Untouchable Friends

  Chapter 11 Bhangi religious thoughts

  Mother godess worship is common among low castes in western Rajasthan. The Bhangis Tan Dan has talked to about their religion seem to worship her as female godess power, but not very concrete. They call her Mata Devi, i.e. the mother godess. Other names are Jogmaya and Jagthamba. (The fascination of the world and the piller of the world.)

  It is general mother godess cult that have been in vogue for ages in the region, and well known to common people living there. It is not a religion for the Bhangis only. When Tan Dan asked them to tell stories of Jagthamba and Jogmaya, they told him stories which belonged to the legends of Karni, Khodiar, and Avad. These three godesses are incarnations of the Hinglaj in mythology of the Baldia group of castes, especially Charan mythology.

  The way Bhangis in the Chelana region worship Jagthamba

  For the Jagthamba cult there are mostly no temples. A picture of a trishule, the trident weapon, painted on the wall in front of the worshipper, could serve as a home made shrine. He could also select a stone slab of about one square feet, and draw the lines of the trishul on it with some colour. Ghee (butteroil) could also do as a paint. Or, the amulett the worshipper wore around his neck he might put on the ground as a temporary shrine, and start worshipping.

  On such an amulett there is often a godess sitting on a tiger with a trishule in her hand. It is meant to be Karni, but the Bhangi worshipper may use the amulett for his Jagthamba worship, not feeling there is much difference.

  Norta ritual feast meals for Jagthamba

  On first and nineth day of the norta celebration, the families worshipping Jagthamba have a feast meal at midday around twelve to two. At that feast they sometimes eat meat and drink some liquor, starting the feast by offering a small symbolic quantity of meat. That is the custom among Bhangis, including Baya's family, who on that day will buy mutton from the village butcher. That is also done by families of other castes worshipping Jagthamba.

  They will not use their own dried meat of selfdead animals, as they offer the first offer small amounts of meat and liquour to the Jagthamba to make the feast sacred.

  Among Bhangis and other untouchable castes, meat and liquor are consumed in small quantities as prasad among both men and women. Among the Jagthamba worshippers of higher castes, such as Charans and Rajputs, only men drink liquor and eat meat. The women in high castes cook sweets such as lapsis. Lapsis is made of wheat dallia roasted in sugar and ghee, or rather gur instead of sugar among poor people. Also Bhangis and other low castes sometimes eat only lapsis and such sweets instead of meat, although they try to serve liquor to the godess, if possible, with or without meat, as liquor is considered to be very much liked by the godess, and an important prerequisite for a successful worship.

  Goat sacrifice to godesses for getting better health

  Uda Ram Bhangi's son Devi Lal moved from Chelana to Merta, when he got a job as a bundle lift at a government office in that town. Once he thought that his sons had were in ill health, and therefore went to a Jagthamba temple at Khejarla and sacrificed a goat to the Jagthamba devi mata in the hope that they would improve. In 1976. He invited relatives and friends to the feast. They also sacrificed liquor to the godess. Then they drank themselves.

  Tan Dan has only heard Bhangis talking about Jagthamba mataji and not about other godesses such as Chavanda for whom there is a temple in a neighbouring village, where a rebari family sacrificed a goat to the Chavanda mata devi due to illness in the family in the 1970s. The rituals were about the same as for Devi Lal's family with the difference that the members of the Rebari family were vegetarians. Therefore they invited meateaters of other castes, who also drank the liqour together with the Chavanda godess.

  Bhairon and Jagthamba are common deities for many low caste people and some of other castes, too. Baniya and Brahmins do not worship these gods on caste basis, only some individuals. They certainly did not participate in the liquor and meat worship of Jagthamba or some other mata devi.

  Charan menfolk, on the other hand, have had the tradition of sacrificing he-goats and liqour to Karni devi among menfolk. At Chelana women did not participate in their menfolks meat and goat sacrifice feasts, although Charan women at other places still did participate here and there in the 1970s. This way of worshipping is fading out, though, due to a desire among Charans to be recognized as high caste Hindus. Among the Charan women a Hinduization process is going on at Chelana, Tan Dan told in 1981.Goat and liquor sacrifice at the Deshnok temple stopped about 1975, when the Government passed a law to that effect.

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