South Asian Goddess Traditions

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume work on the little-known South Indian folk cult of the goddess Draupadi and on the classical epic, the Mahabharata, that the cult brings to life in mythic, ritual, and dramatic forms. Draupadi, the chief heroine of the Sanskrit Mahabharata, takes on many unexpected guises in her Tamil cult, but her dimensions as a folk goddess remain rooted in a rich interpretive vision of the great epic. By examining the ways that the cult of Draupadi commingles traditions about the goddess and the epic, Alf Hiltebeitel shows the cult to be singularly representative of the inner tensions and working dynamics of popular devotional Hinduism.

Mahayana Sutras, largely composed in the first half of the first millennium CE, are situated within the normative gender hierarchies of the ancient cultures of South Asia. Therefore, for the most part, they do not espouse gender equity. is vast textual corpus has constituted and informed the teachings and praxis of Buddhism across Asia both historically and today, inclusive of the fairly recent entrance of Zen and Tibetan traditions in the West. Such texts include the highly revered Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra, which has itself long been personified as a goddess who continues to be honored in both Eastern and Western Buddhist traditions. As explored further below, Mahayana sutras made certain doctrinal concessions to female practitioners who aspired to take up the bodhisattva vow, particularly when we compare female access to the path toward buddhahood in Mahayana versus mainstream texts. Nonetheless, as numerous scholars have noted, Mahayana sutras appear to generally prohibit female devotees from advancing to the highest levels of bodhisattvahood until they have been reborn as male. The present article suggests that the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra puts female bodhisattvas on an equal footing with most of its advanced and enlightened male bodhisattvas. I also assert that there is an urgency to revisit this text as evidence of a shift in the attitudes of Mahayana Buddhist authors toward the representation of female bodhisattva enlightenment, particularly because issues of soteriological equity had—and continue to have—a gendered impact on Buddhist audiences.

Nine Nights of the Goddess explores the festival of Navarātri alternatively called Navarātra, Mahānavamī, Durgā Pūjā, Dasarā, and/or Dassain which lasts for nine nights and ends with a celebration called Vijayadaśamī, or the tenth (day) of victory. Celebrated in both massive public venues and in small, private domestic spaces, Navarātri is one of the most important and ubiquitous festivals in South Asia and wherever South Asians have settled. These festivals share many elements, including the goddess, royal power, the killing of demons, and the worship of young girls and married women, but their interpretation and performance vary widely. This interdisciplinary collection of essays investigates Navarātri in its many manifestations and across historical periods, including celebrations in West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Nepal. Collectively, the essays consider the role of the festival s contextual specificity and continental ubiquity as a central component for understanding South Asian religious life, as well as how it shapes and is shaped by political patronage, economic development, and social status.

This paper investigates cultural adaptations of ancestral traditions between the Hellenistic and local elites in Western and Central Asia from an iconographic and symbolic point of view. It is recognized that the hegemonic Greek population made use of symbols such as the cornucopia and the mural crown (together with those emerging from the local background) in order to reiterate their control over resources. This can be also maintained from a merely symbolic perspective where the divinities legitimize the power of the new rulers and grant a fortunate, wealthy rule over a fertile rich-producing land. In considering select examples of material culture, this paper will look at the diffusion of some “western” symbols and their popularity in various later artefacts of the Indo-Iranian borderlands. Following the introduction of Hellenistic elements in the eastern regions the religious imagery was subject to a series of adaptations that in some cases had a longer life in local variations. This can be exemplified by the appropriation of “adapted symbols” by subsequent waves of conquerors that ended up in controlling the land that formerly was under the rule of Seleucus I.

The village goddess, and by extension the sanskritic goddess, was known as mata, the mother. The goddess was always seen in terms of fertility, as a multiplier. In contrast, the sanskritic goddess also had its ugra roopa or angry manifestation, like Kali, Chandi, etc. They were the slayers of the demons, the masculine evil force. None of the local or village goddess manifested such an attribute; there was no or little challenge to the patriarchal set up. These village goddesses were the deities of productivity-as the guardian deity of water spring and tutelary deity of forest or fields; they were invoked for rain against famine and disease. They sustained and nurtured.
How were these village deities created? Is the conception of ‘classical’ deities different from the local? Is there a structural difference in their constitution? How is social reflected in the mythology of the goddess? What is the response of the patriarchal institutions? These are the questions that are addressed in the present study, using the example of the goddess largely from Chamba and Kangra.

The kumārī is a powerful, often overlooked symbol of identity for practitioners of Kaula Tantrism. This dissertation argues that she is an important liminal, independent figure weaving together many intersecting, opposing threads of orthodox, Tantric, and indigenous culture and belief. Focusing on Kaula literature and practice, this expansive study traces the origins of the kumārī and her worship throughout history, documenting for the first time several significant developments in the history of Kaula Tantrism.

The Tantras selected here give few clues about geographical locations. Of the six short passages, the third alone mentions a place called the “Garlanded” (Mālinī) Mountain and a ravine or cave named Kokila, which may refer to sites in the far northeast of India, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, such as the ruined temple site called Malini- than in the Siang Hills. This area borders Tibet, Myanmar, and Bhutan and is home to numerous tribal communities speaking dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects. Its green forests and high mountains host some of the most biodiverse wilderness in India, with over 750 species of birds and hundreds of mammals, including snow leopards, red pandas, and gibbon apes.

These six short passages translated from the Sanskrit depart from the narrative format and instead present Tantric-guided visualizations and hymns of praise to the so-called goddess of desire, Kāmeśvarī. They are all about vivid description, characteristics of the practitioner, and praise for the goddess’s power. The first two pieces are from the Nityākaula, a previously untranslated Tantra predating the eleventh century and the sole surviving representative of the Nityā cult, as described in the essay. This important early Tantra has barely reached the present, for it survives in a single damaged palm-leaf manuscript from Nepal. The frequent ellipses (. . .) in the first passage flag places where the text is damaged and unreadable. The passage from the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya serves as a midpoint that elaborates on the nature and power of Kāmeśvarī. The latter three passages are from the Vāmakeśvarīmata, a Tantra of slightly later origin that expands the goddess’s retinue and links her to the famous diagram of nine interlocking triangles, called the Śrīcakra. The passages are thus arranged sequentially to illustrate the historical flow of religious influence from the Nityā cult to that of Tripurasundarī, who is still actively worshiped today in the popular Śrīvidyā tradition.

The two songs translated below tell the story of the goddesses Cāmuṇḍi and her sister Uttanahaḷḷi and their epic battle against demons on the hill outside of Mysore in the modern state of Karnataka in South India. These songs, which are sung in the Kannada language, are part of a larger epic ballad Beṭṭada Cāmuṇḍi (Cāmuṇḍi of the Hill) about the goddess Cāmuṇḍi and her relationship with the deity Śiva in his local form as Nañjuṇṣēśvara, “the lord who consumed the poison.”  In these songs, and in the epic ballad more broadly, we can see the local traditions of these two situated goddesses seamlessly blend into the broader Indic tradition through narrative and mythic adaptation and acculturation.

This paper maps the tradition of the goddess in the himalayan province of himachal pradesh, north India using epigraphic sources. it also argues how the tradition of counter conquest developed in the folklore of the goddess, and how women sacrifice resulted in deification as goddess. the paper contextualizes the dynamism in the tradition of the goddess in contemporary society and culture.

RITA D. SHERMA:
The Hindu religion, in continuity with a nearly 4,000-year old living tradition of thought and practice offers, arguably, the only extant, widely-accepted systematic theological tradition of God the Mother as the Supreme Divine.

Negotiations between continuity and discontinuity have characterized Srividya traditions for centuries; these are primarily studied through texts or the juxtaposition of textual prescriptions with observed practices, leaving the process of how Srividya practitioners negotiate esoteric and orthodox tendencies unexplored. Building on extensive fieldwork among practitioners of a contemporary South Indian Srividya tradition, I present the dynamics animating such transformations. Focusing on kalavahana, one of the tradition's central rituals aimed at identifying with Devi, I trace the underlying forces that gradually replace its most esoteric aspects (centred around the body and pleasure) with conventional worship (external or meditative practices), refashioning the tradition as part of mainstream Saktism. While some practitioners conform to the new canon, others, for whom the changes diminish ritual efficacy, secretly continue embodied practices. Through a Foucauldian archaeologico-genealogical analysis, I investigate which regimes of truth and ontological coordinates allow the ritual to change, and which diminish its efficacy. While at first negotiations between continuity and discontinuity appear driven by socio-political motives, ultimately they are governed and legitimized by fundamentally diverging modes of being. A pre-objectified worldview demands embodied experiences (including unconventional practices invoking pleasure) while a dualistic framework endorses representational practices (such as meditation and idol-worship).

Is it more blessed to be everything everywhere, utterly transcendent, the Infinite Absolute? Or is it more blessed to be a person who is somewhere, utterly immanent, the Finite Particular? Hinduism and Christianity have given different answers to these questions, differing both within themselves and between themselves. The answers given bear great importance, because they influence our own interpretation of human existence, which is originally finite, particular, and related. Is this status a blessing to be celebrated or a limitation to be overcome? Could it possibly characterize God? Or, more intriguingly, could God be both?

„Göttinnenverehrung im Jainismus.“ This is the adapted text of a lecture in a Ringvorlesung (lecture series) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and later appeared as a chapter in Aspekte des Weiblichen in der indischen Kultur, ed. U. Roesler (Swisttal-Odendorf: Verlag Indica und Tibetica, 2000), pp. 145-189. It is a lecture about the character of the goddesses known as yakṣīs (specifically the three among them who play a great role in popular Jaina worship in southern India: Kūṣmāṇḍinī, Jvālāmālinī and Padmāvatī) and of their worship.

Величайшая тайна планеты. О чем молчит Библия.
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Книга Дэна Брауна «Код да Винчи», несущая губительную для рода человеческого мысль о смертной природе Христа, своим шумным успехом обязана истине: Иисус действительно имел женой Марию Магдалину. Сущий меж двух Марий, матерью и супругой, тем есть Христос, как в Сердце Ум, сущим в Женщине, Лоне Его, как реальном Творце, скрытым в Библии коркою лжи «Бог есть Муж».

Gnosticism and Tantra are groupings of esoteric traditions that each posed challenges to the philosophical or theological doctrines of the religious systems coeval to them by introducing beliefs and practices that were in shocking contrast to existing purity codes. In both Gnostic and Tantric traditions, female figures can be seen as performing opposing kinds of symbolic work, when they both define a stable and fixed reality for the normative male to transcend, and facilitate the symbolic fracturing of that reality, an act key to enabling spiritual realization or “gnosis” for the male practitioner.
This paper forges a comparison using select female-gendered Gnostic and Tantric figures or principles, with reflection on how the discourses of orthodoxy and heresy shape and define the identities of these groups. I consider how the female principle—both the feminine-gendered symbolic, and also, in some instances, the human woman acting as a metaphor for the Divine—is encoded in these traditions with a purposive ambiguity. Gender theory frames this analysis, as I treat the derivation of religious symbol systems as a gendered act.
In Gnosticism, Sophia and the Barbelo or First Thought are discussed. Sophia’s condition--her will and her generative power-- has been called by Buckley one of “simultaneous deficiency and an excess of power” (132). Throughout the Gnostic myths, her presence is a liminal one: neither here nor there, she exists to delineate a newly formed otherness or ambiguity.
In South Asian Tantra, the female symbolizes and plays the role of the Goddess, in the form of a yogini, a being also between two realms. Close to the human world and divine (similar to the figure of the Sophia), the yogini’s liminality is evoked.
In a general sense, in Gnosticism and Tantra, females and their bodies seem to symbolically embody a performative multivalence: they are by turns the fullness of creation, the most pure and most sought, and the most impure, problematic and othered. Biernacki argues that this very multiplicity of shifting forms does profound work, and can “...explode[ ] the binary logic that founds the idea of an ‘other.’”(126-7).” When the goddess speaks in The Brhannila Tantra, Biernacki writes, hers are “not just words, they are the bodying of sound into female forms. This feminine anthropomorphized speech fuses the notion of sign and thing, giving us a word that is...the presence of being, the goddesses themselves” (119).
To show how the female in select Gnostic texts also performs this engagement of speech-as-gnosis, I discuss Mary as a character in the narrative of the Pistis Sophia who can be seen as the human counterpart to the Sophia. Speech takes on an ontological quality in this text as Mary alone among the disciples succeeds in repeating back the Savior’s teachings, and ultimately, she transforms: “When Mary had finished saying these words...she had become pure spirit entirely” (1896, 199). Mary’s unique acumen will also be explored as potentially noteworthy in terms of the status and capabilities attributed to women by the Gnostics.


Abstract Citations:

Anon. 1896. Pistis Sophia. New York: Theosophical Publishing Society.

Biernacki, Lorillai. 2007. Renowned Goddess of Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Pr.

Buckley, Jorunn. 1986. Female Fault and Fulfillment in Gnosticism. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Pr.

The essay investigates material representations and presences of the goddess and the demon within the ritual space of the goddess festival Navarātri in the South Indian temple town of Kanchipuram. During Navarātri the goddess manifests in various forms: in pots, on tiered doll displays (kolu), in the bodies of females, summoned through possession, as well as in her images in various temples. The goddess’s special ornamentations (alaṃkāras) for which Navarātri is particularly famous, project layers of presence onto her temple image during the festival, leading up to her conquest of the (buffalo) demon. Through looking at material representations of the goddess and demon in homes and temples during this particular festival, the essay illustrates how materiality often concerns presence rather than representations, and investigates connections between materiality and agency.

This book fills the very real need for an affordable, accessible, academic textbook featuring Goddesses from a wide range of world religious, cultural and mythological traditions. As a textbook, its primary audience is professors and students in university and college courses in Goddess Studies, Religious Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. It will also be of interest to students and instructors in the many Goddess-themed courses outside the academy. The contributors to the textbook were selected for their scholarly expertise and qualifications in their respective areas of study, both established and emerging scholars from Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Scandinavia, and Australia. The Goddess traditions surveyed in the 22 chapters include the Female Divine in the major world religions—not only Hinduism and Buddhism, but also in the “Western Religions” of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, popularly regarded as impervious to the Goddess. The coverage ranges from ancient to contemporary, Mago to Mary Magdalene. As such, it is a unique and much-needed resource for students and faculty, as well as a treasury of Goddess scholarship.

Presentation at Department of Anthropology, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam
22 February 2017

Questions about the relatively dynamic or static nature of human societies have animated anthropological debates since the discipline’s earliest days and continue to do so even today. In this presentation, I wish to further reflect on this debate, in particular with regards to its applicability in the domain of gender relations, and how it may be observed in the field. Building upon a growing body of literature on gender, ritual and goddess traditions, I will look at transformations of the perceptions of femininity, female sexuality, body, kinship and motherhood amongst the female and male devotees of goddess Tripurasundarī, and how these impact gender behaviours in the everyday South Indian family life.