The myth of the smallpox goddess

 

The closest thing to Shitala´s "Tantric" form
I could prompt the prude Bing AI to generate

“Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India. The Healing Power of Sitala” is a 2015 book by Fabrizio M Ferrari, a scholar of religion based in the UK. I bought the book on a clearance sale (no academic pricing!), read a few chapters and skimmed the rest. Polemical exchanges between Ferrari and the more mainline scholars he is critiquing could be interesting and, perhaps, entertaining. I noticed that the work is used as a text book in religious studies departments in Sweden.

All across northern India, people worship a goddess known as Shitala or Sheetala (as I would render her name given the limitations of my Latin alphabet computer). However, during his extensive field trips around India, Ferrari noticed something peculiar. The “scholarly” view of Shitala is that she is a wrathful and terrifying deity, a “smallpox goddess” who demands worship and punishes those who refuses with the dreaded disease. Since smallpox is eradicated, presumably she now attacks people with other infections! However, this is *not* how most people in India actually see Shitala. Quite the contrary, the Cold Mother is always worshipped as a benign protectress, principally of women and children, from disease (including smallpox before 1979) and other kinds of misfortune. In some parts of India, she isn´t associated with disease-related topics at all, but is rather worshipped as a fertility goddess. Both poor villagers (whose worship of the deity can be pretty wild) and the urban gentry look upon Shitala as a mild-mannered mother goddess, not as a psychotic ghoul spreading deadly illness.

Something´s clearly up, and this book is the result of Ferrari´s reflections on the Shitala problematique.

The original form of Shitala was strikingly “Tantric” and wild. The goddess was depicted as a white-skinned and “sky-clad” (nude) young woman with big breasts and disheveled hair (the similarity with a male Shaiva ascetic is striking). She was riding on an ass (a wild donkey), considered an unclean and borderline evil animal in India. Later versions of Shitala were more civilized, with the goddess wearing a red sari and a golden tiara. Ferrari believes that while most deities and spirits associated with asses/donkeys are indeed inauspicious, Shitala is one of the few exceptions. Her riding the ass is symbolically a victory *over* evil and inauspiciousness, not an identification with it. Her other attributes include a pitcher filled with water (symbolizing her power to “cool” diseases), a broom (to get rid of impurities) and a winnower (perhaps suggesting an origin among poor peasants).

Beginning in the 17^th century, Bengali poets composed a number of Shitalamangalkavyas, stories in which Shitala played a decidedly sinister role. Excerpts known as Shitalapalas were staged in theatrical form and became popular. The “official” view of the goddess as capricious and brutal comes from these poems and theater plays. Indeed, Shitala is associated with a number of unsavory characters in these stories, including blood demons and what not! These stories have been taken at face value by many Westerners as descriptions of actual religious beliefs, when they are really literary fiction. Ferrari believe that the Shitalamangalkavyas give voice to the class prejudices of the privileged poets who wrote them. The point of these narratives is to describe the village folk and their religion as stupid and superstitious. It´s a form of very primitive bhakti based on fear: the peasants worship Shitala only after she has afflicted them with smallpox (which she then cures). However, even the underprivileged themselves find these tales entertaining, often due to the inclusion of ghouls, vampires and what not. The author makes a comparison to modern zombie flicks!

When India was a British dependency, the colonial power drew all the wrong conclusions from worship of Shitala during outbreaks of smallpox. This was especially the case after the British banned variolation in favor of smallpox vaccines. Variolation (a crude form of smallpox “vaccination”) continued to be carried out despite the ban. The colonial authorities often banned outbreaks of smallpox on variolation. The practice was combined with puja (worship service) to none other than Shitala. Since the British authorities interpreted Shitala as a dangerous “smallpox goddess”, they concluded that the Hindus were in thrall to a dangerous superstition and rejected modern vaccines out of fear of offending her. This attitude was taken over by the secular health authorities after Indian independence, and inculcated into foreign doctors and WHO officials who participated in India´s vaccination campaigns. Scholars also believe in this negative version, and still today – generations after smallpox have been eradicated – the Cold Lady is still depicted as a personification of smallpox in learned literature. Rampant Orientalism?

Maybe. However, I noticed when reading/skimming this volume that even Ferrari mentions a couple of examples when Shitala *is* considered dangerous. At village level, she is often seen as one of “seven sisters”, a collection of goddesses who apparently are dangerous and capricious unless properly worshipped. He describes a Tantric temple, in which the auspicious Shitala is surrounded by decidedly wilder deities (and the inevitable mortuary iconography). Finally, he seems to suggest that the south Indian, specifically Tamil, goddess Mariyamman is a smallpox goddess for real, inflicting diseases on people who refuse to pay her homage. Mariyamman is known in northern India thanks to Tamil migrant workers and is often identified with…guess who…Shitala. So perhaps there is more to explore here?

An interesting chapter deal with the folk worship of Shitala. The author visited a temple where the most popular Shitala festival started with a virtual stampede during which the crowd jostled for the best places inside the temple grounds. A long string of goat sacrifices followed (the animals were beheaded) and the blood offered to the goddess. Hijras played a prominent role during the ritual. Hijras are self-castrated biologically male transgenders, usually regarded as a third gender, but considered “male” for the duration of the sacrificial ritual (only males can offer goats to Shitala). The best and most expensive goat is usually offered by the local hijra community. During the festival, young women can be possessed by the goddess, act as if mad, and angrily denounce males (sometimes including family members or husbands). While many males naturally fear or dislike such behavior, others are sexually aroused by it (the male onlookers didn´t realize that Ferrari speaks Bengali and hence understood their lewd remarks). Worship of Mariyamman is even wilder. It can include piercing rituals, including piercing of cheeks and tongues with arrows and spears?! Apparently, these festivals are often sensationalized in the Indian media.

The last chapter of “Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India” deal with the gentrification of Shitala. Usually regarded as a “folk” or “village” goddess, her worship is spreading upward on the social ladder. This leads to inevitable changes. The middle class, animal rights activists and Vaishnavas frown on the animal sacrifices described earlier. Shitala has therefore gotten new looks. She has become more similar to Lakshmi, rides a dignified white ass that looks almost like a horse, and is associated with Hanuman (although somewhat contradictorily also with Bhairava). Another strategy is to make Shitala more similar to Durga, since the festival of this goddess is popular all over India. In this form, she is no longer associated with disease at all.

Concluding remark: yes, religions change, our perceptions of the gods and goddesses change, as well, suggesting either that they don´t exist or that their myths and legends can´t be taken as literal truth. But you knew that already. So here I end.