Goraiya

Goraiya is an ancestral guardian deity of the Tharu village, classed among the godlings to whom a pig is offered in sacrifice. He belongs to the widespread cult of Goraiya / Goraiyā across the eastern Gangetic plain, where, as William Crooke documented, the godling is a mounted guardian of the village boundary worshipped especially by cultivating and herding communities; votive horses and a shrine at the edge of the settlement are typical. Among the Tharu he is paired in ritual idiom with Mainya, the two standing as the principal ancestral guardian-deities distinguished by their respective pig and goat offerings.

Domains

• village guardianship

Powers

• to ward the village and its boundary against harm

Epithets

• GoraiyāWilliam Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 2nd ed. (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1896). (secondary)

Sources

• Goraiya is an ancestral, horse-associated guardian godling of the village revered by the Tharu, to whom a pig is sacrificed.: Rajesh Gautam & Asoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994). (secondary); William Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 2nd ed. (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1896). (secondary)