Pillar and Post Worship Amongst Indian Tribals

                                  Tribal Pillar and Post Worship


Megalithic cultures have stones and wooden posts and they may be related to existing tribal customs. Marias and Gonds erect pillars and menhirs to worship their dead [1][2]. Later crudely carved a pillar with a circle near the head. The Saora take seeds to pillars and sacrifice an animal to it to promote fertility[1]. Curiously, the Savaras (related to the Saoras) carve female features onto these pillars [1]. I think that because they are related to fertility and wrathful spirits tend to be female (looking at Telugu rural folk customs [9]), the female gender was the natural form. Diseases impact children of which women are more associated with and disease is seen as the wrath of mother nature. Kurubas also worship standing stones and wooden posts [1]. 


The Halbas and Murias adorn and carve their log gods, and in Bastar they are called anga deo or Pat Deo [2]. They could be clan gods. The Tamo clan worshiped a log god called Hurra gunda. As a part of funerary customs for the Gonds, stones and pillars are erected for the dead and the size of the pillar and skill of the carving was dependant on the clan prosperity [2]


The Khond influenced hills of the north have the wooden pillar tradition for the dead in place of the stone tradition [3]. It is said if a man is poor, instead of a stone menhir, he can get a wooden pillar [3]. According to accounts with the Bhils, this tribe says that the spirits of the dead shouldn’t touch the ground, hence a pillar or post [3].


K.P. Rao says that the Gonds mention reacting wooden pillars for the spirits to make sure they don;t wander way, they don’t harm the descendant, and for protection against bad spirits and for rainfall. 


The Irulas worship a Pillar Stone as a goddesses. One such name is Mari [10] (Mariamman?). They break a coconut before it for rain [10].



I wonder if the Khambeshwari or Stambheswari cult that dynasties of the tribal lands originated from these practices of erecting posts. We can say without doubt that the worship of Stambeshwari is of tribal origin. In the 5th Century AD, Maharaja Tushtikara became the first known royal patron of Stambeshwari. Her ruled over what is now the Kalahandi, Sonepur, Baudh and Ghumsar regions, which are all found in the hill tracts of Western and Southern Orissa. In the Terasinga copper plates, it is revealed that King Tushtikara prayed to this goddess to cure his ill mother [5]. 


The next dynasty is the Sulki Dynasty (600-900 AD) of Kodalaka Mandala, which is now the region consisting of Dhenkal, Angul, Talcher, found in the tribal belt of Orissa [5]. What is more curious was that these rulers would end their names with the word sthamba, meaning pillar or post, and their inscriptions reveal that their prosperity arose from Stambeshwari [5].


The Bhanja Dynasty (9th-10th Centuries AD) ruled in the Khinjili Mandala area, which now consists of Sonepur, Baudh, Phulba, all in Orissa and that too being predominantly tribal area [5]. In the 13th century, this dynasty ruled the Ghumasar region of the Ganjam Dsitrict. This area is said to be inhabited by Khonds, Kuis, and Sevaras (Savaras), and it is said that the Bhanja Dynasty patronized Khambeswari worshiped by these tribes [5]. One interesting detail to note is that the Bhanja Dynasty may have been tribal in origin. According to their legends, the dynasty’s founder Birabadhra hatched from the egg of a Pea-hen [6]. This origin myth of progenitors hatching from eggs is found amongst the Central Indian tribal people,  like Sthanals who believe that mankind hatched from goose eggs or duck eggs [6]. Such myths are found in other Austro-Asiatic cultures of Southeast Asia. 



The worship of Stambheshwar seems to survive as Kambhewari as evident by the fact that there is still a temple today in the town of Aska in the Ganjam District in the State of Orissa. In fact one of the pillars has a circular disk for a face and this reminds me of how, as mentioned earlier on in this paper, the Marias and Gonds crudely carved the  pillar with a circle near the head region [1]. 



As to how these pillar/post cults  became full fledged goddesses is a bit difficult to answer. Here is my take on the matter. First, you have the posts erected for the dead. Then over time these spirits of the dead become deified as gods if they are of great importance. If these pillars or posts get connected to fertility, especially if these spirits or gods are female, then they get connected to the Mother Goddess worship and these pillars become goddesses. Then kings would worship these, giving them legitimacy and prominence. 


Either that or the non-tribals mistook these posts for full-fledged gods or goddesses and worshiped them as such. Another explanation is that local tribes when becoming kings or feudatories would elevate the local pillar worship to a goddess worship under the influence of mainstream Hinduism, namely Shaivism. 


That Khambeswari is seen to be related to the tribal practice of worshiping dead spirits by the temple legend. The legend states that the goddess appeared in front of Kamba muni in the forest who asked the latter to ensure her being worshiped. Khamba Munit took her in as his daughter which caused suspicion amongst the passing people on account of a young beautiful girl living with an old man. The goddess decided to reveal herself to the village to save the old man from hate and proved her supernaturalness by disappearing from the spot. The goddess then would mischievously frolic with the old Kamba Muni  till one day the latter got tired of her antics and slapped her. This angered the goddess who cursed her foster father Khamba Muni that he would die and that she would be worshiped on the spot in the forest [5]. All these do sound like a typical tribal legend or something you would find in rural Telugu villages (Peranthalu) [9]. 


To conclude, the Pillar worship such as that of Stambheswari/Khambeshwari is uniquely tribal in nature. The tribes of India erect these pillars or posts to host the spirits of the dead and worship them for protection and rainfall amonsgt other things.Amongst the tribes, the distinction between spirit and god is next to non-existant so it is without suprise that these pillars end up getting worshiped like gods. The non-distinction between spirit and god is also reflected in the Telugu Peranthalu worship. The worship of pillar deities got patronised by kings and this caused the prominace of deities like Stambhewari. Some scholars post that such pillar worship gave rise to the Jagannatha deity. 

10) https://www.jstor.org/stable/605021?seq=2 

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