Village Deities

According to popular Hindu tradition,
the universe has 330 million gods. The
richness of this mythic imagination can
be seen in the composition of the Hindu
pantheon, in which hundreds of major
and minor deities have been given form,
identity, and mythic history. Yet aside
from these deities, who have been given
an identifiable form, there are also a
host of village deities found throughout
India. In most cases, the village deity is
exactly that—the deity who protects,
watches over, and acts as a divine overseer for a particular village or locale.
One of their most common functions is
to protect the village from disease, either
of people or livestock, and to provide
remedies when disease strikes. They are
also the guardians of the village, defending it from ghosts and unseen powers,
as well as protecting the villagers from
danger and misfortune.
The authority of these deities is generally quite limited—in most cases, it does
not extend beyond the village itself. In
most cases, village deities have no welldefined mythic history, form, or personality. At times they will have a temple
dedicated to them, but in other cases the
village deity is believed to be associated
with a particular tree or is represented by
a post in the village square. Village deities
are usually nonvegetarian, demanding
animal sacrifices and offerings of
blood in exchange for their services.
Relationships with these deities are highly
pragmatic—the villagers make offerings,
and the deities protect, but beyond
these offerings there is usually little
organized worship. If these deities have
any organized priesthood, it is almost
always non-brahmin because the impurity (ashaucha) generated by animal sacrifices would be unacceptable to
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Vikramaditya
brahmins. These priesthoods are intermediaries between the deity and the villagers, usually communicating with the
deities through dreams or possession. In
this way the deities’ wishes become
known, and problems or concerns can
find their solution.
In some cases, local deities have gained
greater stature and have been assimilated
into the pantheon. For female deities, this
process is fairly simple, since they can be
brought into the pantheon by claiming
that their temples are one of the Shakti
Pithas, a network of sites sacred to the
Goddess that spreads throughout the subcontinent. Each Shakti Pitha marks the site
where a body part of the dismembered
goddess Sati fell to earth, taking form there
as a different goddess; all these individual
goddesses are thus seen as manifestations
of a single great Goddess. Male deities are
more commonly assimilated into the pantheon as manifestations of the god Vishnu,
and three prominent examples of the former are Jagannath, Vithoba, and
Venkateshvara. Village deities are less
commonly said to be forms of the god
Shiva, but this has happened with
Khandoba, an important regional deity in
the state of Maharashtra. See also pitha.