Ravalnath

Ravalnath is a guardian deity (Kshetrapala) who protects the locality from climatic disasters, witchcraft and snakebites. Ravalnath along with Santeri, Bhumika, Bhutnath and Betal is a popular folk deity worshipped as Gramadevata (village god) in most villages of Goa and Sindhudurg of Maharashtra.

Etymology

The origin of word Ravalnath is a matter of conjecture. The word Ravalnath is derived the word from the word Ruru, who is one of the Ashta Bhairava, eight forms of the god Bhairava - a ferocious aspect of the god Shiva.^[b] The iconography of Ravalnath is same as that of Bhairava. Word ravala is also rerived from the word "ravaNa" which means "screaming","yelling", which is same as "ruru" as mentioned earlier and vedic corpus attributes these epithets to different forms of "Rudra". According to Shenoi Goembab, the word Raval (from the word Ravalnath) comes from the word Rahulbhadra which was also the personal name of Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. Rahul was also the name of Buddha's son. As per his view during the Buddhist period, some Buddhists might have come to Goa and the worship of Ravalnath was mainly due to this Buddhist tradition. These views of Shenoi Goembab are not accepted by mainstream scholars. Some other speculations suggested that the word Ravalnath is derived from Tamil word Iravalnath and in Tamil Iraval means begging for alms, and is connected to Bhikṣāṭanamūrti aspect of Shiva. Ravalnath is sometimes considered as one of the three hundred Gaṇas of Shiva. Yet others derive the word "ravala" from the word "roinn" of Mundari origin meaning an ant-hill.

The ritual worship of Ravalnath is supposed to have been influenced by Natha sampradaya, it is suggested that Nath cult absorbed Ravalnath as suggested by the suffix nath .

The earliest inscription referring to Ravalnath, called Ravaluba, is dated to the Hoysala period. In another inscription from Goa, Ravalnath is referred to as Ravaloba as well as Ravaleshwar. Southern Silaharas, who ruled North Goa and the present Sindhudurg and part of Ratnagiri district and Kadambas of Goa, were devotees of Shiva. However, references to Ravalnath are not found either in Silaharas or Kadamba inscriptions. There are a two inscriptions in Nagari script and from Velus village of Sattari taluka referring to Ravalnath from Vijayanagara period. Famous Jyotiba of Kolhapur is also called Ravalnath, and is tutelary deity of Sendraka (Shinde) royal house, masses and the upper castes alike.