Tensing Rodrigues
There seems to exist a subtle connection between the Yellamma cult and the limgavamt (limgayat) sect, which is difficult to prove. At the Yellamma Gudi near Savadatti, the main temple of the cult, the rande hunime rite is conducted by limgavamt pujaris; though at the village temples the jogamma or jogati perform the rite. [Ramberg, 2011: When the Devi Is Your Husband: Sacred Marriage and Sexual Economy in South India, in Feminist Studies, vol 37, no 1, 35] The history of Yellamma Gudi may partly explain the prerogative of the limgavamt pujaris to officiate at the temple.
But the connection between the Yellamma cult and the limgavamt might go beyond this mere historical fact. Misra describes the synergy between the limgavamt sect and the Yellamma cult, though she does not overtly refer to the latter; so this needs to be taken as tentative. Her description is based on the testimony of Dupuis. [Dupuis, 1906: Hindu Manners, Customs And Ceremonies, 133] She writes ‘… Shaiva monasteries were established for religious preaching and teaching by Jangamas or Lingayat priests/gurus. … Women were drawn towards the sect and the monasteries under the influence of Bhakti. … These women were consecrated to Shiva and treated as wives or priestesses of the god. … These wives or priestesses of the gods became the mistresses and victims of the immorality of the priests, Jangamas.’ [Misra, 2002: Theogamy in Rural India: Socio-Cultural Dimensions of the “Jogini” System in Andhra Pradesh, in Indian Anthropologist, vol 32, no 1/2, 4] But Dupuis’s testimony does not seem very reliable as far as the wrongdoings by the limgavamt priests is concerned; nevertheless the link between the limgavamt and the existence of temple women is undeniable. But we cannot say with certainty that these women were jogamma. Dupuis calls them ‘priestesses of Siv’; locally they were called linga-basavi. The saiv faith is the only tenuous link between these women and the limgavamt sect.
Mishra elaborates further on this topic on the authority of Artal. [Artal, 1910: Basavis in Peninsular India, in Journal of Anthropological Society of Bombay, 9.2] “The institution was mainly started with a view to satisfy the carnal desires of the Lingayat priests who were not allowed to touch a non-Lingayat woman.” says Mishra; and supports it with a Kannada proverb which says ‘a jangam takes his meals in the houses of bhakt (devotees) and sleeps in the house of a basavi’. [Misra, 2002: 4] The term basavi betrays a possible link; though it cannot be taken to support Misra’s contention. Basava is the Kannad word for Siva’s sacred bull Nandi. It is also the name of the supposed 12th-century founder (or one of the founders) of the limgavamt sect. One possibility is that these women were connected with saiv temples probably even before the advent of Yellamma cult or the Limgavamt sect. Jaganathan writes of ‘virgin women who were appointed as the priests’ during the reign of the local chiefs in Savadatti. This was obviously much before the bramhan faith reached Deccan; Yellamma was then probably worshipped as the primitive Mother Goddess. [Jaganathan, 2013: Yellamma Cult and Divine Prostitution: Its Historical and Cultural Background, in International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, vol 3, no 4, 3]
Could it be that the Yellamma cult and the limgavamt sect were two attempts of remediation of a traumatic past and decoupling of the present and future from it, at two different times or by two different groups, bound together by a common history and a common geography? Whether they were linked or not is beyond an incontrovertible proof. The limgavamt have always been considered the upper ‘caste’ and the Yellamma’s jogamma and jogappa the lower ‘caste’; in a way the two appear to have been positioned in place of the bramhan and the sudra in a new social contract, in opposition to the bramhan hegemony.
It may help to explore the origin of the limgavamt sect. Conventionally it is traced to Basava, the Chief Minister of Bijjala, the Kalachuri king, at Kalyana in the Bidar district of Karnataka circa 1162 CE. [Sargant, 1963: The Lingayats, 1] But there are differences of opinion; many historians ascribe the foundation of limgavamta sect to Ekantada Ramayya of Ablur. [Nanjundayya & Iyer, 1935: The Mysore Tribes And Castes, vol IV, 81; Farquhar, 1920: An Outline Of The Religious Literature Of India, 260] In all probability, Basava or Ramayya only gave a distinct religious identity to a community that already existed. What community could this be? It is almost impossible to say that with certainty; we can only speculate.
Could we visualise a scenario as follows? Let us remember that this is only a probabilistic hypothesis that will need historical evidence to validate it; its purpose is to offer a template for seeking the evidence. Both the kur (consisting of kunbi and several similar communities) and the Deccan ksatriya (known today as maratha or vokkaliga/gowda) might have been victims of Parsuram’s rampage. Each of the two might have adopted a different defense mechanism to remediate their traumatic past and decouple the present and future from it. We propose that the former, given their vulnerabilities, slipped into the Yellamma cult; while the latter adopted a more proactive strategy of creating a religious shield to protect their identity and dignity, which came to be called the limgavamt sect, thereby placing themselves diametrically against the bramhan and socially above those following the Yellamma cult. So the relation between the Yellamma cult and the limgavamt might have been of exploitative nature rather than mutually benign.
This subtle thread of caste differentiation becomes very obvious in the third defense strategy that was adopted by a victim population to remediate its traumatic past and decouple the present and future from it; that is in the case of Gomantak Maratha Samaj, an association of people belonging to a community that has been exploited and looked down upon. “The Samaj draws its members from complex groupings of Goan Devadasis, and traces its roots back to the early 1800s, appearing first as a formal community in 1927.” [Arondekar, 2015: In the Absence of Reliable Ghosts: Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia in A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 25.3] The strategy that the Samaj has followed is to own the past without any feeling of guilt and lay the claim to the name Maratha.