitschrift fir die
Kunde Sud- und Ostasiens 8 (1964): 1-31, and "The Case of the Severed Head," Wiener
Zeitschrift fur die Kunde Sud- und Ostasiens 11 (1967): 22-43; Veena Das, Structure
and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1977), pp. 119-20; Stuart Blackburn, "Birth Stories, Death Stories: Oral Performances
in a Tamil Folk Tradition" (1983, typescript). Compare Fr6edrique Apffel Marglin,
"Types of Sexual Union and Their Implicit Meanings," in The Divine Consort: Radha
and the Goddesses of India, ed. Jack Hawley and Donna Wulff, Berkeley Religious
Series (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1982), p. 308.
3 In addition to the studies cited in n. 2 above, see J. Bruce Long, "Death as a
Necessity and a Gift in Hindu Mythology," David R. Kinsley, "'The Death That Con-
quers Death': Dying to the World in Medieval Hinduism," and David M. Knipe,
"Sapindikarana: The Hindu Rite of Entry into Heaven," in Religious Encounters with
Death: Insights from the History and Anthropology of Religions, ed. Frank E. Reynolds
and Earle H. Waugh (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976),
pp. 73-96, 97-110, 111-24; Jonathan Parry, "Sacrificial Death and the Necrophagous
Ascetic," in Death and the Regeneration of Life, ed. Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 74-110; Alf Hiltebeitel, The Ritual
of Battle: Krishna in the Mahabharata (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976),
chap. 10; Meena Kaushik, "The Symbolic Representation of Death," Contributions to
Indian Sociology 10, no. 2 (July-December 1976): 265-92.
History of Religions 257
divergence. But even in the latter cases, folk traditions present a con-
trasting and not a conflicting view.
FOLK HINDUISM
But what is folk Hinduism? Certainly it is not an iso

rather one stream of the Hindu tradition; never truly
other varieties of Hinduism, it nevertheless differs from
tant aspects. Though we cannot wish to define folk
category, we can identify its characteristic aspects.
furthermore, admit of gradations in that they point to
as a word indicates a color that is only more or less prese
The "folk" part of folk Hinduism depends primarily on
local control and prominence among certain social gr
first, in folk Hinduism participants and patrons tend to
geographically limited area and to be, in fact, the sa
exemplary case would be a temple festival celebrated o
persons resident in, or linked by kin to, the settleme
town quarter) in which the event takes place. An ex
localization are those folk temples or shrines that attract
a large region; but even here participation and patron
overlapped. Folk performers may (and usually do) com
the local setting, but still they are controlled by local pa
tion, however, does not mean that folk traditions are restricted to a
single locale; as a tradition, most are geographically widespread, but
their individual instances are under local control. By contrast, nonfolk
festivals are usually controlled by a trust of far-flung, wealthy donors
or by a governmental board that does not participate directly in the
ceremonies. Thus the central difference is that the congruency between
participation and patronage in folk Hinduism brings to its events
(though such things are difficult to gauge) an immediacy and an
intimacy.
Folk Hinduism also has a distinct sociological dimension in that it
tends to be found at the middle and low levels of the caste and class
hierarchies. High status groups sometimes do patronize or participate
in folk Hinduism, but this is atypical, and Brahmin participation is
extremely rare. Conversely, religious practices found exclusively among
high-status groups would not be folk. Note, however, that this does
not mean that these groups have no folklore; the proverbs of a Brah-
min caste, for instance, are part of that group's folklore repertory. But
because religion in India is so closely aligned with the social hierarchy,
its forms are readily associated with differential status. Practices of
high castes have high status, plus the authority of text and theology;
folk Hinduism has its own texts and theologians, but they are not
equal status.
Turning to the "Hinduism" or the specific religious features of folk
Hinduism, we may speak of the objects of worship and the ways of
worship. The first of these, the folk pantheon, contains several levels of
gods and goddesses. At the top of the hierarchy, there is usually some
local form of Siva, Visnu, or some lesser being from classical mythology
(Hanuman, Bhairava, Hariharaputra, etc.). Next, in order of progres-
sively more local deities, are goddesses often identified with some form
of the pan-Indian Devi (Sakti, ParvatT, Kali, Durga) but perceived as
belonging to the local area. On a third level are gods of even more local
origins who are guardians for the goddesses or are otherwise associated
with them. On the last and most local level are those supernaturals
called "ghosts," "spirits," or "devils" in English and pisacu, bhut, jinn,
pir, pey or some other term in Indian languages.
Typically, these are supernatural forms of humans who lived or were
known in the locality, who died an unusual death, and who now are
worshiped. They may be helpful or harmful, are always accessible, and
are usually meddlesome. When the worship of these beings is regular-
ized and elaborated with ritual, like the worship of other gods, there
emerges what one might call "cults of the deified dead."
Folk Hinduism is also characterized by elements in the worship of
this pantheon. These may be found in other Hindu contexts, but they
will not dominate there as they do in folk cults. One element, an
extension of the localization in folk Hinduism, is that gods and
goddesses are seen as having curing powers that directly affect the
worshipers. Another element is that localization can become a per-
sonalization: folk gods and goddesses enter into the bodies of their
worshipers and possess them. Pan-Indian gods, by contrast, do not (as
a rule) possess their devotees; even Siva, who is otherwise prone to
ecstatic and "mad" states, does not usually possess his devotees but
only grants them "grace" (arul, in Tamil) to save them from an un-
wanted state of possession.
A third element in folk worship is an oral performance of the deity's
story. Stories are performed for deities at all levels of the folk pan-
theon, but those performed for the deified dead are of particular inter-
est because they touch the most local forms of Hinduism. In these
performances, the singing and music often serve as a catalyst for pos-
session by the god of his human mediums. The stories themselves are
typically accounts of the origins of the god or goddess, explaining how
he or she came to the specific temple in which the performance is
taking place. Furthermore, and unlike the mythological stories about
more pan-Indian gods, these stories are essentially heroic: their setting
is earthly, not celestial, and the main actors are human beings, not
gods (though the human actors are often deified in the story). Finally
their theme is human struggle-the problems of love and death.
This last point is important because it explains why the oral per-
formance of these stories is the primary ritual in some cults of the
deified dead. At present there are fairly good descriptions of five such
cults in which the dead are worshiped with the singing of their stories.
Two are in northwest India: the bhomiya in Rajasthan and the
khambha in Gujarat; the other three are in coastal areas of South
India: the paddana in southwest Karnataka, the teyyam in northern
Kerala, and the vil pattu (bow song) in southern Tamil Nadu.4 This
essay draws heavily on my own research with the bow song, but com-
monalities in narrative and performance suggest that these five cults
are of a piece. In particular, the narrative similarity between them
approaches uniformity; if personal and place names were suitably
changed, a story from one could be performed in the others. Though
reports of the actual performances are less detailed than those of the
stories, one shared performative element is apparent: the performances,
like the texts, turn on the event of the hero's death, which is the ritual
high point when the hero/god possesses his human mediums.5
Different combinations of the religious features identified above give
folk Hinduism its multiple forms. One common form, and the one that
interests us here, is cults of the deified dead. But even in them there is
variation. However, the one feature shared by all cults of the deified
dead is the worship of humans become gods. This makes these cults a
fundamental form of folk Hinduism and, as I hope to show, influential
in other forms of Hinduism as well. To understand these cults of the
deified dead, let us look first at the death that generates them.
CULTS OF THE DEIFIED DEAD
To the well-known Hindu perspectives on death, the cult

fied dead add something new. In the Puranas (and in an
4 K. K. N. Kurup, The Cult of Teyyam and Hero Worship (Calcutta:

tions, 1973); Peter J. Claus, "The Siri Myth and Ritual: A Mass Pos
South India," Ethnology 14, no. 1 (January 1975): 47-58; Komal Kot
Rajasthan" (paper presented at the Conference on Oral Epics in In
Wisconsin, 1982); Eberhard Fischer and Haku Shah, Vetra ne Khambh
for the Dead (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Vidyapith, 1973); Stuart Blackburn
mance: Narrative and Ritual in a Tamil Folk Tradition," Journal of A
lore94 (1981): 207-27. For related cults in North India, see William Crooke, The
Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (1896; reprint, New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1978), vol. 1, chap. 4.
5 See Brenda E. F. Beck, The Three Twins: The Telling of a South Indian Folk Epic
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 37-41; Gene H. Roghair, The Epic
of Palna.du: A Study and Translation of the Palniti rVrula Katha (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1982), pp. 27-29; Blackburn, "Oral Performance."
poetry) death is deified, but in these cults it is the dead themselves who
are deified. If elsewhere in Hinduism death separates humans from
gods, in these folk cults it joins them together. However, not just any
death has this effect; only a special kind makes the dead hero an object
of worship. First, the death must be premature, an end that cuts short a
person's normal life span.6 Second, and more important, the death
must be violent, an act of aggression or a sudden blow from nature.
Many deified heroes are killed in battle, some in less glorious conflicts;
others (especially women) commit suicide. Lastly, the death that deifies
is undeserved; the person killed is an innocent (if often fated) victim.
However, unlike the problem of theodicy, this deification does not
depend on the innocence of the victim. Indeed-and this cannot be
overemphasized-it is not moral considerations but violence that
transforms humans into deities. Although oral tradition tends to por-
tray the dead hero as a virtuous champion, this is a later development
to win new adherents to a cult and not a quality required for the
original deification. This point was made clear to me while collecting a
version of the Nalla Tankal story in a Tamil village.7 Nalla Tankal (the
Good Younger Sister) was driven by a famine from her married home
and returned to her natal house (now occupied by her brother and his
wife) to seek help. When her sister-in-law insulted her and turned her
away, Nalla Taink! threw each of her seven children down a well and
then jumped in herself. During a discussion with people in a village
(the only one where Nalla Tanka! is worshiped), the question arose as
to why she and not the sister-in-law was deified. I suggested that, since
the sister-in-law was evil, she would not be worshiped, but the villagers
rejected this explanation. "No," I was told, "the sister-in-law is not a
goddess not because she is evil (ketta) but because she didn't suffer;
Nalla Tainka might be evil, too, but we worship her because she suf-
fered and died."
That a violent, premature death is a prerequisite for deification in
folk Hinduism is also clear from stories performed in cults of the
deified dead. Whether in a short narrative about a household god who
(as a human) chopped up his brother-in-law for failing to repay a debt
or in an epic recited for thirty hours, it is a sudden, terrible death that
6 On the significance of premature death for religious thinking, see Talcott Parsons,
"Religious Perspectives in Sociology and Social Psychology," in Reader in Comparative
Religion: An Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, 2d ed.
(New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 131. See also O'Flaherty, p. 212.
7 For a more complete discussion of the Nalla Tankal story from literary sources, see
David D. Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South
Indian gaivite Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 256-59.
transforms a human into a deity. A typical example is a Tamil bow

song, the story of Natan Cami (Natar god), which I summarize here:
One day a young Nadar man happens on a burning funeral pyre. On top lies a
Brahmin woman, bitten by a snake and left to burn by her parents and relatives
who could not bear to watch. Suddenly, with his inner vision, the Nadar man
realizes that the woman is not dead and uses his magical powers to cool the
flames, and then extract the venom from her body. Waking up as from a
dream, the Brahmin woman declares that he must marry her: since he saved
her life, and touched her in the process, he is already her husband. The Nadar
protests, but she is adamant and finally wins him over, and eventually their
families, too. In her village, however, other high-castes are incensed at the
cross-caste marriage, particularly at the Nadar's audacity, and plot to kill him.
Seizing him and tying him to a post, they send a petition to the Maharaja of
Travancore requesting permission to quarter him for violating caste rules. The
Maharaja decides against their request, but in their impatience the high-caste
men misinterpret the message and butcher the Nadar man anyway; following
this, the Brahmin woman pulls out her tongue. In the end, they both go to
Siva's heaven where the man is given the name Natan Cami and sent back to
earth to enjoy worship in several temples.
In other bow song narratives, death is similarly violent-men are

impaled on stakes, stabbed in the back, crushed to death with stones,
or cut down with a machete-like knife. Women are raped, thrown
down wells, or beaten to death, or they commit suicide to avoid these
violations. As indicated earlier, similar stories about the deified dead
are performed in other cults from Rajasthan to Kerala.
Even more widely dispersed among these cults is the practice of
erecting a monument to the deified dead. All over India, literally from
the Indus Valley to Kanya Kumari, there are stones or wooden pillars
set up to represent the dead. From both ancient literature and contem-
porary reports, we know that these memorials are erected to people
who die a violent death-killed by an animal, in an accident, or in
battle (usually defending against cattle raiders)-and to satTs (wives
who cremate themselves on their husbands' pyres).8 From the same
sources, we also know that the stones and wooden slabs are shrines,
places where the heroes/gods are worshiped. In the northern districts
of contemporary Tamil Nadu, for example, the hero stones are named
8 See George Hart, The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit
Counterparts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 25-26, 42-43; and
Fischer and Shah. Hart has also argued that worship of the dead was a formative
influence on the development of devotional Hinduism in South India; see his "The
Theory of Reincarnation among the Tamils," in Karma and Rebirth in Indian Classical
Traditions, ed. Wendy D. O'Flaherty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1980), pp. 116-38.
after a local deity, Vetiyappan, and the sites themselves are known as
"temples of Vetiyappan."9 Even more interesting are the sculptured
reliefs on the stones, which visually present the death-deification
pattern found in the narratives of the cults of the dead. For at least one
kind of memorial, erected to men who died in battle, there is a
standard style of three panels. On the bottom panel the male figure is
shown in battle; in the middle panel he ascends to heaven; and in the
top panel he is either worshiping a god (usually Siva) or homologized
with him.10
A less elaborate form of these memorials to the dead is found in
those put up for women who die in pregnancy or childbirth. O
example of this form is the cumai taiki (load bearer) found in parts
Tamil Nadu. Built of three stone slabs, two upright and one across, t
cumai tahki is used to support the load carried by travelers on f
just as the dead woman carried her child. But not all these cumai tah
structures remain in their original shape. When conditions (finan
kinship, individual interest) are right, the three slabs may develop i
a small shrine, surrounded by mud walls, sometimes with a wooden o
even iron gate, and covered with a tile roof. Now, the woman who d
in childbirth and was worshiped only by relatives will be identified w
a local goddess (usually Muttar Amman) and become the center o
cult embracing more diverse groups. When festival time arrives,
little cumai tdnki will be covered with thatch and decorated with
embroidered cloth, banana tree stalks, and flower garlands while music
ensembles perform before assembled crowds of one hundred person
or more. Occasionally, at the base of large temples in Kanya Kuma
District, Tamil Nadu, one can find the cumai tiiki with its three stone
slabs still intact.
This kind of transformation has occurred elsewhere, too, for ex-
ample, at the Vithoba temple in Pandharpuir, Maharashtra. According
to Deleury, this major temple dedicated to a form of Visnu evolved
9 Ra. Nagasamy, Cenkam Natukarkal (Madras: Tamil Nadu Department of Archae-

ology, 1972), p. 1.
10 For the iconography of these stones and wooden slabs, see Fischer and Shah;
Romila Thapar, "Death and the Hero," in Mortality and Immortality: The Anthro-
pology and Archaeology of Death, ed. S. C. Humphreys and Helen King (New York:
Academic Press, 1981), pp. 293-316; Wilhelm Koppers, "Monuments to the Dead of the
Bhils and Other Primitive Tribes in Central India," Annali Lateranensi6 (1942):
117-206; Ethel-Jane W. Bunting, Sindhi Tombs and Textiles: The Persistence of Pattern
(Albuquerque: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and University of New Mexico
Press, 1980); S. Settar and Gunther Sontheimer, eds., Memorial Stones: A Study of
Their Origins, Significance and Variety (Dharwar and Heidelberg: Institute of Indian
Art History, Karnataka University and University of Heidelberg, 1982); W. G. Archer,
The Vertical Man (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1947).
from a simple stone dedicated to a dead hero." A similar case might

also be made for some of the great Cola temples of medieval Tamil
history, a few of which at least have been identified as funerary monu-
ments.'2 When we include the Buddhist stupa, it is clear that rituals
and monuments to the dead underlie much of Indian religion.
A funerary foundation for folk Hinduism was first suggested to me
while I was doing fieldwork on the bow song tradition. During a casual
conversation, an educated villager told me, "These [folk heroes/ gods]
are all 'small gods'; they are dead people and we worship them like we
worship the dead." What he did not explain, but what others frequently
mentioned, is that not all the dead are worshiped as "small gods"-
only those who have died violently are. But a more important discovery
came later: the two groups-the dead and the small gods- are wor-
shiped with the same ritual materials and sequence. At least this is true
for Natars, the largest caste in Kanya Kumari District.
Though many Natars bury their dead, most burn the corpse. On the
morning following cremation, the ashes are collected, washed in honey
and milk, mingled with fragrances, folded into a banana leaf, and
placed in a pot wrapped in a cloth. Near the cremation ground, two
small pTtams (rectangular mud altars) are shaped by hand, one for the
deceased and one for Ganesa. On the deceased's pitam are placed a
ghee lamp, the pot containing the ashes, and then an offering called the
pataippu (serving). This offering, arranged on a banana leaf, consists
of flowers, fruits (especially bananas), areca nut and leaves, liquor,
cheroots, and anything else that the dead person liked to eat or drink.
This pataippu on a banana leaf is also the basic puja offering in a
bow song festival. Every year in local temples, a festival is held during
which all the gods and goddesses (as many as twenty-one) are fed pija,
an act that gives the festival its name: kotai or "offering." In the pija
to the major deities, the pataippu is obscured, literally buried, by the
ponkal (sweetened rice), eggs, and meat (chicken or goat). But in the
puja to the minor deities, the pataippu stands out, for it is the only
offering made. These minor gods and goddesses, moreover, are usually
represented by a mud pTitam of the same size and shape as that used in
the postcremation ritual described above (though sometimes by a
raised mound of earth sprinkled with white powder). Even more sig-
nificant is the fact that this puja is called a pataippu and consists of the
same materials as those already enumerated for Nadar funerary rites.
Exactly this finding-that the offerings to ancestors are identical to
1i G. A. Deleury, The Cult of Vithoba (Poona: Deccan College, 1960), chap. 9,

postscript.
12 Burton Stein, Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 335-39.
those for other gods-has also been reported among Tamils in two
other contexts, ancient Tamil Nadu and modern Sri Lanka.13
A more general connection between funerary rituals and worship of
ordinary gods has been described for Rajasthan by K. Kothari.'4
Beginning with deaths in the family and tracing the development of the
cult, he shows how the category "ancestor" shades off almost imper-
ceptibly into that of "god and goddess." The same phenomenon has
been observed also by writers on Indian tribal religions. In his lengthy
monograph on the Gonds, C. von Fiirer-Haimendorf explains how the
central ceremony for the dead (karun) is folded into worship rituals for
clan deities; not surprisingly, ancestral shrines often evolve into cult
centers for the clan gods.'5 A similar progression from funeral to wor-
ship, from deceased to deity, has been reported for the Kurichiya in
central Kerala.'6 And in the most comprehensive study yet published
on tribal (or folk) religion in India, Verrier Elwin describes the connec-
tion between ancestors and gods in eastern India this way: "Among the
Saora, the process of god-making never ceases ... ; every ancestor, on
entering the Under World after the proper performances of the guar
(mortuary rite), becomes one of the . . . deities."'7
CONTINUITIES FROM FOLK TO CLASSICAL HINDUISM
This close relation, sometimes identity, between funeral rituals and the
worship of the gods is not limited to folk or tribal cultures in Indi
From an article by David Knipe, we know it exists also in the postcre-
mation rites of classical Hinduism: the sraddha rituals.'8 During th
highpoint of the sraddha ceremonies, the sapindikarana, three catego-
ries of ancestors-father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of th
deceased-are worshiped by feeding them rice balls (pinda). Followin
these offerings, the dead man joins the ranks of ancestors and will be
worshiped in the first category, "father," when his son dies. This transi
tion bumps each ancestor up one level: the father to "grandfather," the
13 Hart, The Poems of Ancient Tamil, p. 82; Bryan Pfaffenberger, Caste in Tam
Culture: The Religious Foundations of Sudra Domination in Tamil Sri Lanka, South
Asian Series, no. 7 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship
and Public Affairs, 1982), pp. 169-223.
14 Kothari (n. 4 above).
15 Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, The Gonds of Andhra Pradesh: Tradition an
Change (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979), pp. 363-93.
16 A. Aiyappan, "Deified Men and Humanized Gods: Some Folk Bases of Hind
Theology," in The Realm of the Extra Human: Agents and Audiences, ed. A. Bhar
(Paris: Mouton, 1976), pp. 139-48.
17 Verrier Elwin, The Religion of an Indian Tribe (Bombay: Oxford University Pres
1955), p. 81; cf. the statement made by E. W. Hopkins in 1885: "It is not denied that th
Hindus made gods of departed men" (The Religions of India [Boston: Ginn Co., 1885
p. 10).
18 Knipe (n. 3 above).
grandfather to "great-grandfather," and the great-grandfather to the

Visvedevi, the category of the "all gods" who preside over the rites and
were themselves previously ancestors. Thus, Knipe's point is very sim-
ilar to Elwin's: ancestors become gods.19
Even without this ritual conveyer belt moving ancestors into the
pantheon, other continuities exist between sraddha rituals and folk
cults. In the sapindTkarana, for example, the arrangement of the three
classes of ancestors is nearly identical to the lineup of deities outside a
small bow song temple. And the deceased himself in the form of a
pinda rice ball (later mixed with the pinda offerings to the ancestors) is
worshiped with the same materials-incense, flowers, ghee lamp, and
water-used to honor the minor gods and goddesses in the folk cult.
These continuities are not, of course, to be explained by any sort of
historical borrowing or derivation. Rather, the sraddha and bow song
rituals show affinities because they share the funerary foundation, or
ritual attention to the dead, that underlies much of Hinduism. In
anthropological terms, both are forms of secondary treatment of the
dead: they occur after death and after the primary rites have been
performed.20
But the two sets of rituals deal with different categories of the dead.
Among the castes that follow them, sraddha rites are normally per-
formed for all those who die a natural death (though women and
children are not as likely to be honored as are adult males), but the
bow song and similar cults celebrate only those who die violently and
prematurely. And these categories of the dead have correspondingly
different destinies. The natural dead become ancestors sustained
through ritual and sacrifice until they are reborn, but the violen
killed are never reborn (though, as discussed below, they do retu
Furthermore, the social groups that support these two traditions are
for the most part, different, too. Castes who participate in the b
song tradition have relatively simple and brief funerary (both prima
and secondary) rituals; none observe anything like the sraddha system
Conversely, those castes (generally Brahmins) who follow the srad
ceremonies in detail are usually not involved in cults to local gods an
goddesses.
Stemming from these differences, the folk cults and the sraddha
ceremonies have developed their rituals for the dead in different direc-
tions. The bow song, for example, has generated a large pantheon
'9 Ibid., p. 120.

20 On secondary treatment of the dead, see Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf,
Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1979); most of their examples concern secondary treatment of the
corpse, but some concern rituals to the noncorporeal dead (see pp. 89-92).
(more than one hundred gods and goddesses in Kanya Kumari Distric
alone) who are honored with puja, long oral performances of thei
stories, possession dances, and other rituals. This folk tradition, in
other words, has developed the funerary base into that complex of
gods and temples usually referred to as village or popular Hinduism
The sraddha ceremonies, on the other hand, have developed the base in
the other direction, into a system of ancestor worship.2' These variant
elaborations of a common base of mortuary ritual are complementary,
for the bow song and the sraddha system emphasize opposite ends o
the human-god continuum in Hinduism. The folk tradition has created
a pantheon of deities, while the high-caste practice honors a group of
humans. However, when the mortuary rituals in the folk traditions and
the transition to divinity in the sraddha rituals are brought to light, the
full continuum-from human death to deified dead to god-is visible
Given the nature of the Hindu world view, this human-god con-
tinuum can also be seen as a circle. Here the complementary nature of
folk and classical perspectives on the dead is even more apparent. In
the Puranas, epics, and law texts, the human-god continuum moves in
one direction: through the avatdra mechanism, gods (particularly
Visnu) take earthly forms and work in the world of men. Movement in
the other direction, humans becoming gods, however, is fraught with
danger and meets formidable celestial resistance; human aspirants ar
corrupted, deceived, or beaten back.22 But, as we have seen, this deifi-
cation of the dead is at the very core of many folk cults: dead heroes
are recruited into, not barred from, the ranks of the gods. A combina-
tion of this deification in folk Hinduism with the avatara in classical
Hinduism forms the symmetrical circle diagramed in fig. 1.
Along the left-hand arc of the circle, humans are born, killed, and
then deified in Kailasa. Along the right-hand arc, gods exist (or are
born) in Kailasa and come down to earth for transactions with humans.
There is thus a continual flow between earth and Kailasa: humans go
up, and gods come down; even the gods, though not actually reborn,
are caught in something like samsira. Finally, as the diagram suggests,
this circular flow is a variation on the better-known cycle that connects
ancestors with the living.
This circular world view is based on a complementarity between folk
cults and classical Hinduism, but the two are not mirror images of each
21 A third development of the mortuary base in Hinduism might be the state funerals
in Bali; see Huntington and Metcalf, pp. 130-32; Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre
State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980),
pp. 116-20.
22 See Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980), pp. 66-68.
Kailasa/gods
deification/ascent avatara/descent
I Y ama Loka/ancestors J
death rebirth
earth/humans
FIG. 1
other. While the ascent of humans to Kailasa (deific

in the classical texts, the reverse-the descent of gods
rejected by folk traditions. In fact, many cults conta
gods who are "born" in Kailasa and who descend to e
their business and win worship; in this way, gods and h
in a circular flow even without the avatara process
tradition, for instance, neatly divides its pantheon into
"cut-up spirits" (vettuppatta vdtai) and figures of "divin
vamcam). The first category consists of gods who
violent death, the second of gods born in Kailasa. Th
then, are differentiated by how they acquire the status
one must earn it, while the other is born to it.
Bow song deities born in Kailasa include the stand
Siva, Visnu, Ganesa, Murukan, and ParvatT (especiall
but there are others who are worshiped more often. Th
lesser birth, born from some part of Siva's or Parva
sweat, tears, or armpits) or through their agency, usua
a huge celestial vat that the devas keep heated in Kailasa
these deities describe how they are born in Kailasa, com
interact with human beings (both beneficially and n
ever, of all the events in their stories, it is this one alo
from Kailasa to earth-that is singled out and given a
kaildca varavu (coming from Kailasa).
If the birth and descent from Kailasa define the stories of these
deities, it is the death and ascent to the same place that define narra-
tives of "cut-up spirits," the other category in the bow song pantheon.
These stories tell how humans (like Natan Cami) are born on earth, are
treacherously killed or forced to commit suicide, and then are "taken"
by Siva to Kailasa where they are given new names. Now deified, the
heroes/gods return to earth (like the birth deities) to avenge their
murders and to win worship. Significantly, this last segment is ex-
tremely short in texts; instead, the death and ascent to Kailasa is the
focus in both narrative and performance.
Yet, the actual act of deification itself in the narrative is uneventful,
usually on the order of, "They went to Kailasa to receive boons from
Siva." Fairly typical is the following excerpt from a performance
(which I recorded in 1979) of the Tampimar story about two brothers
(Kuincu Tampi and Valiya Tampi) murdered in the eighteenth century
in Travancore and now worshiped in a small cluster of temples in
Kanya Kumari District.
Taking out a little dagger,

he slit Kufcu Tampi's throat;
Cut like a goat or a chicken,
"This is the end!" Kuficu Tampi cried,
And fell on the field
where his brother had fallen.
Murdered,
the two brothers went to Kailasa
to Lord Siva.
Their hands raised in worship
they stood before Mahadeva
and asked for boons.
Then Siva,
covered with snakes
many-armed
and Lord of Kailasa,
Spoke to those who had died,
"Those who die a cruel death
have neither tapas nor boon;
those who die by suicide
have both tapas and boon.
But, my Kuficu Tampi,
those who die on the bloody field,
their purity is lost;
To rid yourself of impurity
go wash in that fire pit!"
But one should not expect that the deification process would be any
more important in these narratives. For giva, in granting new names
and boons, is only rubber-stamping what already has been conferred
on the dead by their worshipers on earth. When fortune or misfortune
is attributed to the spirit of a dead person, and when formal rituals are
performed to him, that person is deified.
EXPLANATIONS FOR THE DEIFIED DEAD
Behind the death-deification pattern identified in folk mat

a basic question: Why are the dead deified in the first place
nately, this problem has not been well researched, and our
ing of it has not advanced much beyond the theories of
Freud. One reason for this stagnation is that the only type
to receive sustained scholarly attention is ancestor worship.
this essay it has been shown that other Hindu cults of t
tered on the deified dead) share a ritual base with the ances
sraddha and that these folk cults diverge from the clas
elaborating their common base into a system of god worshi
sidering below some standard explanations for cults of t
ticularly ancestor worship, the special problems presented b
folk cults will stand out more clearly.
One anthropological interpretation of ancestor worship, p
in Africa, has been to see it as an extension of social relatio
afterworld. In this view, the authority of the elders con
death, assuring the continuity of the norms that govern so
and, as Goody has demonstrated, distributing wealth and
successive generations.23 A second anthropological appr
sociological and more psychological. From this perspecti
toward the departed spirit, ancestral or not, are the out
worshipers' personal relations with that person before
studies from this perspective, using data from South A
where, follow Freud in suggesting that the worshiper proje
spirit the hostility he felt toward the relative or friend (whi
worshiper's hostility then becomes the "spirit's" malevo
then must be appeased by worship.24 The aggression of a
also be a form of secondary projection that relieves the gui
from negative feelings toward the human turned spirit; wh
23 J. Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors (Stanford, Calif.: Stanf

Press, 1962); see also John Middleton, Lugbara Religion (London: Oxf
Press, 1960); Emily H. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Vill
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973).
24 Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death, trans. A. A. B
Kuttner (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1918), and Totem and Taboo, trans.
J. Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1950), pp. 51-63. Important interpreta-
tions from a psychological perspective include Kathleen Gough, "Cults of the Dead
among the Nayar," in Traditional India: Structure and Change, ed. Milton Singer
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959), pp. 240-72; R. D. Bradbury, "Father, Elders,
and Ghosts in Edo Religion," in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion,
ed. Michael Banton (London: Tavistock, 1966), pp. 127-53, esp. p. 150; Gananath
Obeyesekere, Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 117-22; M. E. Opler, "An Interpreta-
tion of Ambivalence of Two American Indian Tribes," in Lessa and Vogt, eds. (n. 6
above), pp. 421-31.
attacks, the victim is unconsciously gratified because he feels he

deserves the punishment.25
Neither of these interpretations, however, can apply to cults of the
deified dead like the bow song and others in India. The first, the
sociological argument that worship of the dead transfers authority
across generations, is inapplicable because in these folk cults the dei-
fied dead are not necessarily kin to the worshipers. At an early stage of
a cult, such as that described by Kothari in Rajasthan or illustrated by
the cumai tdhki in Tamil Nadu, the god or goddess may be worshiped
only by relatives, but this is not true for the larger cults of teyyam,
paddana, bhomiya, and bow song. In fact, in these cults, it is not
unusual for the deified dead to be of an entirely different caste from
that of the worshipers. Nor will the psychological explanation, based
on ambivalent personal feelings toward the deceased, fit the case of
these folk cults. Most figures worshiped in them were not only un-
related to their worshipers during life but were even unknown to them.
How could these theories explain, for example, the case of Captain
Pole of the British Army who was killed in 1809 trying to take the
Travancore lines, was buried on the seashore in Tinnevelly District,
and then (within a decade) was worshiped by local villagers with offer-
ings of liquor and cheroots?26 Neither social continuity nor psychic
projection could be said to have motivated this deification.
A third major explanation for the worship of the dead is based on
the concept of liminality. Are not the deified dead in these cults simply
pretas that were not given proper funerals and therefore are not
incorporated into the world of the ancestors? These figures are power-
ful and dangerous and worshiped, the argument would continue, be-
cause they are out of social and ritual bounds. This explanation is
more plausible because, unlike the other two, it does not require that
the spirit be related or even known to the worshipers. Still, the failure
to perform proper mortuary rites cannot by itself account for the
worship of the dead since not all who fail to receive proper funerals are
deified. The liminality interpretation fails because it ignores the actual
type of death that brings deification. In fact, some of the deified dead
in the bow song tradition do receive the ordinary cremation and post-
cremation rites. Finally, since the bow song festival (kotai) is itself a
form of mortuary ritual, according to this theory, it should defuse the
powers of the hero/ god and transfer him to the ancestor category; but
this is not the case.
25 Gough, p. 254.
26 Rev. Robert Caldwell, The Tinnevelly Shanars: A Sketch of Their Religion, and
Their Moral Condition and Characteristics as a Caste (Madras: Christian Knowledge
Society Press, 1849), p. 27.
A fourth, somewhat vague explanation for worship of the deified

dead identifies it as "hero worship." This explains the deification of the
hero by reference not so much to his death as to his life-the fact that
he defended values and material goods important to the social group
that deifies him.27 Once again, this interpretation is not fully satisfying
because not all deified dead are "social heroes"; some are simply vic-
tims of violence, while others are more like villains. Folk tradition may
eventually, rather quickly, in fact, mold figures into the social hero
type, but this does not explain why they are deified at the outset.
For a more adequate explanation of the deified dead in folk Hindu-
ism, it is necessary to look back at the death event itself and at its
violence. Specifically, I would highlight three themes as keys to under-
standing the deification of the dead: (1) its (partial) triumph over
death, (2) the power of the violently killed, and (3) deification as a
means to make that power accessible.
On the surface, the first seems curious. Surely death, if anything,
signifies a human defeat and not the reverse. Moreover, the violent,
premature deaths with which we are concerned would seem death's
most complete victory: its victims, as the theory of the unincorporated
preta holds, are denied access to the world of the ancestors where they
could be fed and from where they could be eventually reborn. How-
ever, the deified dead do return. Though banished from the ritual
world of the ancestors, the victims of violent death return through
deification to another ritual world, the local cults of Hinduism. Killed
or murdered, these men and women manage (through the agency of
Siva) to return as gods. When their stories are sung in a festival, and
when they are honored with puja, death is beaten back, its finality
denied. Deifying the dead celebrates not a triumph of death but a
partial victory over it.
Deification defeats death on the narrative level as well. Stories
(especially epics) about folk heroes/gods in India seem to develop in a
particular pattern by adding two primary motifs: a supernatural birth
and then an identification with a pan-Indian god or hero. The effect of
this pattern is that the human history of the deified hero is gradually
absorbed into a divine pedigree; often his birth and his death are
forgotten or simply explained away as a consequence of a prior curse,
vow, or boon from Kailasa. In this way, the deification process under-
mines itself, for the ladder that human heroes use to ascend into the
world of the gods is pulled up after them-were it left dangling, others
might try to climb it. Even the stories of Shakyamuni Buddha,
Mahavira, and Sankara were constructed to establish the prior divinity
27 See Thapar (n. 10 above); and Kothari (n. 4 above).
of these "historical" figures, to show that they were, from the very
beginning, manifestations of a transcendental reality.28
But it is not only a theological victory over death that deification
accomplishes. The fact that the deaths are violent gives that deification
a more pragmatic payoff, too. In the bow song tradition, and in other
local cults, the deified dead are the most powerful gods and goddesses;
they may lack the status and authority of the other deities with divine
origins, but they have a more immediate power. They are as powerful
as death itself, perhaps because they met it in its rawest form; in other
words, the deified dead have become the violence they experienced.
That force, driven inside them at death, then becomes a source that
worshipers can call on to counteract other elemental forces of disease,
disaster, and even death.
Violence and destruction, of course, are part of the Hindu world
process, but much of Hindu philosophy and theology has been mar-
shaled against it. Even in the ritual realm, as Heesterman has shown,
death was rationalized out of the ancient Vedic (srauta) system when
the agonistic, violent elements were smothered by sacerdotal formula.29
This ritualization of violence is dramatically illustrated in a late Vedic
text by Prajapati's conquest and absorption of death (mrtyu), espe-
cially by their weapons: in Heesterman's words, "The 'weapons' of
Prajapati were the standard elements of the classical ritual-chant,
recitation, and (orderly) act.... Those of Death, on the other hand,
were typically non-srauta elements-song, dance, wanton act."30 Not
coincidentally, these weapons of death are precisely the central ele-
ments of a bow song performance. Both the Vedic and the folk tradi-
tions, then, achieve a victory over death, but by different means: the
classical ritual defuses it; the folk ritual embraces it. Indeed, violence
cannot be banished from the folk ritual since, as the source of the
power of the deified dead, it is a necessary element in their worship
Instead, violence is brought within the ritual frame of bow song per-
formances where people can make safe contact with it and, possibly,
direct it toward their own ends.
Here the folk cults stand against the felt need in Hinduism to isolate
death as a polluting experience. It may be that village religion in South
India and ancient Vedic sacrifice join hands in accepting the necessity
of death in the world process; it is true that both these ritual traditions,
28 See O'Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts, pp. 67-68.
29 See Heesterman, "Brahmin, Ritual, and Renouncer" (n. 2 above), and "The Case of
the Severed Head" (n. 2 above).
30 Heesterman, "The Ritualist's Problem" (paper presented at the annual meeting of
the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, 1983), p. 4; see also O'Flaherty,
Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts, pp. 133-34.
both the ancient and the modern, are centered on the sacrificial kill-
ing of animals.3' And, as David Shulman has shown in detail, the
sacrifice-the necessity of winning life from death-is the original
layer of the Tamil Puranas, later overlaid with concerns for purity.32
Perhaps the bow song and other folk cults are part of this early ethos
(continued, with Brahminical modifications, in the Mahibharata) that
did not shrink from death. But the Vedic sacrifice does not explain
much in the folk cults of the deified dead. The death in these cults may
be sacrificial and animal, but it is also unwilling and human. Death's
presence in them, furthermore, does not indicate the necessity of
destruction and dissolution in the world process; death is natural and
inevitable of that there is little doubt. What the folk cults are con-
cerned with is not the continuity of that process but the appropriat
of its power.
And it is deification that makes that power accessible-the fin
point in this explanation of Hindu cults of the deified dead. Here
preta-pitr model provides a useful analogy. Just as the embodie
subtle self must be made into an ancestor, so, too, the violently kille
must be transferred to a known cultural category. However, they ca
not be made into ancestors, like the ordinary dead, because the v
lence of their end makes them too powerful. Instead, another categor
is needed, and this is supplied by some level in the folk pantheon lik
vettuppatta vatai (cut-up spirit) in the Tamil bow songs (and som
times by the term preta itself). Deification, then, is not just an hono
ing; it is also a category transfer that allows others to make cont
with the power of death. Only when the violently killed are deified
there established patterns for interaction with them.
Thus the relation between folk and classical Hinduism, in terms of
the problem of death, is complex. As we have just seen, there is cont
nuity in that both folk and Vedic cults involve death, but to differe
ends. This essay has also pointed to a more general continuity:
mortuary ritual base shared by folk cults and classical ceremon
There are contrasts as well: folk cults embrace violence, while the
classical sacrifice and philosophy rejected it. And, finally, there are
complementarities in the circular world view formed by the deification
31 See Olivier Herrenschmidt, "Le Sacrifice, du buffle en Andhra Cotier: Le 'Culte de

Village' confronte aux de sacrificant et d'unite de culte," Purusartha 5 (1981): 137-78;
Shulman (n. 7 above), pp. 90-93, passim. On continuities between sacrifice in the
Mahabharata and folk cults in Tamil Nadu, see Alf Hiltebeitel, "Sexuality and Sacrifice:
Convergent Subcurrents in the Fire-walking Cult of DraupadT," in Images of Man:
Religion and Historical Process in South Asia, ed. Fred Clothey (Madras: New Era,
1982), pp. 72-1 1 1; further discussion is found in Kees W. Bolle, "A World of Sacrifice,"
History of Religions 23, no. 1 (August 1983): 37-63.
32 Shulman, chaps. 3, 4.
of the dead in folk Hinduism and th

Hinduism.
The study of folk Hinduism and its relations with the classical tradi-
tion is only just beginning. For the present at least, we can say that
these two streams of Hinduism are consistent in their concern with the
problem of death. Of course, preoccupation with death is not neces-
sarily a sign that a culture is pessimistic; it could just as easily indicate
the opposite. It could indicate that exuberance for life that unites
Hinduism's oldest, most esoteric literature with its most contemporary,
folk traditions.
Dartmouth College

Death N Deification

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Death and Deification: Folk Cults in Hinduism

Author(s): Stuart H. Blackburn

Were it not better to give death the place to which it is en

As a source of Indian religious thought, death is p

? 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

taking his devotee. The problem of death is so pervasive that one

I Wendy D. O'Flaherty, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: Univer-

But what is folk Hinduism? Certainly it is not an iso

CULTS OF THE DEIFIED DEAD

To the well-known Hindu perspectives on death, the cult

4 K. K. N. Kurup, The Cult of Teyyam and Hero Worship (Calcutta:

transforms a human into a deity. A typical example is a Tamil bow

In other bow song narratives, death is similarly violent-men are

9 Ra. Nagasamy, Cenkam Natukarkal (Madras: Tamil Nadu Department of Archae-

from a simple stone dedicated to a dead hero." A similar case might

1i G. A. Deleury, The Cult of Vithoba (Poona: Deccan College, 1960), chap. 9,

grandfather to "great-grandfather," and the great-grandfather to the

'9 Ibid., p. 120.

other. While the ascent of humans to Kailasa (deific

Taking out a little dagger,

EXPLANATIONS FOR THE DEIFIED DEAD

Behind the death-deification pattern identified in folk mat

23 J. Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors (Stanford, Calif.: Stanf

attacks, the victim is unconsciously gratified because he feels he

A fourth, somewhat vague explanation for worship of the deified

27 See Thapar (n. 10 above); and Kothari (n. 4 above).

31 See Olivier Herrenschmidt, "Le Sacrifice, du buffle en Andhra Cotier: Le 'Culte de

of the dead in folk Hinduism and th

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