orthodox Brahmanical pantheon the male deities are also predominant, and their consorts, except in the cases of figures like Kālī, Durgā, or Devī, are of secondary importance. But in the old Dravidian pantheon which has survived in Southern India the leading feature is the worship of the female principle in nature, and it is only in the Brahman-ridden Tamil country that male deities acquire prominence over the goddesses.[1] The important, fundamental conception of Dyaus, the Sky-god, and Prithivi, “the broad one,” the impersonation of the widespread northern plains, does appear in the Vedas, but this bears little relation to the worship of Mother Earth among the Indo- Aryan and Dravidian peoples.[2] In the Vedas “the Earth herself makes no remarkable figure: she is indeed deified, at least partially, is addressed as mother and substance of all things: is generally, in company with the sky, invoked to grant blessings; yet this never advanced further than a lively personation might go.[3]
In the later Hindu cults, however, that of Mother Earth has acquired great importance. She now takes the name, not of Prithivi, εὐρύστερνος of the Greeks, but of Bhūmi, “that which is produced, exists,” or more generally of Dhartī, Dharanī, Dharitrī, “she who bears or carries,” the upholder of the human, animal and vegetable creation which rests upon her surface. As a Grāmadevatā or village goddess she is generally aniconic, being supposed to dwell in a pile of rough stones or potsherds collected under
- ↑ Bishop H. Whitehead, The Village Gods of South India, 17, 94.
- ↑ Macdonell, op. cit. 8, 12; [Sir] E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2nd ed. i. 321 et seqq.; G. Oppert, The Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India, 402; A. A. Macdonell, A. B. Keith, Vedic Index, ii. 16 et seq.
- ↑ W. D. Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic Studies, 32. “The early Iranians personified Mother Earth as Spenta-Armaiti, the Aramati of the Vedas” (M. Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis, 160, 274, 306; M. Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times, i. Introd. xxxvii. et seq. 128 et seq.; A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, 119 et seq.)
