Bahuchara Mata

Bahucharā Mātā

The child-goddess of the villages of Gujarat and Rajasthan

Bahucharā Mātā (Bahucharaji, Bācharā) is a fertility and child-granting goddess worshipped in rural Gujarat — Mehsana, Patan, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha — and in adjacent parts of Rajasthan. She is worshipped under two quite distinct guises. As Bahucharā-devī she is a goddess of children and of fertility, worshipped by women who want a child and by the mothers of the village generally. As Gorakhnath/Bābā, the transformed form, she is a bhakta of Gorakhnāth, the pantharaṅgī sādhū and purported disciple of Macchendranātha and Gorakṣanāth of the Nāth sampradāya, and she has no hair and no blood and neither eats nor drinks. This dual identity is recorded in the braj and saurashtra literature on the shrine, and it is the most interesting thing about the entry; the two forms are not interchangeable in the devotees' own understanding.

The most noted public feature of the Bahucharā cult is its association with transgender and hijra communities, which have long claimed the deity as their patron and have taken part in the shrine's public observances. The association is reported in the scholarly literature on Gujarati bhakti and in the writings of the reformist Gaṇeśa-tradition, and it should be described from those sources rather than from press descriptions of a "gender festival"; it is a bhakti institution with its own ritual calendar. The child's vow — the bālī-form shrine, the offerings, and the music of the bhajan — is set against this. What is not established here is the chronology of the association and any claim that the deity "was" a transgender person; such readings are modern interpretations, not shrine tradition.

The principal shrine is at Bahucharaji, in Mehsana district, Gujarat, with an eighteenth-century rebuilding, and there are important village shrines across the region. A variant story of a vṛṣa (bull) and the miracle of the barren cow, the origin legend, is common to several of them and has been particularly influential in the modern period.

Sources and what is still unverified

• Braj Bhāṣā and Saurashtra devotional literature on the Gorakhnāth form — work level.
• A study of the Gujarati bhakti traditions, including the Nāth sampradāya — to be supplied by a guardian; none is on file here.
• Mehsana District Gazetteer (Government of India gazetteer series).
• Unverified: the frontmatter's "11th c." foundation and its "18th c. restoration by Gaekwads", and the chronology of the transgender association.