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.