Bahuchara

**Also known as:** Bahucharaji; Bahuchara Mata

**Origin:** India

Hijras are India’s third gender, straddling the threshold between men and women. They are described as transvestites or cross-dressers, but that’s a limited, superficial description. Hijras are disreputable and of very low social status but are also popularly considered shamanic, holy beings possessing great spiritual power. Bahuchara is their goddess, and they are vehicles of her power.

Bahuchara’s veneration is not limited to hijras. She is venerated by women whom she protects from marrying husbands who will not provide sexual fulfilment and children. She is petitioned for children, especially sons, by childless women (in a culture where a woman’s safety, status, and, in extreme cases, life depend on male family members). Hijras, however, are her special children.

Various legends recount how Bahuchara attained her role. Their common theme is that in life she was denied the pleasures and benefits of a wife. In the most famous myth, a young prince adamantly does not wish to wed, but his parents insist, marrying him to the future goddess. She’s young and beautiful, but the prince abandons her on their wedding night, riding away into the forest. After months of loneliness, she searches for him, finally discovering him in the forest with a community of hijras. Puzzled and not really comprehending, she asks whether he desires a wife. The prince answers honestly and frankly, explaining that if he wanted a wife and children, he’d be home with her. He describes himself as neither man nor woman but something else.

In another version of Bahuchara’s origins, she is a young girl travelling through the forests of Gujurat. When her party is set upon by thieves, Bahuchara, fearing rape, sliced off her own breast and offered it to the robbers in place of her virginity. She died and was deified. The robbers, cursed with impotence, became Bahuchara’s first devotees.

She reacts with rage. In the context of her culture, there is no divorce, no second opportunity for her. He’s dancing in the forest, but she’s stuck. She is doomed to an unhappy, frustrated, childless life lacking the status and benefits she had anticipated as a prince’s bride. She orders the ritual of emasculation. She slices off his genitals and transforms into the goddess Bahuchara, who presides over this operation and the community of hijras.

Hijras possess the power to transmit Bahuchara’s blessings of fertility and prosperity but only after undergoing emasculation. Their blessings are eagerly sought; their curses terribly feared. They are Bahuchara’s vehicles and priestesses.

Bahuchara is also the matron goddess of gay men, cross-dressers, and the transgendered. She does not expect most to undergo any modification, protecting and loving them as they are. However, Bahuchara selects certain individuals, the few rather than the many, to be her vehicles. Those she has earmarked to be her priestesses may receive dream visits from Bahuchara. Impotence is also sometimes considered to signal her calling. There is a folk belief that impotent men who resist Bahuchara’s call are doomed to seven future incarnations of impotence.

The standard Western sex-change operation may or may not be sufficient to transform a man into Bahuchara’s sacred vehicle. Traditionally the ritual was part of a complex initiation conducted at her temple. In 1888, this rite was outlawed by the ruling Raja despite protests from hijras and is now a criminal act under India’s penal code. (Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and isn’t done.)

**Manifestation:** A beautiful, gracious, bejewelled woman with four arms, her palms and soles ornamented with henna

**Attributes:** A sword, a trident, and a text filled with blessings

**Colour:** Green

**Mount:** Rooster

**Day**: Tuesday

**Sacred site:** Her main temple is near Ahmadabad, Gujarat, India; smaller shrines are kept in hijra households, but ideally each individual is expected to visit her primary shrine.

**Offerings:** Fruit, especially watermelon; cardamom pods; cashews; brown sugar; stick a wick in ghee (clarified butter) and burn as a butter lamp; hijras traditionally practice mortification and celibacy to gain Bahuchara’s favours; Bahuchara is a gentle spirit who condemns the killing of animals: devotees frequently become vegetarians.

## Information Source

Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods & Goddesses by Judika Illes