Pidari

Pidari is one of the consorts of Shiva. She was referred as the snake catcher.

For the village in Nepa see Pidari, Nepal.

Cult

The cult of Pitari evolved as a synthesis of native mother goddess with an aspect of the goddess Kali and is invoked in many villages to ward off evil and demons. The cult was noticed by elite literature by seventh century AD and was primarily centered in Tamil Nadu. Her cult moved on and reached a climax in eastern India between the eighth and twelfth centuries.

Iconography

This Village Goddess possesses most of the attributes of Kali. Her attributes are the cup, fire, noose, and trident. She may also have snakes coiled around her breasts.[1]

Like most village Goddesses she may be represented by a stone. Still many Amman temples in Tamil Nadu have the suffix Pidari.

gollark: But I'd do asymmetric crypto so they can be independently verified.
gollark: Or it could be a salted hash thing with a secret key/message authentication code.
gollark: That's what I'd do.
gollark: It could be cryptographically signed.
gollark: It is, apparently, URLsafe base64 encoding densely packed binary.

See also

References

Bibliography
  • Jordan, Michael, Encyclopedia of Gods, New York, Facts On File, Inc. 1993, p. 205


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.