Sheetala Hindu Goddess and Smallpox

This Hindu Goddess has been around for a long time: I introduce to you all the deity Sheetala (also Shitala). In English, her name means “the cooling one,” and she is a mother goddess protector from smallpox and childhood illnesses — except for the times when she becomes the embodiment of disease and annihilates those who incur her wrath.

Sheetala was mentioned in the _Skanda Purana_ (the earliest parts of this sacred Hindu scripture date to the eighth century): “for the sake of quelling boils and blisters (of smallpox) and for the sake of the children, a devotee takes Masūra lentils by measures and grinds them. Due to the power of Sītalā, children become free from the disease.”.

Like many Hindu deities, Sheetala’s mythology has been conflated with other Goddesses, particularly Shiva’s consort Parvati. She is worshipped more in the north of India, and ethnographers attest to her long connection with women as her main devotees. She sometimes appears like a beautiful maiden, but other times disguises herself like the crone you see here, becoming enraged when others dismiss her in this incarnation. She carries a broom, signaling an item to clean the cause of disease, and a pot with either cooling waters or pustules thought to spread disease.

Now all of this religious practice is decidedly unscientific, but a medical practice known and undertaken in India against smallpox was “variolation,”: deliberately infecting someone a very small amount of the smallpox virus — it (hopefully) would trigger an immune response before the wretched disease would kick in, functioning like a proto-vaccine. The British were writing about the use of variolation in India in the late 1700s. Before the ability to detect viruses, science and religion were both readily used to fight these diseases.