Perhaps I should have been more aware of this, but the spectacular horses that protect the villages from evil spirits astonished and fascinated me. Almost every village in Tamil Nadu, in Southern India, has an Ayyanar shrine.
Ayyanar is a folk god who rides a white horse and protects the villages from evil spirits. The temples are usually on the edge of a village, by a water tank or in a sacred grove. At night Ayyanar is said to patrol the village on horseback - everyone says not to stay out after dark.
The maintenance of a sacred wood is done by a family or the community. It's a hereditary right. A priest and some beggars guard the sanctuary. A festival is held every year with ritual songs, dances and votive* statuettes.
In the sacred forest, it is forbidden to fell a tree or gather wood. This would provoke the wrath of the local god who, in retaliation, would destroy the harvests on which village life depends.
With the modernization and urbanization of today's India, sacred groves are under threat. The observance of rituals decline while customary beliefs are considered mere superstitions. The woods are sometimes encircled with houses and the enclosure is less and less respected.
The cult of Ayyanar , on the other hand, is more and more popular. This local god, who does not belong to the great Hindu pantheon, is sometimes confused with Aiyappan in Kerala. It is found in Sri Lanka, Reunion and all over the world where there are Tamil communities.
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| Small horses outside Karaimal Azakakar Ayyanar temple |
But the next day, we were taken to Namana Samudram. There's a whole avenue of them flanking the path to a temple. The terracotta steeds, painted with bright colours, with pointy ears, bulging eyes and open mouths. Some are facing towards the shrine but most are side-on, staring at me as I walk along the path. The path is being subsumed into the wood, and I can see old statues back in the trees
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| The sandy track leading through the Namana Samudram sacred grove to the Namana Samudram temple. |
The sand lane leads to a horse larger than life and to painted elephants holding a lotus in their trunk. Small colored characters, Ayyanar and his 21 secondary deities, are modeled around the pachyderm. There is not here a large Ayyanar statue but only the representation of the animals associated with it. There is no temple building, just an area where ceremonies can be held. The focal point is a group of elephants.
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| Namana Samudram |
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| Elephant holding a lotus |
The clay statues are hollow. This deterioration are not due to vandalism. The heads break off, lizards and monkeys dart in and out of their hollow bodies and they eventually crumble back into the earth from which they came. It's a symbol of the cycle of life, death and reincarnation.
The drought cracks the terracotta and the monsoon washes out the colours; the gray clay appears when the paint flakes off. Their deterioration is part of the cycle of life. Excessively damaged statues are pushed back where they slowly disintegrate and are replaced with new ones.
It is not just animals that are placed at the temples, but also dolls. These are prayer requests, or acknowledgements of prayers fulfilled for the birth of a child, an ill child, and other reasons. This rather sad pile of broken dolls lay between two horses.
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| Prayer dolls |
*an object offered in fulfilment of a vow, for a wedding or a birth or a death, for good fortune, or for specific requests - and in thanks when those requests that have been granted.
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