DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

44 SENIOR DEITIES OF POONA [2.5
before neolithic savages had heard of Siva. The beast, normally vehicle of
Siva, is stated explicitly by the Linga-purana to be Siva’s active principle,
so really his totem. The cobra which encircles Siva’s neck, raises his
hood over Siva’s, phallic emblem, and upon whom Visnu reclines in
enduring sleep is another object of primitive worship quietly absorbed
into different, complex religious cults. We know just what the red coating
sindura (red oxide of lead) means in the case of Ganesa, for his saga
tells us that the elephant-headed god killed a demon (asura) called Sindura,
bathed in his blood with great delight; hence he must be given the
coating of sindura as blood substitute. That the red pigment is substitute
for the magical respiratory substance of life, blood, could have been guessed
from other observations on blood sacrifices (never made to Ganesa) but is
here explicitly recorded. The senior god of Poona is the Ganesa of
Kasba Peth (the oldest part of the city), whose image is lost beneath
a very thick coating of sindura (probably over 150 millimetres in
thickness) into which two silver eyes are set, like the oculi of the Vetala
or of any primitive neolithic image. The first invitation has to be sent to
him whenever a Poona wedding is announced. The priesthood is divided
among the members of a single family. Numerous gifts, income from the
miserable advertising which covers the outer wall (as of almost every
other Poona temple in this bourgeois age) and rent from estates assigned
to the temple and shop-stalls within the enclosure make the share of
each priest quite respectable. The senior goddess of Poona, whose cult
is similarly fashionable (and lucrative to the priests) is Jogesvari, before
whom an endless stream of visitors pays tribute (cash, flowers, coconuts)
from five o’clock in the morning when she’wakes, is dressed and
fed, to nearly midnight, when she is officially put to bed. The
worshippers see only a demure silver mask peeping out from the folds of
a cloth garment. But on no-moon dates, unbreakable custom demands
that the goddess be not dressed so that the original image of a squat,
long-armed, though not naked mother-goddess figure in crude relief
becomes visible ; tradition significantly requires the renewal on this lunar
date of the red pigment with which the real image is coated. Thus the deity