three therapies of south india 71
Each day the possessed and ill supplicants at Chottanikkara engage in an
elaborate routine of ritual activities. Most mentally affl icted people reside at
the temple lodge, which is where my assistant Biju and I stayed when we were
visiting. Th e affl icted devotees wake up at 3:30 in the morning to convene
for a bhajan, a devotional song. Th ey then enter the temple when it opens
at 4 am, circumambulate the main shrine with the regular worshippers, and
visit the other shrines around the temple as they please. In the main shrine,
the possessed devotees queue up along with other worshipers to do darśan,
a mutual encounter with the deity through the image of Amma-Narayana.
Darśan involves an exchange of gazes between the devotee and the goddess
via her personifi cation in her idol in the shrine, and through this encounter
supplicants experience the auspiciousness and benefi cence of the deity.^24
Like patients in ayurvedic medical facilities, affl icted supplicants at the
temple are required to follow a special dietary regimen. No coff ee or tea is
consumed by the affl icted devotees in the morning, and around 8 am they
are given ghee (clarifi ed butter) to drink, sometimes mixed with brahmi, an
ayurvedic psychiatric medicine, and panchgavyam, a mixture containing the fi ve
products of a cow that is also used in ayurveda. Brahmi is an ayurvedic “brain
tonic,” made from the plant Hydrocotyle asiatica or Bacopa monnieri (Dash and
Junius 1983: 103). Th e use of brahmi, not just to treat psychopathology but also
for the enhancement of mental capacities, has become somewhat fashionable
throughout India.^25
Th e next event of the day for the patient-devotees, as well as for other visi-
tors, is the 11 am puja at the Siva shrine on the western perimeter of the temple.
On one of the days I observed the Siva puja, I was standing outside the temple,
looking over the short temple wall at a small crowd that was gathering around
the Siva shrine, a small stone building near the temple wall about 10 feet tall and
20 feet by 10 feet at the base. My research assistant Biju, appropriately shirtless
and wearing a dhoti cloth with decorative fringe from the waist down, had joined
the possessed devotees and other worshippers who were huddled together, eyes
fi xed on the small door of the shrine waiting for a priest to emerge and begin the
puja. During this time, possessing spirits became active in three women in the
crowd who started swaying gently and then gradually began to dance around.
While one of the three women—or the spirit possessing her—began shouting
unintelligibly, a man who was also possessed began dancing about, then fell to
the ground and proceeded to roll himself around the temple on the temple walk-
way. Performing an act that some supplicants off er as an expression of extreme
devotion, he circumnavigated the main shrine in this way.
While the possessed man made his way around the main shrine, the crowd
at the Siva shrine was off ering and receiving prasad, which consists of food,