Mainya is one of the two principal ancestral guardian-deities of the Tharu, named alongside Goraiya in ethnographic accounts of Tharu worship. The pair are distinguished by their sacrifices: a pig is offered to Goraiya and a goat to Mainya. She is propitiated for the protection of household and village within the common round of Tharu domestic and territorial ritual conducted by the guruwa priest. Beyond this paired guardian role her mythology is little elaborated in the published record, and she is best understood as a tutelary ancestral power of the Tarai settlements rather than a figure of extended narrative.