FERRARI 2013

Ferrari, Fabrizio M.

The Silent Killer. The Ass as Personification of Illnes in North Indian Folklore

În „Religions of South Asia”, nr. 7/ 2013

pp. 249-270

Abstract: Sítala (‘the Cold One’), a mother goddess worshipped in Northern

India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, is traditionally represented as a beautifol

young lady riding a donkey. But the ass is a rather marginal character in both

oral narratives and devotional/auspicious literature. Unlike the majority o f divine

mounts in classic and popular Hinduism, the animal has no proper name and is

speechless. Vernacular and Sanskrit literatures do not indulge in descriptions,

nor do they m ention its gender. In brief, the donkey is an annihilated ythological

character. In this article I will discuss the ass as a living symbol o f illness. My

analysis will examine narratives in Sanskrit and vernacular (Hindi, Bhojpuri and

Bengali) texts where the ass is associated with goddesses o f death, disease and

misfortune. By reflecting on several years o f fieldwork in India, I will then confate past and present readings o f Sítala as a ‘smallpox goddess’ and will explore the role of the ass as a metonym for illness. $٠ rather than being disease perse, sítala is a controlling deity, a performance symbolically rendered through riding the ass.Besides shedding new light on the worship o f an extremely popular goddess, this article eventually reflects on the origin o f mechanisms of cultural blame and pollution originated at the convergence of the praxis and social behaviour o f human and non-human animals (as well as other-than-human persons) in Northern India.