Essay name: Goddesses from the Samhitas to the Sutras
Author:
Rajeshri Goswami
Affiliation: Jadavpur University / Department of Sanskrit
This essay studies the Goddesses from the Samhitas to the Sutras. In short, this thesis examines Vedic goddesses by analyzing their images, functions, and social positions. It further details how natural and abstract elements were personified as goddesses, whose characteristics evolved with societal changes.
Chapter 4
8 (of 11)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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The Vedic Aryans personified a particular disease, possibly
cholera, as the word came to mean later as a goddess in Vis奴cika.
She was invoked by them to protect the sacrificers from suffering,
she is a very minor Vedic goddess. In Visucika we have the
earliest myth of a disease-goddess.
In later Puranic and post-
Puranic mythologies disease-goddesses multiplied. Hence Vis奴cik膩
is significant as starting a mythological process.
Subrahmani
Only once is a reference found to the goddess Subrahmani
in the whole of the Vedic literature in a hymn of the Sadvim艣a
22 Brahmana. She is the famous centre of all the gods. The word
clearly marks the ascendance of the Brahmin caste in society
as the sole reference associates her with the cardinal point of
the pantheon.
Puramdhi
Puramdhi is sometimes personified as a goddess. She is
7 the goddess of plenty and liberality and is endowed with clarified
butter; she is possessed of praise consisting of the interwoven
vers
23 verses.
The word literally means 'supporter of the township';
hence the association with plenty and prosperity (of butter)
22 I: 219.
23 MS II : 814, RV VII: 3618
