of this type do not appear to be connected with the cult of Mother Earth because their worshippers are in the pre-agricultural stage.
Secondly, there is a type of Mothers who are generally acknowledged to be of human origin. Many of the southern Mothers fall into this category, such as Gangammā, sometime regarded as a form of the divine river Ganges, who is also said to have been the daughter of a Brāhman, and Pangammā, one of three sisters who made a famous tank.[1] This type of Mother is particularly common in Gujarāt in the shape of the deified spirits of women of the Chāran tribe, people who, in the old days of anarchy, used to take charge of convoys of treasure, and were ready to give their lives in its defence. The murderer of such guardians was believed to be haunted by the angry spirits of his victims, and even now, though their traditional occupation has ceased, Chāran women are supposed to possess supernatural powers, and are addressed as “Mother,” or “Goddess Mother.” Many of the most famous Mother Goddesses in Gujarāt belong to this class.[2]
Thirdly, we must not dismiss the possibility that some Mothers may be simply animistic or pre-animistic spirits, impersonation of the awe and terror with which people of the lower culture regard anything quaint or abnormal. Possibly some of the Jungle Mothers may be included in this class.
But the general class of Mothers is so vague, “figures as melting and shifting as the clouds of sunset”—so Andrew Lang described the Vedic gods[3]—that the study of their origin and relations is difficult. In their earliest forms they are purely local, regarded as having no relation to the
- ↑ A. F. Cox, A. H. Stuart, Manual of the North Arcot District, i. 186. See other instances in Bishop Whitehead, op. cit. 26, 32, 75, 118, 123.
- ↑ A. K. Forbes, Rās Māla, 2nd ed. 426 ff; Bombay Gazetteer, v. 76, vii. 609 et seqq., ix. part 1, Introd. xxxvi; Sir M. Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 4th ed. 225 et seq.
- ↑ Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. 161.
