Khoḍiyār Mātā

Khodiyar Mata

A goddess of the Saurashtra herders

Khodiyar Mata is a kul-devi — a clan or family goddess — of a number of communities of Saurashtra in western Gujarat, and she is worshipped particularly by the pastoral and cattle-keeping communities of the region, among them the Ahir, Rabari, Bharwad, and Patel groups, though the boundaries of her cult do not follow community lines neatly and she is honoured well beyond them. Her principal shrine is at Rajpara, near Bhavnagar; there are other shrines of her, and the whole cult is a network of village and caste shrines rather than one temple with a central authority.

The goddess is depicted in a form that is unusual and, in India, very recognisable: as a lame woman — khoda or khodi being the local word for lame — seated on a crocodile (makara). The lameness is not a defect but the mark of the deity, and it recurs in the imagery of regional goddesses in Gujarat and Rajasthan. This iconography should be described as it is found in the shrines' own images and records, not fitted into a pan-Indian Shakta scheme. The makara or crocodile mount is found on several western Indian village goddesses and is not unique to her. The account in earlier versions of this entry of "seven sisters and two brothers" as a local pantheon should be treated as a specific local tradition of a particular shrine cluster rather than a general structural feature of the cult, and it is best taken from the sthala-puranam of the shrines themselves.

The Mahā Sudi Athami in Magh — around January–February, at the height of the Gujarat winter and close to the seasonal turn — is her principal festival, and the jatra around it is the community gathering. The vrats — Friday observance, and the Navratri fast — are the ordinary round. Animal sacrifice is practised in the shrine, as in many Saurashtra village shrines, and in recent decades has in many shrines given way partly or wholly to symbolic offerings; the current practice at any particular shrine should be given from that shrine rather than generalised for the whole cult. The Shri Khodiyar Dham complex at Rajpara has been substantially expanded and modernised in recent years, and the shrine now receives a substantial diaspora visitation, particularly at the time of the new year and of Magh, when families return.

On the Shakti Pitha and the Mahavidya claims. Khodiyar Mata is often placed in Shakti taxonomies — as a Shakti Pitha, and within a list of Mahavidyas or village-goddess forms. These classifications should be handled carefully. The Shakti Pitha list is a medieval compilation whose membership differs between sources, and a regional kul-devi is not automatically a member of it. The Mahavidya concept is a specific tantric framework with a specific list, and a Saurashtra clan goddess does not belong to it by virtue of being a goddess. The earlier version of this entry placed her in a "Shakta landscape" in which "each is a distinct face of the one supreme Mahadevi"; that framing has been removed as a doctrinal imposition on a local clan cult, and this entry presents her as what she is: a regional family and community goddess of Saurashtra with her own iconography, her own shrines, and her own calendar.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in the Gujarat regional goddess-cult tradition, in David Kinsley's work on Hindu goddesses, and in the shrine's own records. A human guardian from a Saurashtra or specifically Khodiyar Mata tradition should supply and check: the sthala-puranam of the Rajpara shrine; the local list of her companions and any "sisters" or "brothers" pantheon; the current jatra and festival administration; the satsang and community institutions of the cult; and the dham's own account of its expansion. The claim of a seventh-century origin in oral tradition is not independently documented and should be given as the tradition's own claim if at all. The "half a million" annual figure from earlier drafts has no cited source and has been removed. The source previously cited for this entry, a purported 1973 book on Shakti Pithas by D. C. Sircar, could not be verified and has been replaced.