Salabai is the named goddess at the heart of the Devi movement that swept the adivasi tracts of western India in 1922-23, studied in detail by the historian David Hardiman. Originating in propitiation ceremonies to a mother goddess associated with smallpox and the fertility of the soil among the coastal fisherfolk of Palghar, her cult moved north through the Dangs and south Gujarat, where Bhils and other adivasi communities gathered to hear her commands spoken through mediums who shook in trance. The goddess ordered her followers to give up liquor and toddy, to bathe daily and keep clean, and to withhold service from liquor dealers and moneylenders, so that what began as a religious visitation became a far-reaching movement of adivasi self-assertion.