[The Pomegranate 17.

1-2 (2015) 51-70] ISSN 1528-0268 (print)

doi: 10.1558/pome.v17i1-2.26652 ISSN 1743-1735 (online)

Elements of Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism

and Tantrism in Light of the Shakti Pitha Kāmākhyā

Archana Barua1
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Guwahati, Assam, India, 781039
archana@iitg.ernet.in

Abstract
India’s northeastern state of Assam (ancient Prāgjyotishapur and Kāma­
rūpa), known for its goddess shrine, the Devipītha (Seat of the goddess)
Kāmākhyā, has enriched the mosaic of the Indian religious tradition with
its unique contribution in Shaktism and Tantrism. Shaktism and Tantrism
represent a particular phase of religion which was in the main personal
and esoteric. Assam or the northeast of Bengal, is the source from which
Shākta-Tāntric beliefs and practices found its Austric-Tibetan base around
Devipitha Kamakhya and it became a strong Tantric center that remained
influential in Bengal, Orissa-centric Eastern regions that resulted in man-
tra, yantra, çakra, etc.
In this context, this article tries to address some such interesting fea-
tures of the Mother Goddess Kāmākhyā and her various transformations.

Keywords: Assam; Chamunda; Devi; Goddess; India; Kāli; katyayani;

Kāmākhyā; Menstruating Goddess; Mother Goddess; Sankaradeva; Tan­
tra; Vaishnavism.

Introducing Shakti-Pitha Kamakhya, The

Shrine for Shkta-Tantric Worship on Assam
Shaktism and Tantrism represent a particular phase of religion
which was in the main personal and esoteric. “Assam,” as the early
orientalist H. H. Wilson puts it, “seems to have been the source
from which the Tantric corruption of the religion of the Vedas and

1. Archana Barua is a Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences (Philosophy), Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam,
India.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016. Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX.
52 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

Puranas proceeded. Above all Assam is infamous as the heartland

of Tantra—a highly esoteric tradition, which has long held a place
of profound ambivalence, fear and embarrassment for both Indian
and western observers.”2 Hugh Urban describes it thus: “The land
of Assam, the remote, hilly, northeast corner of India on the border
of China and Bhutan, has long held a place of mysterious fascina-
tion and tantalizing allure in both the eastern and western imagi-
nations. Famed as a realm of treacherous jungle and strange tribal
ritual, Assam has, for centuries been portrayed in Indian literature
and in European accounts as a savage, untamed country,” a land of
magic and witchcraft, “where non-Hindu superstitions have never
been entirely stamped out” (Kakati: 1).3
The history of the Devipitha Kāmakhyā is closely connected with
the stages of the history of the land. The land referred to as Prāgj­
yotisha in the Hindu Epic Mahabharata is now accepted as present-
day Assam and North Bengal. Later epigraphic sources from Assam
call the kingdom Pragjyotisha-Kamarupa. In the early twelfth cen-
tury, epigraphic sources from the Pala dynasty mention Kāmarupa
as a mandala of the kingdom they ruled. The origin of the Kāmākhyā
Temple, one of the oldest living shrine of Kāmarupa (ancient Assam),
dates back to antiquity. The noted scholar Banikanta Kakati sug-
gests that based on linguistic considerations (as per the etymologi-
cal meaning of the word Kāmākhyā), one can trace the root of the
word kāma to a possible Austric source while ākhya remains a ple-
onastic derivative to give the Austric name a Sanskritic garb. This
re-Christening of the Goddess is a part of larger re-Christening at
work in the Hindu religious text, Kalika Purana (tenth century) that
also provides a mythical background of Kāmarupa. The story goes
like this: “As the Great God Mahādeva (also known as Shiva mean-
ing ‘The Auspicious One’), continued to do penance, the other gods
became afraid that he would thereby acquire universal power. They
sent Kāmadeva, the God of Love, to make Shiva fall in love again, and
thereby break his penance. Kāmdeva succeeded in his mission, but
Shiva was so enraged at the result that he burnt Kāmadeva into ashes
by a fiery glance of his third eye. Kāmadeva eventually regained his
life and his original ‘form’ (Rupa) in Assam and the land where this
took place become known as ‘Kāmrup’ (‘Kāmarupa’).”

2. H. H. Wilson (trans.), The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and

Tradition, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: Punti Pustak, 1972), 263.
3. Hugh Urban, ”The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship, and Sacrifice in Assa-
mese Tantra,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, no. 4 (2001): 777–816.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 53

Shiva, the powerful God of the Hindu Trinity, the Lord over
death and destruction, the self-controlled and celibate, is essentially
the god of the yogis and interestingly enough, Shakti Tantras also
present Him more as an enjoyer of life ( bhogi) with his passionate
love for his spouse (Shakti) than a life renouncer. For the devotees,
Shiva, the Mahādeva, is the great god who is regularly prayed to
along with his Shakti as follows:
Om Sarva Mangal Manglāye Shivay Sarvārth Sādhike
Sharanye Trayambake Gauri Nārayaani Namostu Te!

“Oh the divine couple Shiva Parvati!

O! Thee, the protectors of this universe,
Along with Lords Brahma and Vishnu
We pray to You for our well-being, prosperity and enlightenment of
our souls.”4

The great god Shiva alone is Nilakantha, the blue-throated one

who could swallow poison and remained unaffected, is shown now
as uncontrollably lamenting the loss of his beloved wife Sati. Kalika
Purana, a work composed in the ninth century ce in ancient Assam
for glorifying Kāmākhyā, provides a mythical explanation now on
the origin of the Devipitha Kāmākhyā. The story provides a Hindu-
Tāntric interpretation of the shrine as follows: Mahamāya was born as
Sati in the womb of Daksha’s wife Birini. Sati won Siva’s love through
her deep devotion and became his wife with her father’s consent.
However, Daksha felt slighted when Siva failed to treat him with due
respect. So he held a great yajña (sacrifice) to which he invited all the
important beings of the Tribhuvan (Three Worlds, namely Heaven,
Earth and Hell), except his son-in-law Siva and his daughter Sati.
When the sage Narada told Sati about the yajña (sacrifice) she ex-
pressed her desire to attend the sacrifice. But when Shiva forbade her
to go, she flew into a great rage and transformed herself into Shyāma
or Kāli. When Mahadeva (Shiva) sought to escape her wrath, she
assumed ten different forms, the Dasamahavidya, and surrounded
him. A helpless Siva finally allowed her to go to Daksha’s yajña know-
ing well that she would not be able to bear the insults that would be in
store for her at her father’s place. Shiva’s wife Satī insinuated herself
into a gathering for a sacrifice, got angry at hearing the insults against
her husband and she ended her life on that very spot itself. Totally
upset and grief stricken at this sad turn of the events even a great
god like Shiva could not retain his calm. Carrying her corpse on his

4. Ibid.

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54 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

shoulder, Shiva continued his dance of destruction and in the process,

left her body parts at 51 sites, with the vagina at Kāmākhyā. Her body
parts fell at 51 places across the Indian Subcontinent, where temples to
her came up named as Devipīthas (seat of the Devi) or Shaktipīthas
(“seat of the force” or power).
It may be mentioned here that it is her suicide that gave rise to
the term Sati for a wife’s suicide on her husband’s funeral pyre,
even though in her case, her husband was still alive. According to
the same Purana, ”the genital organ of Sati fell here when her dead
body was carried hither and thither in frantic sorrow by her hus-
band Shiva. The Yoni, no sooner had it fallen on the hill, turned into
stone, and Shiva himself finding no corpse on his shoulder, sat down
and became a stone. It is said that the Devi here becomes completely
transformed into the eroticized form of Yoni of Sati or Parvati, the
goddess who fulfills all desires at Nilachala,her permanent abode in
which, like a sixteen-year old (Sodasi), still passionately in love, Sati
as Kāmākhyā waits for her beloved husband Shiva for fulfilling her
sexual desires, and also to bless her devotees . Shiva remains there
zealously guarding his beloved wife’s corpse and her body parts and
also afterward when she re emerged as a sixteen–year-old passionate
lover of her husband Shiva in her resurrected form as Sodashi. The
Kālika Purana explains the origin of Yonimandala, located inside the
temple on the Nilāchala, and identifies the hill both as a graveyard
and a scene of the secret love-tryst of the Goddess.5
It is this graveyard motif that provides the occasion for Banitkana
Kakati to speculate on the deity’s Khasi tribe’s connection in particu-
lar. Kakati believes that this Yoni–goddess Kāmākhyā migrated into
Assam with the migration of the Austric peoples. The uniqueness of
the Kāmākhyā Temple, amidst all the other Hindu places of worship
in India, is that it enshrines no image or idol of the Goddess
Kāmākhyā. But in the corner of a cave inside the shrine we find the
symbol of a yoni (female genital organ). It is moistened by a natural
spring that flows from the cleft in the bedrock of the cave, which
resembles a yoni. Inside the temple there is a cave and in the cave
there stands a block of stone resembling the yoni, and the block of
stone has always been kept moist from the oozing of a natural spring
within the cave.6

5. Sarma,Rajib, ”Sri Sri Kamkhya Temple: A Socio Religious Perspective,” http://

www.jaimaa.org/articles/sri-sri-kamakhya-temple-a-socio-religious-perspective/.
6. Banikanta Kakati, The Mother Goddess Kāmākhyā: Gauhati (1989), quoted in
Hugh Urban, ”The Path of Power: Impurity.”

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 55

The region of the Nilāchal was originally inhabited by the Austric

people, who were animists, worshiping nature and natural objects
like mountains and stone as the divine. With the gradual inroads of
Vedic Brahmanical religion, local goddesses like Kāmākhyā were
assimilated into the Brahmanical fold, and a Puranic origin was
assigned to them. In an attempt to substantiate a folk origin of the
goddess or an origin independent of Sati’s limb story, Kakati draws
our attention to the fact that there is no reference to the Kāmarupa -
Kāmākhyā as a Shakti-Pitha (sacred shrine for Shakti worship)in the
Devi Bhagavata, another Shakti text of the time. The folk origin of
Goddess Kāmākhyā is also reaffirmed by the fact that neither the
Umachal Rock Inscription of 500 ce, which is situated so near it, nor
the travel records of Hiuen Tsang made any mention of the shrine.7
This indicates a later phase of Sanskritization of the Kāmarupa—
Kāmākhyā as a Shakti shrine associated with the Great Hindu God-
dess, Shakti or Devi. One can say that Yoni-puja or womb worship
is the cornerstone of Kāmākhyā worship the mythical background
of which is provided by another fascinating story in a similar back-
ground. The cave is later renamed as Manobhāva Guhā (the cave
of Cupid) because, according to mythology, this was created by
or belonged to Kāma, the god of erotic desire. Pranav Jyoti Deka
writes, “The name ‘manobhāva’ itself is comparatively new, which
means Madana or Kāmadeva (eros) and originated from Tantra.
Manobhāva is in the lajja seed syllable hrim.”8

Shakti Pitha Kāmākhyā and the Cult Of Power

Suggesting a fresh approach to the study of Assamese Tantra by
looking into deep relations among Tāntric ritual, political power,
and kingship in ancient Assam, Hugh Urban suggests that much of
the Assamese Tantra centers around the unleashing and harnessing
of power (shakti) in all its forms—social, political, and spiritual alike.

7. When the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim visited Kamarupa as an invited guest

of Bhaskar Varman,the Kamarupa king who accompanied Hieun Tsang to Kanauj
where he was greeted with a rousing welcome. After Harsavardhana’s death in 647
ce, his kingdom disintegrated and its ultimate decline took place around the twelfth
century. But Kamarupa, which latter came to known as Assam, from the thirteenth
century flourished under the Tai Ahoms until the nineteenth century. Its western
boundary shrunk from the river Karatoyā to the river Manas.
8. Pranav Jyoti Deka, Nilācala Kāmākhyā: Her History and Tantra (Guwahati:
Pranav Jyoti Deka, 2004), 20–21, 43.

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56 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

According to the oral tradition, as well as the Vishnu Purana and

Kalika Purana, it was Naraka who initiated the worship of the god-
dess Kāmākhyā, who dwelt on the Nilachal hill in Assam, and built
the original Kāmākhyā Temple. Naraka was conceived by Mother
Earth during the Boar Incarnation of the Great God Vishnu, but
was born aeons later during Vishnu’s incarnation as Krishna. His
father Krishna, the lord of Dwarka, brings Naraka to Prāgjyotispura
(Assam) where the latter kills Ghataka, the Kirata Chieftain, and
drives his followers beyond the Dikkaravasini. Thereupon, Krishna
places Naraka upon the throne of Prāgjyotispura and enjoins him to
worship the goddess Kāmākhyā who dwells on the Nilachal.
Blessed by Kāmākhyā, Naraka becomes very powerful. Gradually,
he comes under the influence of his friend King Bana of Sonitpur (pres-
ent Tezpur), a staunch Shaivite, and develops Asura (demonic) quali-
ties. Meanwhile, the sage Vasistha comes to Kāmarupa to worship at
the shrine of Kāmākhyā. But an arrogant Naraka denies the sage access
to the goddess. This arrogant behavior of Naraka angers Vasistha, who
curses him, and says that “the Goddess Kāmākhyā would henceforth
be worshipped according to the Vāmāchara (left-handed) mode of
worship.” She would disappear from his kingdom and without her
protection he would soon meet his end. He even vows to remain in
Kāmarupa itself until Naraka meets his end and establishes an ashram
at Sandhyāchala. Vasitha’s curse was directed not against Kāmākhyā
as such, but the whole set -up there and its tantras and rituals and its
“newness” and secretiveness, which differed from the already accepted
traditional way of goddess worship, including Hinduized or even non-
Hinduized goddesses like Tāra as Kāli and some others.
Although there is tremendous difference of opinion within the
tantras themselves as to precisely how such practices are to be per-
formed or interpreted, it may be mentioned here that there is a subtle
difference between the dakshiāachara and vāmachara (right-handed
and left-handed) methods of worship. In Kāmākhyā the sādhaka (Tan-
tric practioner) following the dakshiāachara (right- handed) method
is normally asked by his guru to make use of pancha-’M’kāras (five
M’s) in the form of substitutes (like coconut water in a bronze uten-
sil for madya (wine), ginger mixed with salt for meat, horse gram for
mudrā, well-cooked red leaves for matsya (fish), and putting red san-
dalwood paste on one’s own body for maithuna. But while follow-
ing the vāmachara (left-handed) system the sādhaka is not allowed by
the guru to make use of the pancha-makāras (five M’s) with their sub-
stitutes. He is required to use these pancha-makāras) in their actual

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 57

sense. In the shrine of the goddess rituals continued to be performed

in the left-handed way as well.
The yoni-cult thus flourished with royal patronage in various
forms until it finally led to a confrontation with the traditional priest-
hood of the temples in general, represented by Vasistha, whose curse
against the esoteric rituals and secrecy being confined among a select
few, made the goddess “heart-broken,” and she disappeared from
the shrine, while a new phase of the goddess begins with her reap-
pearance in a slightly transformed form. This event of the goddess
disappearing from the shrine and deserting it for quite long is graph-
ically recorded in the Yogini Tantra, a sixteenth-century text, which
appears to be the description of an actual earthquake, the intensity
of which shifted the bed of the Brahmaputra and caused the temple
to tumble down. The Yogini Tantra now follows the story and re-
handles the myth of the origin of the Mother Goddess Kāmākhyā,
who is now to be seen more as the most powerful Great Goddess of
Shakti-Tantra salutations to whom is made as follows:
Ya Devi Sarva Bhuteshu Shakti Rupena Samsthita
Namastasyai Namastasyai Namastasyai Namo Namaha

We bow to the divine goddess in all existence who resides in the form
of energy. We bow to her, we bow to her, we continually bow to her.

In the Yogini Tantranow we find a different version of the origin of

the Yoni-Goddess of Nilāchal, stressing creative energy. In the new
Hinduized form, this local goddess Kāmākhyā, who had her base
in folk tradition, is now shown as indistinguishable from the Great
Goddess of the Shakti Tantra who is superior to Brahma the creator
and Vishnu the preserver and all others. In the course of a conver-
sation, Parvati (Sati reborn as the daughter of the Himalaya Moun-
tains) asks her spouse Shiva, “Who is Kāmākhyā?” and Shiva replies
that Kāmākhyā is the same as Kāli, the eternal in the form of Brahmā
who fulfils all desires. Shiva then narrates the origin of Kāmākhyā.
He then continues with the story introducing the Great Goddess
Kāmākhyā and identifying her with Uma, Parvatmi and other ver-
sions of Shakti along with her associates who reside in the shrine all
together. Yogini Tantra thus re-handles the myth, further making it
more a Shakti-shrine (pitha) than a Yoni shrine.9

9. It narrates thus: The Nilāchal is also the abode of the Dasamahāvidya or

ten forms of the Goddess Uma. According to the Brihaddharma Purana, when Uma
(Sati) wanted to attend her father Daksha’s yajna (sacrifice) and Shiva forbade her,

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58 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

Based on these evidences, Banikanta Kakati classifies four phases of

goddess worship as evident in her four forms as Mother Goddess
Kāmākhyā, as Śiva’s wife Pārvati, as the young maiden of Tripura
Sundari, and as the destructive and violent goddess Kechāikhati–
Tāmresvari. She is worshipped in her various Dasamahavidya forms
as Kāli, Tripura, Tāra, Bagalāmukhi, Cinnamastā, Bhairavi, etc. with
strong liquor, meat of all kinds, occasional offerings of human flesh
along with human and animal blood. It is evident that blood, whether
human, animal, or that believed to emanate from deities, has played
many significant roles in the history of religions including Shaktism
and Tantrism that is practiced in the Shakti-Pitha Kāmākhyā as well.
Hugh Urban writes, “Even today, the great Tantric temple of Kāmā­
khyā outside modern Guawhati is infamous for its regular animal sac-
rifices, its floors stepped in goat and buffalo blood, and the many
red-clad, matted haired Tantric devotees who gather around the tem-
ple walls.”10
In addition to offering one’s own body flesh or one’s blood to the
goddess, some other apotropaic practices prevailed, as otherwise the
devotee believed that the goddess will do harm. Kāli and Durgā are
two wrathful forms of the consort of Shiva, and worship, especially
at the main shrines, includes the sacrifice of animals. These kinds
of contravention of norms or vows seem to be a constituent of the
majority of wrathful-deity practices.
The deeper meaning of Shakti and Shiva/Bhairava is that Shakti
as prakriti represents Nature while Shiva represents Consciousness.
But whereas consciousness is fearsomely straightforward, nature is
complicated and has secrets, hence much scope for Shaktic magic
and esotericism. Once transformed into the yoni goddess, Kāmākhyā
could easily be revered as the menstruating goddess, and the shrine
gained added fame as the seat of the Tantric goddess Kāmākhyā,
the goddess who menstruates once a year. A comparison is drawn
between human female becoming pregnant after menstruation and

the ten different forms, the Dasamahavidya, came out of the third eye of Sati to
frighten Shiva into granting consent. These different forms of the Mother Goddess,
namely Kāli, Tāra, Mahavidyā, Sodasi, Bhubanesvari, Bhairavi, Chinnamastā, Sun-
dari, Bagālamukhi and Dhumāvati are enshrined in different temples dedicated to
her on the Nilachal. They contain no image and are known as Sakti peethas. The object
of worship consist of a stone each moistened by a natural spring. This accommodates
other minor goddesses within the Kāmākhyā cult. Other non-Hindu and local deities
could also be accommodated as per various forms and manifestations of the Dark
and powerful Goddess Kāmākhyā who is none other than Kāli, Tāra and Shakti.
10. Hugh Urban, “The Path of Power,” 97–8.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 59

the mother earth getting heavy with crops after divine menstruation.
During the annual Ambubachi Mela, the temple precincts are closed
to the worshippers as it is believed that the goddess, along with the
Earth, goes through her menstrual cycle. During this festival held in
the month of June (the seventh day of Āhar according to the Hindu
lunar calendar), during the height of the rainy season, the red hema-
tite present in the soil mixes with the water of the natural spring that
moistens the yoni, leading credence to the commonly held belief of a
menstruating goddess. Puranic (of the Puranas) literature thus refers
to the goddess on the Nilāchal as a primordial and, associated with
the fertility cult. The red color closely associated with goddess wor-
ship is the red seed or menstrual blood that flows out of the body of
a fertile woman who is not carrying a child.”11
The Kālika Purana, a work composed in the ninth century ce in
ancient Assam for glorifying Kāmākhyā, gives a new description of
Manobhāva Guhā. It says, “Inside the cave there exists a very lovely
pudendum on the stone which is 12 āngulas (9 cm) in width and
20 āngulas (16 cm) in length gradually narrowing and sloping. It is
reddish in colour like vermillion and saffron. On that female organ
resides the amorous Goddess Kāmākhyā. The primordial force
resides in five different forms. The goddess is supposed to have her
annual period in the month of Āsād (June-July) for 3 days, there after
the summer crop is planted in Assam.”12
Accordingly, the Tāntric goddess Kāmākhyā undergoes trans-
formations as does her counterpart Shiva. Here we find interest-
ing developments within the Shiva-Shakti cult that a shift is made
from Shiva as yogi and a renouncer to Shiva as bhogi and enjoyer as
per Tantric injunctions and requirements for replacement of Shiva-
Lingaraja with Kāmeswara Mahadeva, also identified with the res-
urrected Madana ( eros). Shiva remains the patron deity of the king
Kumara Bhaskarvarma, who once declared that he would not bow
his head before any one except “ash-adorned Shiva”; subsequently
the white Svāttika Shiva was replaced by the royal, red form of
Shiva, the Kāmeswara Shiva, at a time when the Mahā Gauri concept
came up from the unification of Visnumāya and Durga. Deka sug-
gests, “The Shiva was no more ‘the ash -adorned Siva’ (Lingaraja)
but became Kāmaeswara, who though was still smeared with ash, is
to be propitiated with red flowers and kumkuma (saffron, an item of

11. Kali Prasad Goswami, Kāmākhyā Temple (Guwahati: A.P.H. Publishing Corp.,
1998).
12. Pranav Jyoti Deva, Nilācala Kāmākhyā, 14.

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60 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

luxury). Kāmesvara is a rājasika (royal) Siva, while Lingaraja is sāttvik

and Bhairaba is the Tantric form of Siva… As Devi Kāmākhyā, the
blue goddess of the Tantras, dwells on the blue mountain Nilachala,
Shiva also becomes blue here.” Among the Bhairavas, the Nilacala
Bhairava on the Nilacala and the Mahābhauirava of Tezpur became
the most famous, and magnificent temples came to be built in their
honor. One of the principal idols inside the main temple, identified
as Kāmeswara Mahadeva, is actually a statue of Bhairava.13
As the Tantric branches of Hinduism gained strength, the Tāma­sika
or Tantrika Shiva, the blue Shiva Bhairava, came into force. Tāntric rit-
uals specially associated with the cult of power and harnessing of it
in all its forms, dangerously leaning toward transgression of normal
laws of purity and impurity and redefining it, to an extent that Tantra
and also Yoni-Tantra remained specially attractive to many kings and
rulers and the royals, in the context of Assam. We find here a change
in perception when the goddess shrine is reinterpreted as a Shakti-
pitha (power center) developed within a feudal society that flourished
under royal patronage at different phases of her history. We also find
here an attempt at unification of the powerful local and tribal god-
desses on a common platform within the Shakti-pantheon of Hindu-
ism. It is also evident that kings and rulers in Assam played an active
role in re-building the temple under the guidance of Smārta-Shākta
priests from Bengal and elsewhere. This helps us in understand-
ing the changes incorporated in the Shakti-pitha Kāmākhyā at vari-
ous phases of its existence. The Garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum) of
the Kāmākhyā Temple dates back to the seventh century, while the
Sikhara (dome of the sanctum) is dateable to the sixteenth century.
The semicircular Nātyamandir (dancing hall) was constructed by the
Ahom monarch Rajeswar Simha in the eighteenth century. During
the reign of the Ahom king Rudra Simha, Krisnaram Nyayavagis, a
Shākta Brahmin priest from Nabadwip in Bengal, was installed on
the Nilachal as the chief priest of the Kāmākhyā Temple. He came to
be called the Parbatiya Gosain. One of his descendants, known as the
Nati-Gosain, was instrumental in the construction of the temple of the
Na-Math Kali Mandir, adjacent to the Kāmākhyā Temple. This temple
was embellished by terracotta tiles and decorative blocks and strongly
resembles the temples of Bengal. An inscription of Gaurinath Simha,
fixed to the inner wall of the temple premises, bears testimony to the
sacrifice of one lakh (100,000) animals by the Bhitarual Phukan.

13. Ibid., 20–21, 43.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 61

The present day Kāmākhyā Temple was built by the Koch ruler
Naranarayana (Malladev) and his brother Chilarai (Sukladhvaj),
according to an inscription in the temple. However, the Darrang Raj
Vamsavali, a chronicle of the Koch royal family, records the recon-
struction of only the Sikhara (dome) of the Kāmākhyā Temple in
1565 ce by the architect Meghamukdam. It states that he tried to re-
build the dome twice with the original stone blocks that had fallen
down, but failed. As a result, he built it in the shape of a beehive
with bricks. The King also issued copper plates endowing land and
the service of different paiks (servitors) to the Kāmākhyā Temple.
These paiks consisted of Brahmans, Daivajna (astrologers), flower
suppliers, garland makers, washer-men, cleaners, carpenters, oil
pressers, sweetmeat makers, leather workers, cobblers, dancers,
ballad singers, weavers, goldsmiths, potters, fishermen and others.
Thousands of animals were also sacrificed. During the rule of the
Varman dynasty in Assam, types of Shiva proliferated in Kama-
rupa as Rudresvara, Sidd­heswava, Kedareswara, and Isāna along
with many local Shivas as Harupesvara and Hatupesvara. “Origi-
nally constructed in the 8th century during the Pāla dynasty in
Kāmarupa, renovated by Chila Rai and King Naranarayana is the
present temple of Kāmakhya as the ancient Kāmarupa temple was
destroyed in natural calamity and the ‘temple-less Goddess’ was
brought to ‘new roofless one,’ the roof of which was later provided
in 1565 ce renovation by Koch King Naranarayan and his general
Chilarai… We also find that a divine lineage to the Koch royal
dynasty was acknowledged during that time by the Brahmancal
order.”14 Within the temple premises, we can also find two full size
representational statues of Malladeva and Sukladhvaj.
According to a folk legend, the goddess, assuming the form of
a beautiful woman, used to dance nude within the closed doors of
the Temple at the time of the evening prayers. The Koch king Mal-
ladeva and his brother Sukladhvaj desired to see the dancing God-
dess and as suggested by the chief priest Kendu Kalai, they peeped
through a hole in the wall. She, however, got offended by the intru-
sion and tore off the head of the priest and turned the king and his
brother to stone. According to another version, the king and his
future descendants were henceforth, forbidden “to cast a look even
at her very hill” or they would die. Even today, descendants of the
Koch royal family pass by the hill under the cover of umbrellas.

14. Ibid.

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62 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

Tantra as the Common Bridge Between Shaktism and Buddhism:

Intermingling of Hindu-Buddhist Tantric Ideas in Kāmarupa-Kāmākhyā
Hugh Urban comments, “I conducted field research at Kāmākhyā
Temple and other sites in Assam, 1999–2000, and found it to be one
of the few areas in India today where Tantric practice is still quite
lively. In future studies I plan to explore living Tantric practices as
it is continued today at Kāmākhyā and in rural Assam.”18 There is
strong Hindu-Buddhist intermingling of ideas and rituals in Shak-
tism and in Tantrism as many scholars trace the Buddhist origin of
the Hindu goddesses including Kāli, Tāra, Ugratāra, Cinnamastā
and some others. To quote Bhattacharya, we have evidences to
show that these systems gained ground in Assam, which was noted
for the esoteric doctrines of Tantric Shaktism. Both the Indian and
Tibetan sources provide us with materials regarding the preva-
lence of later Budd­hism in the form of Vajrayāna in Assam.” He
continues,
From the later part of the seventh century, Buddhism underwent rad-
ical changes, developing into several forms of mystic cults known
as Mantrayāna, Vajrayāna and Tantrayāna. Vajrayāna from vajra, is
a thunderbolt or a diamond, the third current along with Hinayāna
and Mahāyāna, in the religious teaching of Buddhism. This esoteric
sect appeared in the North-East of India and later spread to border-
ing regions, primarily to Tibet. The main core of the teaching is the
idea of releasing dormant powers within human nature—first of all
sexual energy, which is used for the instantaneous accomplishment
of spiritual liberation (moksa, nirvāna). Vajrayāna based itself on local
pre-Buddhist cults, genetically ascending to various types of worship
of a Mother Goddess. This Goddess played the part of a female coun-
terpart of energy (Shakti) of the higher Godhead; the female primary
source of energy was usually identified with Māyā (magic illusion) or
Śiva’s spouse, Kāli-Durgā. Parallel with Buddhist Vajrayāna, currents
of Hindu Tantra were developing.15

These various phases of her development is reflected in the layers

of meaning that gathered around the shrine that also sought to unveil
the hidden depth of this mysterious Tantric goddess. In the process,
the goddess of the Yoni-Pitha remained the Mother–goddess for
her average devotee, though she remained the passionate goddess
representing eroticized love for a chosen few and the dreadful and
wrathful goddess as Shakti or power for some others. The goddess

15. Benoytos Bhattacharya, Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism, 2nd ed. (Varanasi,

Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1964), 46.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 63

at the shrine finally emerged as the living embodiment of eroticized

desire (kāma) who fulfils all desires of her devotees.
The temple and the shrine have many submerged underground
layers associated with different phases of its historical development as
per its exposure to diverse socio-cultural and religious influences
across south east Asia over and above the Indian subcontinent and its
Hindu-Buddhist neighbors. If we now recapitulate the Shākta-Tantric
phase of its existence we find that in Assam, Shaktism and Tantrism
originated in the fourth to fifth century ce onward and rose into prom-
inence in the seventh century ce as we have seen above. There is
strong Hindu-Buddhist interface in Shaktism and in Tantrism, as
many scholars detect a Buddhist origin for Hindu goddesses includ-
ing Kāli, Tāra, Ugratāra, Cinnamastā and some others.16 The goddess
cult of Kāmākhyā accommodated other comparatively darker and
ferocious goddesses of the tribes (Kechāikhati, for example) or of Bud-
dhism within its fold, as these Buddhist deities such as Marai and Ai,
for example, were also Hinduized and renamed as the serpent god-
dess Manasa and as Sitala, the goddess for smallpox, respectively.
Similarly dark and strong goddesses from folk traditions were also
accommodated as Hindu counterparts of Kāmākhya. Kāmākhya also
became indistinguishable from the Buddhist Goddess Tāra; rather,
Buddhist Tāra herself became Hinduized as Mahā- Cina Tara based
on some shared Tantric commonalities between these cults. In the
Hinduization process some such Buddhist goddesses were on the
verge of losing their distinctive Buddhist identity, a fact against which
the sage Vasistha, who first introduced the Buddhist Tāra to the Hindu
fold, once raised his voice of dissent.
Students of Indian religion are familiar with some of the Tant-
ric practices associated with the worship of the great god (Sanskrit
Mahadeva, Tibetan Lha chenpo), Lord Shiva. For example, in the Kaula
Mārga (path of time) practice, yoginis of different categories are
included in the chakra or circle of experience. The sāddhaka (practi-
tioner) aspires to control body and mind for acquiring power (siddhi)
that enables him to perform magical activities at the mundane level
by regulating the cosmic elements. The siddha can bring rain or
obtain wealth, as he can also heal the sick and perhaps also acquire
destructive powers that may be used against his enemy and to do
harm. Some such female practitioners are also known as dākinis,
yoginis etc. and such names are mentioned in connection with ritual
practices at the Tantric shrine Kāmākhyā.

16. Ibid.

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64 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

As per Tibbat’s Pang Sam Jon Zen book, Sarah or Rahulbhadra

is born of a Brahmin and a dākini in an eastern Assam in a place
called Rajñi, a place identified as Rāni in Nowgong district of Assam.
Sarahapāda (circa eighth century ce), originally known as Rāhula
or Rāhulbhadra, was the first sahajiya and one of the Mahasiddhas,
and is considered to be one of the founders of Buddhist Vajrayana,
and particularly of the Mahamudra tradition. His dohas (couplets)
are compiled in Dohakośa, the ‘Treasury of Rhyming Couplets’.
Padas (verses) 22, 32, 38 and 39 of Caryagītikośa (or Charyapada)
are assigned to him. The script used in the dohas shows close resem-
blance with the present Assamese, Bangla and Oriya scripts which
imply that Sarahapa has compiled his literature in the earlier lan-
guage which has similarity with both Oriya language and Angika
language (part of the Maithili language).
Perhaps the most important figure for the early development of
both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra in South Asia, Matsyendranath,
received his esoteric knowledge in Kāmarupa while living among
the many powerful female Yoginis who dwelt here. It may be men-
tioned that for a Tantric practitioner Kāmrupa-Kāmākhyā remains
prominent among their four sacred pithas, the sacred shines for the
Shakta-Tantric Hindus in particular. Matsyendranath is also linked
in Nepal with the Buddhist Vajrayāna tradition and even almost com-
pletely identified with Avalokiteshvara. With his strong association
with the decidedly Tāntrik Yogini Kaula school of the Nāthas, Mat-
syendranath is considered as the author of the Kaulajñānanirnaya
(“Discussion of the knowledge pertaining to the Kaula tradition”),
one of the earliest texts on Hatha Yoga in Sanskrit. It is no wonder
that Assam as Kamarupa (associated with Kāmākhyā) remains the
land that has immensely contributed to the magico-religious cults of
the Tantrikas, the prime center of Matsyendra Nātha and Goraksa
Nātha, the Tantric Siddhas, whose descendents and followers came
to be known as the kānphata Yogis. Mike Magee notes, “The con-
nection between Matsyendranath and the Kaula Tantrik tradition is
underlined in the Kaulajnananirnaya by its constant references to
Kāmarupa, the most important of the 51 pithas where the body of
the goddess fell when it was sliced to pieces by Vishnu because it
relates to the genitals of the Devi.”17

17. Mike McGee, “Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath Are Revealed.” volesoft.

com/​2011/01/29/matsyendranath-and-gorakhnath/.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 65

In the process both Buddhist and Hindu Tantras became indistin-

guishable from one another. To quote Pranav Jyoti Deka, “In Nilacala
we have Hinduised Buddhist Tantras. Statues found here do not
carry an image of dhyāni-Buddha on or near their head.The trans-
formation of the Goddess took place from Cinnamunda Vajrayogini
to Vajravarāhi, then to Vajravairocani and ultimately to Kāmeswari
Kāmākhyā, but Hetuka–Bhairava is the only link where the essence
did not altar with the change of Goddesses.”18
The seed incantations of the Tantra for Kāmākhyā are addressed to
Vajra-yogini, Vahra-varāhi and Vajra-vairocāni, who later became
closely associated with the Shakti in the form of Chinnamasta and
Buddhist Chinnamunda. These two parallel Tantras came up only in
the nineteenth century. Gradually Cinnamasta merged with the Bud-
dhist goddess Sveta Kurukulla and the Hindu Rati, goddess of sex,
and a new goddess, Sodasi, emerged who is the progenitress of the
medieval and post-medieval Yoni cult. It likely took roughly one
hundred years to modify the Cinnamsta cult to Kāmeswari-Kāmakhya
cult, thus the cult could not come up before late tenth or early elev-
enth century. One has to remember that in India, Vajravarahi statues
are the first deity showing vaga mudrā, that is, exposing her sex organ
to view. With the introduction of some new names from the Buddhist
Tantra,Tantrism in general and the Shakti Tantra at Kāmākhyā was
now ready for Hinduizing certain Buddhist deities into its common
Tantra-fold.” The acceptance of one form of Tāra as Sveta Kurukulla
Tāra (equivalent to Rati) shows that the society has become a fertile
ground for seeds of the Kāmeswari-Kāmakhya cult, where Kāmeswari
is the goddess of desire and Kāmakhya is the deity of cessation of all
desires.”19
On the one hand, the mother goddess Kāmākhyā is Kāmeswari,
the blue and the mysterious goddess of love-sex-and power, and on
the other hand she is the Great Goddess, who in her transcendental
and religious position can bestow liberation from the bindings of
desire and of Kāma. For her devotees she also represents the reli-
gious dimension of bestowing liberation from the realm of mundane
desires. This contradiction in the goddess Kāmākhyā needs to be
pondered upon. “How does Kāmākhyā-Kameswari, a Shakti god-
dess, assure her devotees release from the cycle of rebirth., which
generally does not fall in the domain of a Shakti deity?” Deka won-

18. Elizabeth Anne Benard, The Chinnamasta: The Awful Buuddhist and Tantric
Goddess (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 2010 [1994]), 62.
19. Ibid., 62–63.

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66 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

ders. Can the goddess in the Shakti and the Āgama scripture bestow
salvation or can she simply fulfill desires of the devotees, not taking
them to a desireless state? For this the goddess had to imbibe the
Kāmākhyā aspect, a blend of pravritti (desire and passion) and nivritti
(desirelessness/dispassion) in one, and finally she remains a combi-
nation of all these aspects in these various aspects. “Hindu Tantra
borrowed the goal of emancipation from rebirth from Bauddha
tantra, and Bouddha tantra in turn adopted the concept of visualiza-
tion (dhyana) and to merge with the deity, from the Hindu tantra.”20
In order to understand the mystery of this mysterious combination of
the magical with the religious, of desire and power and bondage in
the level of the phenomenal realm of trigunā-prakriti, and the ability
to bestow on her devotees the mantra of rising above that very bond-
age by rising above the mundaneness of the mundane, Kāmākhyā
remains a bitter sweet combination of Buddhist klesha as suffering
and Hindu ānanda. She is both Kāmeswari, kāma-isvari, the goddess
of desire, and the expiration of all the desires, and Kāmākhyā-kamma
= khyaya. “She is a three faceted Goddess synthesized from the
Hindu Sakti Tantra and Buddhist Anuttra Tantra or Vajratantra path.
She protects her devotees by destroying the enemies as Shakti, best
prosperity as Lakshmi,can grant emancipation from the cycle of
rebirth as Vajrayogini, also sexual pleasure as Vajravairocāni.”21 It is
at this juncture that mutual borrowing of ideas and rituals between
the two continued.
Let us place the myth in the larger context of Assam’s some
other agriculture- related myths that centered on Balabhadra the
earth–tiller, and Bhumi the Earth–mother, the larger background
of which provided a platform for accommodating of the Kāmākhyā
cult in Assam introduced for the first time by Naraka, the son of
Mother Earth whose mythical presence was felt near him in the
guise of his foster mother Kātyāyani. At a later phase when Naraka
himself changes his ways and the land gets its new Shakta-Tantric
name as Kāmarupa, the shrine gained its fame as the Yoni-pitha
Kamakhya.
This Tantric phase of the cult thus added power-centric interpre-
tations of some of the previous myths that also glorified either the
passions for sex-and love and the path of enjoyment (pravritti mārga)
following the Tantra-sanctioned deviations of the norm for the select

20. Ibid., 62.

21. Ibid.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 67

ones who can undergo such rituals. The Tantric phase could add the
mythical justification for the passion in love and sex that remained
confined to a select group of Tantric initiates and its secrecy and eso-
tericism has led to suspicion and conflict with the traditional modes
of worship as partially illustrated in the mythical figure of Vasistha,
particularly in his curse against the Yoni-mandali at Kamakhya. We
have also seen how at a later phase the cult underwent a Hinduisa-
tion phase that identified the shrine as strong Shakti-Tantric shrine
accommodating Dark and powerful deities across Buddhist –Hindu
Tantras and its local variations.

The Reformist Sect of Mahapuruush Sankaradeva

and its Impact on the Shakti-Pitha Kāmākhyā
Assam underwent another form of Vaishnavite reform movement in
the time of Mahāpurush Sankaradeva and his Neo-Vaishnavite fol-
lowers that centered on the agricultural god Vishnu-Krshna. With
more focus on Buddha-Mahaveer-centric “non violence” and glo-
rification of family-centric virtues of dāsya (servitude) and vātsalya
(parental affection), Krishna is depicted here as the Sun rather than
the Tantra-based Rādha centric-Moon of the Sri Chaitanyite sect.
Being accommodative and flexible in her position, the goddess in
the Yoni-Pitha already opened herself for change in the basic key
concepts that defined her belief systems when the two major scrip-
tures, the Kalika Puran and the Yogini Tantra, put divergent inter-
pretations about the Yoni circle as a symbol of sex and as a symbol
of creation.
The Yogini Tantra modified the eroticized form of the god-
dess with a focus on creativity of Eros than its sexual newness.
The Yogini Tantra has also recorded certain local customs prev-
alent in different parts of ancient Assam, and the goddess in the
Yogini Tantra also adopted a catholic attitude not only to local and
regional cults and practices but also toward accommodating the
other as a foreigner, allowing them flexibility on codes of conduct
and rituals in its un-Hindu like attitudes and practices. Rather, she
herself sought to imbibe some such “different” norms in her own
persona!
As reported by very senior priests, in the left-handed path of
Tantra the sadhaka is not allowed by the guru to make use of the
pancha-makaras (the Five Ms) with their substitutes. He is required
to use these Makaras in their actual sense. Niharranjan Mishra com-
ments,

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68 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

But what is of interest to us here is the report that in the Nityapuja-

vidhi (daily puja-rituals) there is provision of woman companion to
co-operate with the priest. This age-old practice gives us occasion to
speculate that there must have been a period during which vamachara
(left-handed path) type of worship was in vogue in the temple. But
now the system is dispensed with. And the priest performs the puja
being accompanied by symbolic presence of a woman companion in
the form of a red flower to his left side. To us, this change over to a
new system is not an isolated phenomenon. The reformative attitude is
evident in Tantric literatures like the Shaktisangama Tantra and Mah-
anirvana Tantra. Incidentally, this reformative method in the Tantras
coincides with the time of Sankaradeva, the great Neo-Vaishnavite
reformer of Assam. This adoption of a new system of worship in
Kamakhya may have been influenced by his preachings.22

Since Nām (prayer in a public place called Nāmghar in the com-

pany of fellow devotees) and Namghar were introduced in Assam by
the Vaishnavite Saint Sankara Deva (1449–1569), the first of the reli-
gious reformers of Assam in the Middle Ages and the founder of the
Neo-Vaishnavite Reformist religion in Assam known as Eka Śarana
Nām-Dharma (Religion of supreme surrender to the One), Hugh
Urban attributes the practice of Nām accommodated at the Nāmghar
segment of the Kāmākhyā-temple to Sankaradeva’s impact on the
Shakti-pitha.23 Patricia Dold suggests an alternate way of looking at it
by placing Vaishnava–Nam-kirttan introduced by Sankaradeva to be
at the receiving end.24 Following Urban, I would like to draw atten-
tion to the fact that Sankaradeva’s novel way of introducing Nām as
pure (śuddha) and nirguna (above the realm of the phenomenal and
the contingent) retains its salvation bestowing and transcendental
dimension that differs from the ontic and conditional dimension of
māyā governed world of samsāra. That way it remains plausible that
some other pre- Sankaradeva religions including Shakti-Tantric wor-
ship pattern at Kamakhya opened ways of creatively accommodating
some such reformist ideas, simplicity of rituals, and democratization
of Bhakti, that lessened its Shakta-tantric emphasis on esotericism
and complexity of rituals. This shows that some kind of meaningful
dialogue could take place within the distinctive framework of each
perspective as unique in its own terms.

22. Niharranjan Mishra, Kamakhya: A Sociocultural Study (New Delhi: D.K .Print-
ers, 1960), 42–32.
23. Urban, “The Path of Power: Impurity.”
24. Patricia A. Dold, ”Reimagining Religious History through Women’s Song
Performance at the Kāmākhyā Temple Site,” in Re-Imagining South Asian Religions,
ed. Pashaura Singh and Michael Howly (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 129.

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 Barua   Magic, Esotericism, and Religion in Shaktism and Tantrism 69

One definite impact of Suddha-Bhakti-centric Naam-Kirttan (chant-

ing of the divine Nām in the community of devotees) within San-
karadeva-founded Ek Sarna Nām Dharma on the shrine of the Great
Goddess of the Shakti Tantra is evident when some such kirttanas
could be accommodated within its wider fold. This kept room for
accommodating communal prayer (known as Naam-kirttan) that glo-
rified the motherly bond between the child god Krishna and mother
Yasoda that helped restoring the Mother goddess image of the god-
dess herself over and above her Tantra-bestowed eroticized form as
yoni-goddess Kamakhya. The way this shrine of Tantrism and Shak-
tism once accommodated both passion of Tantra and the passionless
goal of nirvana in her combined form of Kameswari-Kamakhya, it
could also accommodate this kind of democratization of devotion(
bhakti) into its fold as well. To quote N. R. Mishra, ”Benediction in
Kāmākhyā nowadays ends with words like ‘Hari–bol” (invoking the
name of Hari/Vishnu). Animal sacrifice is no more a festive occasion.
It is done virtually surreptitiously behind walls as if it is the fulfill-
ment of an indecent private contract between the gods and the
devotees.”25 With Vaishnavite humility, the devotees at Kāmākhyā
pray to the goddess singing the following Vaishnavite prayer song
composed by Mahapurush Madhavadeva (the most ardent disciple of
Mahapurush Sankaradeva in Assam):
O what did I see in Yadu’s stomach?
…………………………
The same Braja,the same mountain and the same cows,
I saw even Yasoda like me and all the Gopis of Vaja,
Servant Madhava says that Yasoda is really fortunate.
She shrugs off the dirt and takes the Lord of the Universe on her arms.

Niharranjan Mishra comments, ”It should be noted here that the

spirit of assimilation, which is discussed in the earlier chapters, par-
ticularly in Chapter 2, is also evident here. Many songs written by
Madhavadeva, a versifier per excellence, who was a close follower
of the great Sankaradeva, have been ungrudgingly accepted here in
this complex… This neo-Vaishnava cult has become the second most
influential cult on the modern Nilachala hills and influencing pro-
foundly the Kalika Kamakhya Kameswari cult.”26

25. Niharranjan Mishra, Kamakhya: A Sociocultural Study, 136–37.

26. Ibid.

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70 The Pomegranate 17.1-2 (2015)

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Bhattacharya, Benoytos. Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism, 2nd ed. Varanasi, Chow­
khamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1964.
Deka, Pranav Jyoti. Nilācala Kāmākhyā: Her History and Tantra. Guwahati: Pranav
Jyoti Deka, 2004.
Dold, Patricia A. ”Reimagining Religious History through Women’s Song Perfor-
mance at the Kāmākhyā Temple Site.” In Re-Imagining South Asian Religions,
edited by Pashaura Singh and Michael Howly, 115–154. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Goswami, Kali Prasad. Kāmākhyā Temple. Guwahati: A.P.H. Publishing Corp, 1998.
McGee, Mike. “Matsyendranath and Gorakhnath are Revealed.” volesoft.com/20​
11/01/29/matsyendranath-and-gorakhnath/.
Urban, Hugh. “The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship, and Sacrifice in Assamese
Tantra.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 69, no. 4 (2001): 777–816.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/69.4.777
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Calcutta: Punti Pustak, 1972.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016