Source: Beauteous Beast: The Water Deity MAMI Wata in AFRICA
Take, for example, the chromolithographic image of the triple-headed, multiarmed Hindu deity Dattatreya.58 For Ewe Mami Wata worshippers, it represents Densu, a papi wata spirit associated with a river in Ghana. He is called the “triple gift giver” and is a source of enormous wealth, as explained by the artist of the mural in the shrine of renowned Mami Wata priestess Affi Yeye in Benin.+++(5)+++ In the shrine of Igbo healer and Mami Wata priest Dido in Nigeria, the spirit has a different name but still serves to give valuables with its many hands.
As a Yoruba Mami Wata devotee who sells popular Hindu prints in Togo has explained:
[F]ormerly, during the colonial period, we had the pictures (Hindu images), but we didn’t know their meaning. People just liked them to put in their rooms. But then Africans started to study them too- about what is the meaning of these pictures that they are putting lights, candles, and incense there every time. I think they are using the power to collect our money away, or how? So we started to befriend the Indians to know their secret about the pictures.+++(5)+++ From there the Africans also tried to join some of their societies in India and all over the world to know much about the pictures. Reading some of their books, I could understand what they mean.59
His account illustrates how meanings are constructed, as well as how Mami Wata ritual practices evolve and spread so dramatically. The print seller uses books on Buddhism, Hinduism, and occultism as references for his synthesis of foreign and indigenous divinities and the paraphernalia necessary for their worship.+++(5)+++ When African clients express an interest in the deities illustrated in particular prints, the print seller provides the English, Hindu, and African names of the gods and goddesses and explains their powers, attributes, and the materials required for their worship.+++(5)+++ Each spirit, he explains, has its own incense or perfume because Mami Wata likes pleasant scents, and the fragrances “drive away evil spirits.” He adds that Mami Wata abhors filth and loves beautiful things. Therefore, her shrine must be spotless, well arranged, and covered in white cloth or clean sand. The remaining requirements include flowers, “sweet” foods (such as candy, bananas, oranges, and eggs), candles, either a bound notebook or sheets of paper, money perfume, and talcum powder, as well as sweet music to soothe Mami Wata’s heart.60 All these ritual elements resonate with the devotions of Hindu merchants, studied by African devotees of Mami Wata for the purpose of obtaining the same good fortune as those successful merchants from overseas.+++(4)+++
[^59] Ibid., p. 62. See Drewal, Mami Wata, figure 41: print of the Hindu deity Dattatreya, before 1975, chromolithograph, 20.3 x 15.2 cm, private collection. (Ogunbiyi, personal communication, 1975). The importance of books and writing in Mami Wata beliefs and practices seems to have been inspired by writing associated with overseas strangers and the presence of books in some Hindu chromo-lithographs, especially those for Lakshmi (see Drewal, “Mermaids, Mirrors, and Snake Charmers,” p. 45, figure 13; and Drewal, “Interpretation, Invention, and Re-Presentation in the Worship of Mami Wata,’ pp. 122-3, figures 11, 12).+++(5)+++