Mayana Kollai

Mayana Kollai
Disguise of a woman as Kali, a form of the Hindu goddess Parvati at the Mayana Kollai festival in Vellore, Tamil Nadu
Official name	Mayana Kollai
Also called	Graveyard Robbery
Observed by	Hindus and Hinduism
Liturgical color	Red
Type	Cultural, ethnic and Hindu
Significance	Celebrations of Parvati as Angala Devi and all other Hindu deities's killings of all evil demons and demonesses like Vallala Kandan and many others in Hindu mythology
Celebrations	Ritual worship and religious parades
Observances	Ritual worship and religious parades
Begins	The 1 day which is the first full moon day after Maha Shivaratri
Ends	The 1 day which is the first full moon day after Maha Shivaratri
Date	Decided by the Hindu calendar
Frequency	Annual
First time	Thousands of years ago
Started by	Hindus
Related to	Maha Shivaratri

Mayana Kollai is a festival celebrated after Maha Shivaratri on the first full moon day after that in February or March at Angala Devi temples in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in India in the Indian subcontinent. It is widely celebrated as Angala Devi is the goddess worshiped by the followers of goddess Parvati because she is a form of the goddess Parvati. Brahma was arrogant about his creation and had no remorse about the suffering that living beings had on earth. Shocked by this, Shiva took the form of Bhairava and he cut off the fifth head of Brahma and thus invoked a curse upon himself; the curse enabled the head to remain attached to his right and left hands and did not allow him to eat and soon Shiva felt remorse and for destruction of his chaos, Brahma had remorse about suffering of living beings in Earth and cured them and then Brahma told Shiva to become a wandering ascetic as Bhikshatana and beg for food in his skull. The Kapala was consuming all the available foods instead of Shiva and Shiva had no foods to eat at all. He then became a mendicant and roamed the earth begging and eating food, and also sleeping in graveyards.

Parvati told the protector god Vishnu for a solution. He came up to the idea of to trick Brahma's head falling away and told her this, "My dear Parvati, go to Thandakarunyam graveyard in Melmalayanur with your husband and make a pond there named "Agnikula Tirtha" and prepare a tasty food made by Hummingbird tree leaves and Chicken meat and serve that food to Kapala and then throw the food everywhere in the graveyard. The Kapala will come down, leaving Shiva's hand, to eat the food. Then take your husband to the pond and clean him with that water, so that it will not catch your husband's hand''. Parvati follows her brother's instruction and frees the Kapala from her husband. Since he was sanctified by the water of the pond, it could not approach him and in turn got attached to Parvati. Parvati amassing powers of Shakti in a cosmic dance and later, she destroys the Kapala by her sheer scale of power and ferocity by crushing it under her right and left feet and fuses it into Brahma, who gets his five heads again. This fierce form is called as Angara Rupa and she herself was later named to be Angala Devi. The temple in Melmalayanur is dedicated in memory of this form of Parvati, a form where she is a goddess who is the wife of a god and she removes head of an another god from him and attaches it to that god and relieves her husband from his curse.