Goddess

India is home to a host of different goddesses. Although goddesses differ greatly
in demeanor and character, they are all
generally seen as expressions of a single
underlying female deity. This vision of
the goddess coincides with the characteristic Hindu practice that allows for
multiple manifestations of a divinity,
while at the same time asserting his or
her underlying reality as a single entity.
Many of India’s goddesses are the deities
of a specific site, who might be worshiped only in that specific place. Yet as
these local goddesses are all mythically
linked as differing forms of a single great
Goddess, the sacred sites (tirthas) are
also connected with this great Goddess.
The sites, called pithas or “benches,”
form a sacred network stretching
throughout the entire subcontinent.
The origins of the goddess cult
in India are uncertain. Excavations of
cities of the Indus Valley civilization
have unearthed female figures with
enormous breasts, hips, and buttocks.
These figures resemble the Venus of
Willendorf found in Bronze Age Europe
and suggest that there was some kind of
cult associated with women’s fertility.
Some interpreters have seen the Indus
Valley figures as proof that the cult of the
Mother Goddess originated in the Indus
Valley civilization, but hard evidence
supporting this claim is slim. Another
reason some interpreters believe that
goddess worship must have come from
the indigenous Indian culture is that the
deities mentioned in the Vedas, the oldest Hindu religious texts, are almost
exclusively male. The female goddesses
in the Vedic hymns are infrequent and
unimportant—Ushas (the dawn),
Prthivi (the earth), and Nirriti (death
and destruction). But somehow female
divinities were elevated from virtual
obscurity and became conceived as the
reigning power in the universe.
The cult of the great Goddess
appears fully formed, seemingly out of
nowhere, in about the fifth century. She
first appears in the text known as the
Devimahatmya (“greatness of the
Goddess”), which is itself a section of the
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Goddess
A shrine in the Godavari River near the riverbank of Nasik.
Markandeya Purana. The depth and
subtlety of her characterization in this
text leads scholars to infer that this
cult had existed for some time, perhaps as a secret religious community
open only to initiates. The goddess in the
Devimahatmya is a powerful, independent female force and is able to do what
the gods cannot. She is created from the
collected radiance (tejas) of all the gods,
and comes into the world to kill a
demon against whom the gods have
struggled in vain. The Devimahatmya’s
three different episodes portray her in
three different divine personas: as
Mahasaraswati in the slaying of the
demons Madhu and Kaitabha, as
Mahalakshmi in slaying a demon
named Mahishasura, and as Mahakali
in the battle against the demon generals
Shumbha and Nishumbha.
Many of India’s goddesses are the
patron deities of particular locales, and
are considered unique to that place. The
Shiwalik goddesses, for example, are
unique to particular sites in the
Shiwalik hills. At the same time, all of
these goddesses are considered different
manifestations of the same divine energy.
According to the sites’ charter myth,
each site is associated with a particular
body part of the primeval goddess. The
myth tells of the death of Sati, who commits suicide when her father Daksha
insults her husband Shiva. Shiva picks
up Sati’s body and wanders the earth,
carrying her on his shoulders. In his
grief Shiva neglects his divine duties,
and the world begins to fall into ruin.
The other gods beg Vishnu for help, lest
the world be destroyed. Vishnu uses his
razor-sharp discus to cut off pieces of
Sati’s body, until finally there is nothing
left. When the body is completely gone,
Shiva goes to the mountains, where he
becomes absorbed in meditation.
Wherever a part of Sati’s body falls, that
place becomes a Shakti Pitha (“seat of
the Goddess”), sanctified to the Goddess
in a particular form. The number of
these places differs from source to
source—some list fifty-one, and others
\108. Whatever the number, the sites are
spread throughout the subcontinent,
from Baluchistan in modern Pakistan, to
Assam in the far east, to deep in southern India. Each Shakti Pitha is associated
with a particular body part of the great
Goddess, has a particular presiding
female deity, and has a particular
Bhairava as a consort to that goddess.
From this perspective, the entire subcontinent is seen as a single cohesive
unit, with the network of sites connected to one another as are the parts of the
body. Different places may claim the
same body part, the result of the drive to
establish a site and to give it prestige.
For example, Sati’s vulva, the most powerfully charged part of the female body,
is usually accepted to have fallen at
Kamakhya in Assam, but the same
claim is made at Kalimath in the
Himalayas. There is no single authoritative list of sites and competing claims
are not uncommon. Many Hindus seem
unconcerned with the seeming inconsistency of having the same body parts
claimed by different sites; perhaps this
reflects the conviction that the Goddess
is behind them all, and that the specifics
are therefore less important.
While some goddesses are only worshiped in their particular locale, such as
the goddesses found in the Shiwalik
hills, other goddesses have become
more widely worshiped, and some have
become pan-Indian. In the pantheon,
the Goddess generally appears in two
widely differing types of manifestations.
At times she appears as a wife and mother,
in forms such as Parvati, Lakshmi, and
Saraswati. Although these married
goddesses are not completely powerless,
they tend to be benign, benevolent,
and auspicious. Her other manifestation
is in forms such as Durga and Kali,
whose male consorts are considered
subordinate to them. These independent manifestations of the Goddess
have the power to help their devotees
(bhakta), but they are also volatile and
potentially dangerous, since their power
is sometimes unleashed without control. Cultural observers have suggested
that this dual perspective represents
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Goddess
cultural perspectives on Indian women,
particularly the belief that women’s
procreative capacities should be
channeled through the safe, confining
bounds of marriage. Married women,
as wives and mothers, are auspicious,
life-giving, and life-sustaining because
their creative power has been regulated under male control. Unmarried
women remain a source of danger,
particularly to the family’s prestige,
since the quickest way to ruin a family’s
good name is through the corruption of
its women.