THE MATANGI IN LEGENDS AND STORIES
After gathering from the Madigas all they could tell me of the Matangi cult, I turned to books to find corroborative evidence of the antiquity of the cult, to get an explanation of its rites and customs. I found that two scholars, Professor Wilson and Sir Monier Williams, give the same enumeration of Saktis: “Kali, Tara, Shodasi, Buvaneswari Bhairavi, Chinna Mastaka, Dhunavati, Vagala, Matangi, i.e. ‘a woman of the Bhangi Caste,’ Kamalatnika.” The name of Ellama is here omitted, and the Matangi is given a place among the ten great Saktis. This does not coincide with the information I obtained about the Matangi. Perhaps these ten Saktis belong to Northern India, rather than to Southern India.
There is another enumeration of Saktis in a book which treats of the gods of Southern India. It is as follows: “Mariama, Ellama, Ankalama, Bhadrakali, Pidari, Chamundi, Durga, Puranai, Pudkalai.” Ellama here has a place among the great Saktis. The Matangi cannot be given a place among them because she is only the Pariah woman who is at times possessed by the spirit of Ellama.
The author who thus gave me some slight corroborative evidence was the great Danish missionary, Ziegenbalg. He wrote his book on The Gods of Malabar in the year 1713, and sent it to Germany for publication. He was informed that the project of publishing his book could not be entertained, that he had been sent out “to uproot heathenism, and not to spread heathenish nonsense in Europe.” The great missionary was a scholar. His book, not published until 1867, contains information for which the student seeks in vain elsewhere.
While I failed to find a description of the Matangi cult, I yet found traces of the name in several books, in a way that served as a landmark. There was a degree of satisfaction in its recurrence, for the surrounding group of circumstances bore the mark of similarity. Wherever the name Matanga or Matangi, whether with masculine or feminine ending, occurred, there was religious aspiration, and with it the Chandala element.
The earliest mention of the name Matangi is to be found in the Mahabharata. It is not possible to give an authentic date in connection with this Sanscrit epic. Portions of it are of great antiquity, and the tradition of the sage Matanga probably belongs to the older parts. He was one of the limited number of renowned sages of Indian antiquity who were of degraded origin.
Matanga considered himself the son of Brahmin parents. One day, however, he made the discovery of his spurious birth. He was travelling in a car drawn by asses. They walked slowly, and in his impatience he goaded the colt. “It is a Chandala who is in the car; his wicked disposition indicates his origin,” said the she-ass to the colt.
Matanga heard this, and immediately besought the she-ass to tell him what she knew of his origin. He learned that his mother was a Brahmin, but that his father was a Chandala. Determined yet to earn Brahminhood, Matanga entered upon a course of austerities. Indra, to whom he appealed, refused his request, because so high a position cannot be obtained by one who is born a Chandala. One hundred years of austerities passed, but were of no avail. After Matanga had stood on his great toe for another one hundred years, Indra relented to the extent of giving him the power to change his shape at will, and move about like a bird. This legend indicates the strength of the Brahminical hierarchy to exclude all who were not of purely Brahminical birth.
Centuries pass, and again we meet with a sage, Matanga, mentioned in the Ramayana, the second Indian epic, which is also of great antiquity. When Rama, the hero of the epic, enters the great forest Dandaka, he is told that he will behold in the forest the abode of the great ascetic, Matanga, who was feared by all. “Even the elephants, though they were many, dared not cross the threshold of his asylum.” Matanga, and the ascetics with him, had departed to heaven in celestial cars, leaving an “immortal mendicant woman, by name Savari,” who had been commanded to await the coming of Rama, because she would then attain to the abode of the celestials.
Rama comes; he speaks to the female ascetic, who appears before him with matted locks, clothed in rags and the skin of an antelope: “O thou of sweet accents, hast thou succeeded in removing all hindrances to asceticism? Hast thou observed the commandments and attained to mental felicity?”
She approaches Rama with the words: “Favoured with thy presence, my asceticism hath attained to its consummation.”
She shows him the spot known as Matanga’s wood, and the various wild fruits growing on the banks of Pampa, which she had collected for him. He has come to take possession of them. Her work is done, and she announces her purpose of renouncing her body and approaching “those pure-souled ascetics” on whom she had formerly waited.
In an excess of joy Rama exclaims: “O gentle one, I have been worshipped by thee! Do thou depart at thy ease and pleasure.” Thus dismissed by Rama, she surrendered herself unto fire, and repaired to that holy region where her preceptors dwelt.
A more tolerant spirit by far is shown in this story, as compared to the previous one. The ascetic, Matanga, belonged to the day when Aryan hermits adopted conciliatory measures in the colonization of Southern India. With his disciples he formed a colony, but they do not seem to have dwelt in proud isolation. They honoured a Pariah woman by leaving her in charge of the deserted hermitage until Rama should come. They taught her to desire the heaven of Brahmin ascetics.
Again there is a gap of centuries, and we find in the Puranas, which rank next to the Ramayana in antiquity, a legend which, though it may not directly refer to the Matangi, yet marks the change which time had wrought. The Brahmin Rishis had realized that the worship of the gods of the Aryans did not appeal to the mind of the aborigines, yet they desired to control the religious life of all. Thus it came to pass that Siva, one of the lesser gods of the Aryan pantheon, in the evolution of centuries, took upon himself the stern qualities which the Dravidians revered in their deities. His consort, Parvati, became the form in which Sakti worship found expression. She is worshipped to-day in a multiplicity of forms, not the least of which is that of the Matangi.
The legend, to be found in the Valavisu Purana, is as follows: An ineffable mystery was once revealed by Parvati, the wife of Siva, and her son, Kartikeya. By way of punishment, they were to be re-born in an infinite number of mortal forms. But Parvati entreated that the severity of the sentence might be mitigated to one transmigration. This was granted. At this time Triamballa, King of the Parawas, and Varuna Valli, his wife, were engaged in special acts of devotion in order to obtain issue. Parvati condescended to become their daughter and assume the name of Tiryser Madente. Her son became a fish of immense size, roaming about in the sea. Swimming south, he attacked the fishing vessels of the Parawas, and threatened to destroy their trade. The king made public declaration that whosoever would catch the fish should have his daughter as a wife. The god Siva assumed the character of a Parawa, caught the fish, and was re-united to his consort. This legend is an attempt to bring Siva and Parvati into very close contact with the aborigines. The Parawas rank first among the tribes of Tamil fishermen of to-day, and were once a strong people and had kings.
A more elaborate attempt, on the part of the Brahmins, to explain the presence of this aboriginal cult by the side of Aryan deities is found in the legend of Ellama. Vishnu, who is distinctly a god created of Aryan conceptions, here appears incarnate as the son of Ellama, in the form of Parasu-Rama. Saivism and Vaishnavism thus converge in the person of Ellama, for she was the personification of Siva’s wife, and the mother of an incarnation of Vishnu.
Ellama was the daughter of a Brahmin. Her life from her childhood was so pure and holy that a great Rishi took her to be his wife. Parasu-Rama and three other sons were born to her. Her chastity was so great that by means of it she was enabled to roll the waters of the river Kaveri in huge balls to the place where her husband performed the sacrifice, that he might use it. One day she saw the shadow of something in the ball of water which she was rolling, and looked up. She saw the Gandharvas, the celestial musicians, flying through the air, and she admired their beauty greatly. Next day the water refused to be rolled. The Rishi asked, “Why can you not roll the water?” She replied: “Yesterday I saw a shadow in the water, and, looking up, saw the Gandharvas flying through the air. Beyond this I know of no sin.” The Rishi replied: “Your chastity is lost. A chaste woman would not have looked up and admired the Gandharvas.”
He called upon his sons to behead their mother, but they replied, “She is our mother; how can we cut off her head?” Parasu-Rama only was willing to do it, and the father sent him to find his mother. She had taken refuge with the Pariahs, who refused to deliver her to Parasu-Rama. He, however, killed all the Pariahs, and brought the head of his mother to the Rishi, who, greatly pleased, asked, “Son, what do you desire that I should do for you?” He said, “I desire that you give back to me my mother!” The Rishi granted his request, gave him the head of his mother, and he went in search of the body. Among the dead bodies of the Pariahs whom he had slain he could not find the body of his mother. He therefore placed the head upon the body of a Pariah woman, and brought her back to life. His father, when he saw her, said, “She is now a Pariah woman.” Both mother and son were sent away from his presence. Parasu-Rama became a mighty king, and Ellama became a goddess.
According to Ziegenbalg, the pagodas erected to Ellama in the Malabar country contain eight figures beside her own. One of these is Matangi, the Pariah woman, on whose body the head of Ellama was grafted. Another is Jamadagni, her husband, who ordered that she should be put to death. It was Jamadagni whom the maiden married, after she rose out of the ant-hill as Matangi. This establishes a coincidence in two legends.
The legends concerning the Matangi have received their most elaborate touches in the legend of Ellama. The next mention of her I found in books of local history and biography, where she stands forth in bold outline, in striking contrast to the mythical form of legendary productions. She is now “a female warrior of her tribe,” and takes part in the capture of Kampula in the Carnatic by Mohammed the Third in 1338. Many warriors from the Telugu country fought under the hero Kumara Rama, and she was among them.
The Matangi seems to have been treacherous, and to have gone over to the King of Delhi, who was highly incensed at the cowardice of his commanders, and put a large force of his soldiers under the command of the Matangi. Not only did she herself go over to the enemy, but she persuaded a company of Telugu soldiers to fight on the Mohammedan side. In the early part of the conflict that ensued, Kumara Rama was successful, and drove the enemy back. Not until then did he hear of the treachery in his camp, and speedily proceeded to the scene of danger, where he encountered the Matangi. He seized her nose-ring, shook it, and told her that he “disdained to take the life of a woman.” His bravest soldiers, surprised and overpowered by numbers, fell fast around him, and he was left alone. After maintaining the conflict for a long time, and killing many of his assailants, he himself was at last slain, and the Matangi cut off his head and carried it to Delhi.
The Matangi here has the power of her office. As Matangi she wielded a powerful influence over the Telugu warriors, which led the King of Delhi to regard her as a desirable ally. Kumara Rama’s hesitation to kill her, in the heat of battle, was probably due to respect for her office, rather than for her womanhood. She was the embodiment of a cult which all held sacred.
Looking back upon the recurrence of the name Matangi at intervals of centuries, far back into almost pre-historic times, we find one continuous thread of evidence that the Aryan invader, as he confronted an aboriginal cult of peculiar strength and tenacity, sought to find a place for it, to control it, and conquer it. The first step is indicated by the legend of the sage, Matanga, who was refused the boon of Brahminhood, showing the strength of the Brahminical hierarchy to exclude one who was of partly Chandala origin. Next we receive a glimpse of the more conciliatory measures adopted by Aryan hermits in the colonization of Southern India. Later we have Siva, the god evolved partly of Dravidian ideas, and his wife Parvati, taking upon themselves the form that would endear them to some of the lowest of the aboriginal tribes. Not satisfied with this, not only Saivism is brought in close contact with the Matangi cult, but Vaishnavism also finds a way to gain a hold upon it. It might seem as if the Brahminical hierarchy had now absorbed this strange cult. Far from it. The bloody ferocity of the “female warrior Matangi” differs from the loquacious curses with which the Brahmin sages content themselves.
The aboriginal tribes have clung to their cults with a peculiar tenacity. In view of the fact that the Brahmins have interested themselves in the Matangi cult, it is remarkable that none of their religious conceptions have penetrated into it. The legends concerning it they have succeeded in moulding according to their ideas. The cult itself they have not been able to reach. It is an aboriginal cult.