LESSON - 2

A06142 Worship and Festivals

Dealing with the Gods and Goddesses worshipped by Tamil folks, this lesson describes the traditions followed in festivals. Traditionally, folk - Gods are two - fold, minor and major. Minor deities are males and females worshipped in specific ways. Tamil culture and variations in temple festivals emerge in the course of descriptions in this lesson.

Six central units take up the origin and development of worship, the distinction between minor and great Gods and Goddesses, the description of minor deities and the structure of their temples, the classification of such minor deities, the ways of worshipping them and the rituals and festivals performed.

Folk worships refer to how human beings relate their faiths in Gods to Nature worship. Worship of trees and animals and ancestor worship are important kinds of this folk religion.

Major gods like Siva, Vishnu, Murugan, Vinayaga, Parvathi, Meenakshi and Kamakshi differ from minor Gods like house Gods, family deities, caste Gods, village Gods and popular Gods. The latter have births and deaths like humans, are worshipped by the poor in remote villages, forests and hills. Separate temples for family, race and caste may receive offer of animals that are killed in the premises with Brahmins or non - brahmins as priests. Oral stories and folk songs praise them. Major Gods are eternal, urban, worshipped by the elite, enormously powerful, accept vegetarian offers only, sober, usually with brahmin priests and having mythological stories and place histories.

Minor Gods can be males and females as chief and supporting Gods and mother and virgin Goddesses. They are based on faiths attributed to those who actually lived and died in different localities. Their temples are not well-structured but set up on the banks of tanks, lakes, rivers, and under the trees. The forms of these deities are not kept for long but created then and there, mostly with disproportionate organs angerous weapons. Ayyanar is a typical such God. Songs and proverbs galore, concerned with these deities.

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