DISANI

ORIGIN Kafir [Afghanistan—southern Hindukush]. Supreme fertility and mother goddess.

KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP origins uncertain and still persisting in parts today.

SYNONYMS Disni (Prasun region); Dizeile.

CENTER(S) OF CULT throughout the Kafir region, particularly at the village of Shtiwe (Prasun).

ART REFERENCES large wooden sculptures.

LITERARY SOURCES Robertson G.S. The Kafirs of the Hindukush (1896); Morgenstierne G. Some Kati Myths and Hymns (1951).

Disani is the most important goddess of the Hindukush, particularly revered by the Prasun people. Legend has it that she emerged from the right breast of the creator god IMRA.

Alternatively she emerged from a sacred lake into which a sun disc had fallen, as a golden tree. Other legends place her as the daughter of the god SUDREM, or of INDR and the goddess Nangi-Wutr. She is the consort of Imra and other major deities in the pantheon and therefore bears strong fertility and maternal connotations. She has a son, BAGISHT, conceived when she was raped by a demon. She also plays the role of huntress. Her home is said to be Sudrem.

Disani is also a benign and comforting goddess of death who carries the deceased into the House of the Great Mother. She is perceived in human form, armed with a bow and quiver, with streams of milk pouring from her breasts. She can appear as a wild goat from whose footprints spring the shoots of wheat, and symbolically as a tree (see INANA) whose roots embody the underworld Nirmali. Her cult centers seem to have been connected with the villages of Shtiwe, Bagramatal and Kamdesh.

As goddess of death, Disani receives the prayers of women whose menfolk are about to go into combat. Legend has it that she lives in a golden fortress with seven doors and seven roads radiating from it. As a fertility goddess she is a guardian of cattle. In her role as vegetation deity, she tills the land. She also sows, threshes and winnows grain.

Sacrifice is in the form of a goat, or more usually milk, butter and cheese.

Disani is the protectress of the bonds of kinship and family loyalty. In conflict with this role she also inadvertently slaughtered her own son by decapitation, which gave rise to an annual spring rite of the dying god, witnessed in the religions of many other agricultural and pastoral societies.