Maariamma

Courtesy: Sri.S.Narayanasamy Iyer

Puranically, Kaartha Veeraarjunan was an Asuran Kshathriyan demon-king, with a thousand heads, two thousand arms, enormous wings and a Hanuman-like tail.  He could, and did, fly through the air, especially over sacred rivers where Rishi-pathnis and other chaste pious women used to go to bathe very early and to carry sacred water back home for their menfolk to perform Sandhya Vandhanam and other prescribed rites.  He was a contemporary of the Asuran Braahmana demon-kings of Lanka  --   Raavanan, Kumbhakarnan, and Ravanan's eldest son Indrachiththan.
 
Lord Parasuraaman's mother, who had gone one day, very early in the morning, to bathe and to gather theertham for her Brahmarishi husband Jamadaagni and for her Brahmachaarya children, including Parasuraaman (then known only as Raaman),
glimpsed this asuran's swiftly disappearing shadow on the water, and marvelled at the existence of such a powerful and loathsome creature.  Tragically, she instantly lost her pathi-vrathaa status.  And, along with it, her normal ability to gather theertham like a snow-ball, and to carry it home without a container.  She had taken a solemn vow, at the time of marriage, in the assembled Brahmana Parishad, not to look upon any male except her lawful husband.  She had, perhaps inadvertently, broken that vow.

When her husband discovered the fall in grace, he divorced the sullied wife immediately, and called upon his eldest son to take the fallen woman into the forest and behead her according to the dharmic laws.  Son after son refused.  When it came to the turn of seven-year-old youngest son Raaman, that child upheld the eternal Dharmic law of instantly obeying his Dharmic teacher, i.e.
his own father, without question.  And carried out his father's decree without hesitation.
 
After returning home, having his ritual bath, and performing his ritual Sandhya
Vandanam, Samaidha Dhaanam and so on, the time came for breakfast.  No
mother.  So the father proceeded to cook and serve breakfast.  The other sons
accepted, but not Raaman.  He wanted to be fed only food prepared by his
mother, and fed only by his mother's own hand.
 
The Brahmarishi father was in a dilemma.  But Raaman was adamant, as only a
high-spirited child will.  Only his dead mother could prepare food and feed
him.

After deliberation, the Brahmarishi father agreed to restore Raaman's mother to
life, if Raaman would show where the head-severed body of the woman lay.

Led by Raaman, Jamadaagni and the brothers scoured the nearby forest, and soon
found the beheaded body.  But the head was missing.  Only the headless corpse
remained.  Frantically, they hunted high and low, criss-crossing the thick
jungle, without success.  Some wild beast must have snatched the head away,
perhaps to feed its young in its lair.

Jamadaagni became concerned.  It was getting late, and his life-retoring
Mruthyu-sanjeevana Shakthi would ebb away by sunset.  By the following morning,
it would be too late.  The recovery team re-doubled their efforts.  They were
approaching the outskirts of an untouchables settlement, when they noticed, in
the rapidly-fading daylight, the corpse of a newly-dead black untouchable woman
which had been flung on top of a garbage-heap outside the settlement, as was the
custom at that time.  Luckily, no wild beast had mauled the corpse, which was
still intact.

Jamagaagni took the axe from Raaman, severed the untouchable black woman's
corpse's head from the body, carried it to where Raman's mother's headless body
lay, and aligned the two together, pronouncing the life-restoring manthrams and
sprinkling the sacred water from his kamandalu, precious moments befoe the Sun's
disc slipped below the horizon.Â

Immediately, the resurrected body sprang up, full of vigorous life, and looked
around in wonder.  Jamadaagni introduced the new being to Raaman as his
resurrected mother.  She ran forward to embrace the divine-looking child.

Raaman took one look at the black grinning face, red eyes, thick lips and white
teeth of the untouchable woman, and shrank back in horror, clutching his
father's legs.  He forcefully rejected the notion that this mongrel creature
was his mother.

Brahmarishi Jamadaagni was in an ever greater dilemma than before.  The new
creature emotionally implored him, accusing him of having created this
situation, and asking him what she should now do, what he now proposed to do.

After some initial hesitation, the rishi came to a decision.Â

"Since Raaman has called you a "duplicate mother" or "maari-amma", that shall be
your name --  Maariamman," he declared.  "Since you hunger for the company of
young children like Raaman, the mothers of other young children shall approach
you for help.  You shall have the sole power to inflict, and to cure,
death-dealing smallpox and other infants' and children's diseases.  You shall
be prayed to as Seethala Devi, the curer of smallpox.  But you shall reside and
have your shrines only in the forest and under trees, and temporary shelters. 
You shall not have any shrines or temples in villages or places of human
habitation.  None of the First Three Varnas shall be your priests or priest's
assistants."

From that day to this, animal sacrifices and untouchable servers have been the
norm in all Mariamman temples.  And going into trances, and shouting, are part
of the rites.

When Parasuraaman attained maturity, an implacable enmity manifested itself
between him and the avaricious power-hungry Asuran Kshathriya demon-king Kaartha
Veeraarjunan.  The former managed to overcome all the spells and powers of the
latter, and triumnphed over him in battle, utterly
destroying nhim, and wiping out his army, his relatives and all his progeny.

S Narayanaswamy Iyer