DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

42 DEVELOPMENT OF SlVA [2.5
the patient before the days of ice-packs) with shrines in every village,
and over a score in Poona which is a city grown out of many villages;
as she now receives gifts from devout mothers on the tenth or twelfth
day after vaccination, she may be considered an effective protector
against the disease, especially by people who have never heard of Jenner
and to whom the vaccination is just a new-fangled blood-rite. Every
lane in Poona has such cults by the dozen; many of the temples grew
out of family gods set up by the brahmins who were attracted to the
city in the palmy days of the Peshwas, while the cruder gods continue
side by side. Occasionally, a local cult is assimilated to or may have
developed from the documented gods of the pantheon ; for example,
the major Maharastrian deity Vithoba is taken to be a form of Visnu,
his consort Rukliumal equated to Laksmi.
To return to the Vetala, we find that he is a goblin throughout classical
Sanskrit literature, a demoniac creature of some kind ; the Vikrama
cycle of legends contains him as a prominent actor. Siva, with whom
he has iconographic similarities, is the lord of all goblins (bhutesa),
as is any senior Vetala of longer standing ; but neither Siva’s image
nor the phallic symbol are normally found coated with the red* minium
pigment. Bhairava, whom we have seen in parallel location to the Vetala,
is of the same substance (amid) as Siva, and a death-god (as are Siva
proper and the Vetala too) able to receive sacrifices. Siva, however,
* A local tiger-cult Vagboba is to be seen on the divide between Pimploli village and
Bedsa. The aniconic image is round and socketed, like a Siva phallus, but coated with a
thick layer or minium into which two eye-sockets have been pressed. A stone Nandi bull
stands in front of the god, as for Siva’s symbol, but his genealogy is explained in the
present case by dozens of tiny stone bull-figures, in serried ranks, all facing the god. It is
fairly obvious that the original practice was of sacrificing a bull regularly to the tiger-god
; this was replaced by the stone votive bull figurines. Later, the assimilation to Siva
would take place under brahmin influence, with the diminution of tigers which further
reduced depredations of livestock grazing in the forest. In Bhorghat, on the other hand,
the corresponding cult is of the tiger-goddess Vagh-jai (elsewhere one of the ‘ seven
sisters ‘) ; she has acquired a quite recent closed temple, with bells, fashionable worship,
and gifts from travellers on the Bombay-Poona highway which passes close by.