the sacred tree of the community. Her cultus is of primitive simplicity: she is chiefly worshipped by women, and if she has a priest he is usually not a Brāhman, but drawn from the menials or outcastes. In south India Brāhmans object to serve the Mothers because they cannot join in their animal sacrifices.[1] In northern India her offerings consist usually of grain or fruit laid on her stones or of milk poured over them. The Orāon farmer, before transplanting his rice seedlings, makes a libation of rice-beer on the ground, and prays to Dhartī Māī: “O Mother Earth! May we have plenty of rain and a bumper crop! Here is a drink-offering for thee!”[2] The forest-dwelling Kharwār in Mirzapur, who now lives chiefly by farming, prays: “O Mother Earth! Keep in prosperity and protect the ploughman and his oxen!” while in the Panjāb the prayer runs: “Keep our rulers and bankers contented! Grant us a plentiful yield! So shall we pay our revenue and satisfy our banker”—the sinister figure who haunts the dreams of the struggling peasant.[3]
In the Vedas she is invoked to shelter the corpse as it is laid in the grave. “Go thou now to Mother Earth, who is wide-opened, favourable, a wool-soft maiden to the good man. May she guard thee from the lap of destruction! Be not oppressive to him, let him enter easily, may he fasten close to thee!”; or, as it runs in the Atharva-veda, “Be pleasant to him, O Earth, a thornless resting-place: furnish him with a broad refuge! I cover thee excellently with the garment of Mother Earth! Thou being earth, I make thee enter into earth!” [4] The Rāūls of Poona at the present day, who bury their dead, say: “O Mother Earth! we make this body over to thee in the presence of the gods Brahmā and Vishnu, who are our witnesses.”
- ↑ Bishop H. Whitehead, op. cit. 41.
- ↑ Sarat Chandra Roy, The Orāons of Chola Nāgpur, 142.
- ↑ W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, i. 32 et seq.
- ↑ Rig-Veda, x. 18: Atharvavea’a, xviii. 2, 4, trans. W. D. Whitney, ii. 836, 843, 883. The word for “earth” is here bhūmi.
