Cite
MLA
“Renuka Yellamma.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/devata/ellamma-renuka/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). Renuka Yellamma. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/devata/ellamma-renuka/
Often only a head, the face of the Devi set on a pedestal or on a pot, covered with turmeric and kumkum; in full form a seated Devi holding a trident, a drum, a bowl and a sword, sometimes with a cobra hood above.
01Renuka in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata
Renuka was a king’s daughter, married to the rishi Jamadagni of the Bhrigu line, and the mother of five sons, the youngest Parashurama. The Mahabharata (Vana Parva) and the Bhagavata Purana (9.16) tell what happened at the river. Going to fetch water, she saw the gandharva king Chitraratha at play in the water with apsaras, lingered, and came back late. Jamadagni, knowing by his tapas what had passed through her mind, ordered his sons one by one to kill her. The elder four refused. Parashurama struck off his mother’s head with his axe. Pleased, his father offered him a boon, and Parashurama asked that his mother live again, with no memory of what had happened, and that his brothers be restored.
02Yellamma of Saundatti
In the Kannada, Telugu and Marathi country Renuka is Yellamma, and her best-known seat is the hill called Yellammana Gudda above the Malaprabha near Saundatti in Belagavi district, where between two and six lakh devotees come each year; the walls of the temple are stained yellow with turmeric thrown over the years. The big fairs fall on the full moons, above all in Margashirsha and Magha. Her devotees include the jogappa and jogathi, men and women given to her service, who carry her image in a basket on their heads and beg for rice in her name, the joga, as the katha says the rishis prescribed. The temple was long linked to the devadasi custom of dedicating girls to her, which Karnataka abolished by law in 1982.
03Ekaveera of Mahur and the worshipped head
At Mahur, in Nanded district of Maharashtra, she is worshipped as Renuka Ekaveera, and the Ashtadasha Shakti Peetha stotra names her among its eighteen: Mahurye Ekaveerika. Mahur is held to be her own place, and on the same hills stand the shrines of Sati Anasuya and the Datta Shikhar of Bhagwan Dattatreya. Across the south, the worship of Renuka as a head alone recalls the katha of the axe; in the Tamil country devotees join her to Mariamman, whose head, the katha says, was set on another body. Hyderabad keeps a great Yellamma festival at Balkampet in Ashadha, and Renuka lake in Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh, carries her name in the far north.
In the texts
- Mahabharata, Vana Parva (Jamadagni and Renuka)
- Bhagavata Purana 9.15–9.16
- Ashtadasha Shakti Peetha Stotra
