“Who am I . . . what significance do I have?”: Shifting Rituals, Receding Narratives, and Potential Change of the Goddess’ Identity in Gangamma Traditions of South India

These narrative and ritual changes raise questions about what each individually creates, their relationship, and what is lost or gained in the changes I have observed. What is created with the addition of Sanskritic rituals to temple service (traditionally offered to puranic deities4 rather than gramadevatas ["village deities"] such as Gangamma), when middle-class aesthetics haveatepick impacted architectural temple changes, and when Gangamma's narratives recede from the public imagination? How is the goddess' identity potentially changing with these narrative and ritual shifts? These questions bring a performative lens to older questions of the relationships between ritual and narrative, which often prioritize one over the other.5 Ethnographic and performance analyses of Gangamma ritual and narrative traditions show the finely tuned ways in which they are both independent and codependent and the ways in which they both reflect and create--and have the potential to change--the identity of the goddess.