Yellamma of Saundatti

Yellamma of Saundatti

What is a Gram-Devatā?

A gram-devatā ("village deity") is the specific god of a specific village — not the pan-Indic god of scripture, but this god, in this place, protecting these people. Every Indian village has one. There are thousands. Most do not appear in textbooks. Their names and functions change every 50 kilometres. The officiating priest is usually not Brahmin — he is from the local caste, the work passing father to son. Worship is oral, ritual, and embodied, not textual.

The Place — Saundatti (Yellampur), Belagavi

• Location: Saundatti (Yellampur), Belagavi district, Karnataka (15.7703°N, 75.0475°E)
• Tradition: Folk-Hindu / Regional / Gram-devata
• Known from: 10th c. CE (temple documented); worship ancient

Who Yellamma of Saundatti Is

Yellamma of Saundatti is the primary Kuladevata of ~60% of north Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra. She is identified with Reṇuka-devi — the mother of Paraśurāma, beheaded by her son and restored. The temple atop the hill at Saundatti draws half a million pilgrims on the annual Mahā Jātre (Bharata Hunnime, January). Traditionally girls were dedicated to her as devadāsīs (jōgatis); this practice was outlawed in 1982 but social work with rescued women continues. Pilgrims circumambulate the hill barefoot. Offerings: neem leaves, turmeric paste, karnataka (small oil-lamps).

Worship Tradition

Yellamma of Saundatti's worship is typical of gram-devata practice:

• Daily: morning and evening oil-lamp (dīpa-dāna); water or milk offerings; incense
• Weekly: Tuesdays and Fridays are traditionally special (mangalavāra for many goddesses)
• Annual: the big village festival (jātra, koḍai, urus, perahera — names vary) once a year, usually at harvest or monsoon-transition, lasting 1–11 days depending on tradition

Offerings

• Plant offerings: coconut, turmeric, vermillion, red hibiscus, neem leaves
• Food offerings: locally grown rice preparations — pongal, khichadi, payasam, laḍḍū
• Animal offerings (non-Brahmin shrines): a rooster or goat; increasingly replaced by the symbolic pumpkin-breaking since the mid 20th century. Vegetarian offerings for the Brahmin-style worship of the same deity

Priestly Tradition

The pujāri is usually from the local community — not Brahmin — and inherits the role through patrilineal succession. In Tamil Nadu she/he may be a Pāṭṭi or Pūjāri. In Maharashtra a Guravu. In Telangana-Andhra a Pāmula or Kurumbapu. In Kerala a Kaṇiyar. These are not shortcomings of the tradition — they are the tradition. The priest knows the god personally.

Historical & Ethnographic Context

Documentation of this shrine and tradition comes from:

• Colonial district gazetteers (late 19th–early 20th c.) — the Imperial Gazetteer of India, state-specific gazetteers for each district
• Census of India cross-references (1881 onward)
• Independent scholarly ethnographies — Sontheimer, Kinsley, Hiltebeitel, Caldwell
• Oral tradition preserved by the priest-lineage and village memory

Why This Matters

Gram-devatas are the real lived religion of 900+ million rural Indians. They are older than pan-Indic Hinduism, older than Vedic Sanskrit; many predate recorded history. When we catalog only the textual-Brahmin gods, we miss the majority of how Indians have actually worshipped for most of Indian history. This entry is part of a long-term effort to map the unmapped sacred geography of India.