Mainya

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.

Domains

• ancestral guardianship

Powers

• to protect the household and its kin as an ancestral guardian

Epithets

• MainyāRajesh Gautam & Asoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994). (secondary)

Sources

• Mainya is a Tharu ancestral guardian-deity, paired with Goraiya and distinguished by the goat offered in her sacrifice.: Rajesh Gautam & Asoke K. Thapa-Magar, Tribal Ethnography of Nepal (Delhi: Book Faith India, 1994). (secondary); Christian McDonaugh, The Tharu of Dang: A Study of Social Organisation, Myth and Ritual in West Nepal (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1984). (secondary)