Traveling Goddesses

Abstract

Goddesses link people to places. Throughout India, goddesses serve as village protector deities, grounding a village and connecting its people to it. Goddesses also serve as family deities, binding people to a distant place with special significance for their family. Typically people travel to their family goddess’s temple only infrequently, but most think that they should make the trip at least whenever a new bride or baby is added to the family, to present the new member to the goddess. Tuḷjā Bhavānī, as the patron goddess of Śivājī, is becoming, increasingly, the goddess of Maharashtra as a whole, and the recently invented goddess Bhārat Mātā (McKean 1996:144–63) is coming increasingly to personify India as a whole.