This is a statistical study based on a state-wide public opinion survey conducted in Tamil Nadu in 1972 and in 1976. The authors are members of the staff of the Department of Statistics of the Madras Christian College. It consists of two short chapters and together runs into 28 pages. In the first chapter entitled 'South Indian deities and their relative following in Tamil Nadu', Dr. Gift Siromoney analyses the relative popularity of the different gods in the Hindu pantheon. In the second chapter entitled 'Social reformist movement and worship of deities', Professor K. R. Rajagopalan co-relates the data on the worship of the deities according to political party affiliation and tries to assess the atheistic impact of EVR's Dravida Kazhagam movement on parties like DMK and ADMK, the 'inheritors' of that tradition in comparison to other parties like Congress (R) and Congress (O).
The study contains much useful information on the relative popularity of different deities in the various districts of Tamil Nadu. The finding 'that the proportion of younger people who worship Muruga daily is distinctly higher than the proportion of older people' is, I think, a valid statistical generalisation as it is borne out by other independent studies in depth of religion in Tamil villages. Murugan, being conceived as a Tamil deity *par excellence*, despite his absorption into Saivism may be the reason for this popularity rather than any intrinsic religious motives. He is still the most popular deity. The present decline of his popularity to 51.3 per cent from the figure of 65.6 per cent for 1972 may also be bound up with the same reason, namely the state of Tamil revivalism championed by the DMK. The statement that the Perumal (Vishnu) worshippers are more in the Congress (R-O) than in the other two parties, i.e. DMK and ADMK, is also of interest to us. In this context, I wish the authors had analysed the relative popularity of gods in relation to different caste groups rather than in mere percentages. It would have helped to locate the information in terms of the different sections in the community.
I must, however, add that we should be wary of reading too much into this kind of information as it needs to be qualified in many ways. Let me point out a few examples. Dr. Gift Siromoney says that 'if one goes by the number of temples under worship in Tamil Nadu, Siva must be worshipped by a large proportion of people, but according to our survey he is worshipped daily by only about twelve per cent of the Hindu population' (p. 5). This, I think, is a case of methodological error. The respondents were given a list of twelve names - Siva being one of them - and were asked to say whether they worshipped any of these gods either daily or on special occasions. The data collected in this form can be misleading since the authors ignored the fact that many village gods in South India like Chudalai Maden, Kalan, Bhairavan, Muttappan, Pottan, Gulikan, Uccitta, Tekkan Parangodan, Kandakarnan, Malakarai Deivam, Koragataniya and numerous others are said to be either a 'kirata'
1 or 'raudra'
2 form of Siva or an *amsam* of Siva by the people.
The same kind of methodological failure is behind the statement of Prof. K. R. Rajagopalan that 'even though there is a special temple dedicated to Durga (or Parvati) on the Cape, Kanyakumari district does not have even a single worshipper in our sample'. The truth is that in Kanyakumari district there are many more temples and very many worshippers of Durga. But the goddess is known by a name which will be considered a village goddess by our authors. One should remember here that people who worship Durga as Mutharamman in a village will not say immediately that they worship Durga even when they so understand her, because Durga in her form of Mutharamman is someone nearer to them and there will be stories linking her with the village or with a caste of that village. This phenomenon of understanding their village gods and goddesses as a form of Siva and Parvati is rather common in South India. But this is not to be explained in terms of Sanskritisation but rather in terms of present-day Hinduism as a composite religion with Aryan and pre-Aryan elements.
There is also the fact that the popular name of a god in a particular region is not the Sanskritic one but a local one. For instance, Vinayaka in Kanyakumari district is popularly known by the name of 'Pillayar'. The authors do not seem to have taken into account these kinds of facts in their attempt to study the percentage of the worshippers of the different deities. In the circumstances one cannot accept their findings without much reservation.
Another question this study raises is what are the criteria the authors used to distinguish village gods from other gods. Some of the names given as village gods in the list on pp. 23 to 25 do not appear to be village gods. Names such as Ayyappan, Rajarajeswari, Samundi (Tamil form of Chamundi), Veera Raghava Perumal, Narasimhamoorthy and many others in the list are familiar names in the higher Hindu tradition, in any case as it exists today. Why then they are considered village gods remains a query. In fact, one of the great problems in the study of popular Hinduism is to know which are the village gods or rather whether this distinction between village gods and higher Hindu gods makes any sense in the Hinduism of today. None of the criteria proposed in early writings such as animal sacrifice, non-Brahmin priesthood, crude images, malignant nature of the deities, phenomena of possession by these gods can be exclusively or uniformly applied to the village gods since any one criterion or all these are found in the worship of both the so-called higher gods as well as the village gods.
I should also mention that Table B referred to in the second article is found missing altogether and consequently many errors in the numbering of tables follow, which rather irritates the reader as he is often required to turn his attention to the tables while reading the report.
— A. M. Abraham Ayrookuzhiel
Bangalore