Korravai

Kotrawi (Kotṛawi) was the ancient goddess of war and victory and mother of Murugan, the Hindu god of war, now patron god of Tamil Nadu.^[1] The earliest references to Korrawi are found in the ancient Tamil grammar Tolkappiyam, considered to be the earliest work of the ancient Sangam literature. Korrawi is identified with goddess Durga. In early iconography, Korrawi is presented as fierce and bloodthirsty .

To illustrate Korrawi's place in the metaphysical world of the earliest sources, Kersenboom-Story provides a "tentative" fivefold classification of the disposition of the major spiritual powers.

According to the early Tamil literature, the divine manifests itself in various shapes, shades and degrees of intensity. In most cases it is thought of as a power that is highly ambivalent: possibly benevolent, but usually dangerous and even malevolant. The most striking aspect of man's relation to these different manifestations is his attempt to control them by means of some type of 'dramatic performance'. True evil is too powerful to be dealt with by humans and has to be subdued by the god Murugaṇ. ... Tentatively, we classify the manifestations of the divine as follows:

1. benevolent: the god Murugaṇ; the king
2. mildly ambivalent: hero-stone; kantu (stump of a tree)
3. ambivalent: aṇaṅku 'sacred power'
4. dangerous: pēy, pūtam (demon); Koṛṛavai
5. evil: cūr, Cūraṇ^[2]

See also

• Hindu deities

Notes and references

1. "Korrawi was perhaps the earliest and the most widely worshipped goddess of the ancient Tamil people." Tiwari (1985).
2. Kersenboom-Story (1987): 10–11.

Bibliography

• Mahalakshmi, R. (2009). "Caṇkam literature as a social prism: an interrogation". Chapter 3 (29–41) in Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (editor). A Social History of Early India. Pearson Education, India.
• Harle, James C. (1963). "Durgā, Goddess of Victory". Artibus Asiae 26 (3/4): 237–246. doi:10.2307/3248984. JSTOR 3248984.
• Kersenboom-Story, Saskia C. (1987). Nityasumaṅgalī: devadasi tradition in South India. Motilal Banarsidass.
• Kinsley, David R. (1988). Hindu goddesses: visions of the divine feminine in the Hindu religious tradition. Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions 12. University of California Press.
• Tiwari, Jagdish Narain (1985). Goddess Cults in Ancient India (with special reference to the first seven centuries A.D.). Sundeep Prakashan. [Adapted from his PhD thesis accepted by the Australian National University in 1971.]