I have written previously about the influence of pharaonic Egypt on festivals (Onam, Thiruvathira, Vishu), daily life (Mund, Karaima, Kappal), and toponyms in Kerala. This article focuses on such influence in matters of religious practices — orthopraxy — separate from religious beliefs — orthodoxy — suggesting a previous life to Kerala’s native religion before the spread of Hindu Brahmanism around 500–1000 CE.
Oachira is an ancient village in Karunagapalli taluk in Kollam district in Kerala. It is famous for its temple dedicated to the formless god of creation, Parabrahma. In worshiping a formless deity, without an idol, this temple differs from all other idol-worshiping Hindu temples of India. It differs too in its inclusivity: since time immemorial, it has welcomed believers of all castes and classes to worship in its sprawling sixty-four-acre grounds.
One of the ritual offerings made by devotees to the temple is a live bull — Oachira kala. The bulls are dressed with a crown of Lord Shiva on their horns (see picture above) and let loose on the grounds around a large banyan tree, which forms the focal point of worship at the temple. They are considered as icons of Parabrahma, and as the Lord’s vehicles. Another motif of this bull worship is expressed during the temple’s annual festival coinciding with harvest celebrations around Onam. The rituals involve a procession of eduppu kala, large cloth effigies of twin bulls on wheeled carts. These huge, colorful effigies are built at large expense and brought to the temple in a procession to the accompaniment of drums and music as a form of devotional offering. According to the Kerala Tourism Department, “[t]housands throng the place to watch this visual extravaganza rooted in history, legends and inspiring sagas of religious harmony.”
By one legend, the name of the village is a corrupted form of Onattuchira, a chira ‘dam’ just outside the temple precincts. The land where the chira is situated belonged to the local king, who was also called Odanattu Raja or simply Onattu Rajah, and hence its name. Another legend claims that the festivals at the temple were started by the king with the blessings of certain Nambuthiri brahmins. Yet, these legends, while perhaps true, are equally as likely to be just colorful distractions from the actual history of the place, the temple, and the holy bulls, in light of their remarkable parallels to ancient bull worship practices in pharaonic Egypt.
The cult of the Apis bull in pharaonic Egypt involved revering a live bull, in strikingly similar fashion to Kerala’s Oachira kala. It was the oldest and longest lasting cult of ancient Egypt, enduring from around 2900 BCE (or earlier) until 398 CE. The cult’s popularity peaked during the first millennium BCE, when the holy bull’s stable stall within the Temple of Ptah at Memphis became a prominent pilgrimage site. A ritual called ‘run of the Apis bull’ existed since at least 2900 BCE; the ritual involved the bull, crowned with a symbol of a larger deity (a solar disk with a snake uraeus or the twin feathers of Osiris) over its horns, being taken in procession, presumably in a circumambulation around the temple or town, the timing of the festivals coinciding for the most part with the harvest season. By 1450 BCE, the pharaoh himself escorted the holy bull in procession as a royal offering, and the rituals continued into the Graeco-Roman period (ca. 332 BCE-395 CE). Another ritual involved a ceremonial burial of the bull when it died and was considered a “period of time during which social boundaries were ... partially suspended.”
During its lifetime, the Apis bull was dominantly associated with Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation, akin to the Hindu Puranic god Brahma. The bull was considered his herald. After death, it was transformed into Osiris — the god of the underworld — as Osiris-Apis. “While Apis’ theological connection with Ptah remained rather loose, his association and partial syncretism with Osiris as ... Osiris-Apis ... grew in importance during the late second and first millennium BCE, eventually becoming momentous even beyond Egypt proper.”
In addition to Apis, Mnevis was another revered bull, this one associated with the sun god Ra as well as Osiris. Like Apis, Osiris-Mnevis was also depicted crowned with the solar disk and a snake uraeus. While Apis was worshiped at Memphis, Mnevis was worshiped at a different city, Heliopolis. Sometimes, Mnevis and Apis were worshiped as the “two bulls of Egypt” identified with the sun and the moon, respectively (see, for example, the adoration stela of Mnevis and Apis below dating to around 1300 BCE in pharaonic Egypt).
In the deification of the bulls, the twin beliefs of indwelling and incarnation, and in the religious practices of oracular addresses, processions and festivals, the worship of the Apis and Mnevis bulls epitomized complex theological concepts unique at the time to ancient Egyptian religion and culture. Yet, in the religious practices of dressing the bull with a crown of the god of creation, symbolizing the bull as a representative of the deity in some fashion, celebrating the twin bulls in a festival during the harvest season, suspending social boundaries associated with worship rituals, and revering the temple of the bull as a pilgrimage site, there are remarkable parallels with the Oachira kala of Kerala. Whether Egyptians worshiped huge cloth effigies of the bulls similar to Kerala’s eduppu kala, is not known, but Egyptologists believe they did worship cloth-swathed mummies of the bulls on wheeled caravans as part of burial ceremonies when the bulls died. All these similarities point to a strong Egyptian influence in Kerala predating Hindu Brahmanism. This may not be entirely surprising given Kerala’s trade contacts with Graeco-Roman Egypt during periods when the Osiris-Apis and Osiris-Mnevis cults flourished there.
Incidentally, Osiris (Egyptian osir) corresponds linguistically to oachir in Malayalam. Thus, it seems quite likely, despite local legends and the Hindu Puranic orthodoxy, that veneration of the holy Oachira kala is really a vestige of the ancient Osiris-Apis and Osiris-Mnevis bull worship practices of pharaonic Egypt. If indeed that is the case, then it is a remarkable example of ritualism that has lasted continuously in human history in more or less unchanged form since the dawn of the Bronze Age around five thousand years ago to the present day.
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