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Text 30 - Kannalavva or Plaint to Kurumbara


“May you live for 5000 years. 5000 years O sixty Kurumabara who have obtained the varan (permission) of divine knowledge, who rose up in the sky (and stayed there) without coming down to earth and thereby showed the mracle of walking (in midair): in the name of the sixty Kurumbara devatas, and also remembering the names of the great divine kings of the Four Warrants, who have great influence, here at the early dawn watch the demons, we have dedicated to the sixty Kurumbara devatas at this dance hall in order to send them away….. The oblation of the boat sails has been consecrated to the sixty noble Kurumbara devatas by these village people, who have been beset by afflictions from various demons such as yakku, preta (ghosts), khumbhanda, and pisaca and so forth…..and if there be any Kurumbara devatas intent on frightening these people, threatening to drink their blood or scaring them into fits of fainting - if there be such, by this pideni oblation we have given you, sirs, by the power of Vaisravana-Vessamuni who had given you varan to banish illness from the five aggregates and also from within people’s bodies, by his power and command and also of the great divine kings, it is done - consummated - once, twice and three times.”


  

(See Obeysekere p 155-6)