Tari Pennu (the Earth-goddess)
Tari Pennu, the Earth-goddess (also Bera Pennu, and in many districts Dharni or Tana Penu), is the consort of the Sun-god Bura Pennu and, in the myth recorded by Macpherson, the being who rebelled against him and introduced evil, disease and death into a world that had been wholly good. She was the most feared of Kondh deities: her favour was sought through the notorious meriah rite, in which a purchased or specially-born human victim was sacrificed and the flesh and blood distributed to the fields to fertilise the soil and bring out the red of the turmeric crop. The rite, described by British officers from the 1830s and suppressed in the 1850s, made the Kondh and their Earth-goddess a central case in the comparative study of agricultural sacrifice by Frazer and later by Boal and Padel; buffalo sacrifice replaced the human meriah after suppression.
Children
- Dinga Pennu (the Judge of the Dead)
- Loha Pennu (the Iron-god / War-god)
- Pidzu Pennu (the Rain-god)
- Sandi Pennu (the god of Boundaries)
Domains
- earth and soil
- agricultural fertility
- evil and death
Powers
- to make the soil fertile and ripen the harvest
- to send disease, accident and death into the world
Epithets
- Bera Pennu
Relations
Sources
- S. Charteris Macpherson, 'An Account of the Religion of the Khonds in Orissa,' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 13 (1852), pp. 216-274.
- James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed., Part V, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1922), ch. on human sacrifices for the crops.