Yellamma

Yellamma is the great mother-goddess of the Deccan borderlands, worshipped across northern Karnataka, southern Maharashtra and into the Telugu country. Her principal seat is the hill shrine above Saundatti in Belagavi district, known simply as Yellamma Gudda, overlooking the valley of the Malaprabha. In her temple tradition she is Reṇukā, wife of the sage Jamadagni and mother of Parashurama, and the two names are used interchangeably by her devotees.

The tradition

The core legend is that of Reṇukā: beheaded at her husband's command by her son Parashurama, then restored to life when the son was granted a boon. Southern tellings elaborate the story in many directions, and in some versions the restoration joins the goddess to the body or head of a woman of another caste, a motif that devotees read as the goddess's refusal of social boundaries. Whatever the telling, Yellamma is understood as a mother who has known suffering, and her cult has always drawn strongly from the poorest communities of the region.

Worship

The great pilgrimages to Saundatti fall on full-moon days between autumn and the end of winter, when the hill fills with lakhs of pilgrims, their carts and their offerings of turmeric, which is thrown and smeared until the crowds themselves turn yellow. The goddess is served by jogatis and jogammas, women and men ritually dedicated to her. The dedication of girls to the goddess, the devadasi custom historically associated with Saundatti, was outlawed by Karnataka in the 1980s, and reform campaigns have worked alongside the cult since; the pilgrimage itself continues undiminished as one of the largest goddess festivals of the Deccan.