68 chapter
I am describing Amma-Narayana here as an incarnation of one, absolute
deity or divinity rather than as one among a pantheon of gods and goddesses.
Th e divine has many manifestations, and the problem of naming and charac-
terizing the “absolute” is a signifi cant theme in Hinduism. Western Orientalist
and Islamic discourses have often construed Hinduism as polytheistic based
on the observation that Hindus appeal to a variety of gods with distinct names
and identities in their worship at temples and enactment of rituals. A brief
conversation with a Hindu who frequents such temples, however, will usually
reveal that all these “gods” are seen as manifestations of the one, absolute deity,
which cannot be identifi ed by a single name or set of characteristics. Fuller
(1992) explained that “all Hindus sometimes and some Hindus always insist
that there is in reality only one God, of whom all the distinct gods and god-
desses are but forms” (30), and Eck (1998) claimed that asserting the oneness
of God while celebrating multiple personalities and forms is a distinguishing
feature of the Hindu style of religiosity (24). In the following description, I
will attribute several names to the divine to maintain this representational
style.
Th ose who have recounted the story of the origin of Chottanikkara temple
take us back to the days when the site of the present temple was a dense for-
est inhabited by “tribals,” a term used in India for the pre-Aryan inhabitants
of the subcontinent. One day, a tribal man named Kannappan brought home
a cow, intending to slaughter it for food. His daughter, however, refused to
allow him to kill the cow, and soon after this protest she, Kannappan’s only
child, died. After this tragic loss, Kannappan became enlightened and turned
his attention to god. After the goddess Devi came to Kannappan in a dream
and revealed that the cow was her incarnation, Kannappan transformed his
cowshed into a temple.
After Kannappan’s death, the temple fell into ruin, and the region was
deserted by its inhabitants until one day a Pulaya (low caste) woman who was
working in the area sharpened her scythe on a stone, which began to bleed.
She alerted people from her town who came to see this remarkable sight, and a
Brahmin declared that the chaitanya (power, consciousness) of the goddess was
present—as we will see later, chaitanya is a term one woman used to describe
what she attained from her healing experience at Chottanikkara. Th us a new
shrine was consecrated, and the idol of the goddess in the temple today bears
a small incision that is said to be the wound she received from the Pulaya
woman’s scythe.^23
Th e possessed or mentally affl icted at Chottanikkara number around twenty
at any time, and according to the temple staff , they come from all over India
although the majority are from Kerala. Th ese individuals are described as being