Maha Kiriamma, the Great Milk-Mother, is the chief of the Maha Yakini, the great female spirits of the hilltops, of whom the lesser Maha Yakini are her attendants. She both sends sickness and is besought to lift it, and she is worshipped as a giver of children to childless women; the Maha Yakini were at the same time feared as stealers of children. Sources differ on how far her cult overlaps that of the wider Sinhala Kiri Amma associated with the goddess Pattini.