Goa, the smallest state of India, is blessed with immense natural beauty and surrounded by a multi-hued spiritual aura that emanates from the numerous religious cults that are consecrated in the elegantly designed Hindu temples of the state, big and small. Worshipped as the Gramadevatas, the patron deities of the villages; the Kuladevatas, the family deities and the Ishtadevatas, the favoured ones by the devotees beyond their village and family connections, these divinities are enveloped in mythologies, both classical and of folk origin. These carefully woven mythologies invariably enhance their appeal to the believers and the tourists alike, thereby attracting a large influx of visitors all through the year. This paper is an attempt to document the mythological background of two of the temples situated in Ponda Taluka, dedicated to the most popular cults of Goa. A thorough scrutiny of the primary sources like the Compromissos or the private statutes of the individual temples, Portuguese Revenue Registers known as Foral de Ilhas of 1534 and the Communidade Records known as Livros da Communidade, secondary sources like the classical Puranic literature available in Sanskrit language, the Stalapuranas or the spiritual histories of the local temples written in Marathi language and available at the temple sites; and a wide range of folklore collected through exhaustive fieldwork form the fundamental basis of this paper.

Keywords: Goa, Hindu, Temples, Mythology, Folklore.