The Book of Kali

by Seema Mohanty

  Sexual rites

  According to Brihad Nila Tantra, the sexual act is an essential component of the ritual aimed at invoking Kali and obtaining powers from her. This is how one scripture describes one aspect of the ritual, while repeatedly clarifying that the ritual is powerful and that the information must be kept a secret:

  Have a young and beautiful girl adorned with various jewels. After combing her hair, give her tambula to chew and draw two Hrims on her breasts, Aim on or near her mouth, and draw two Klims on either side of her genitals. Drawing her towards you by her hair, caress her breasts and then unite. O pure smiling one. Recite the mantra 1000 times, O sweet-faced one. Dearest, one becomes accomplished by practising the rite for a week. Maheshani, recite the mantra not in the manner written in books, but as written in her yoni. This brings mantra siddhi, there is no doubt about it. So, Devi, the secret thing giving all desires has been declared to you. One should not reveal it, one should never reveal it, Maheshani. O Naganandini, at the risk of your life, never reveal it. It is the giver of all siddhi. I cannot speak of the magnificence of this mantra. Had I ten thousand million mouths and ten thousand million tongues, I could still not speak of it, O Paramesvari.

  The sexual act is usually illicit—performed outside marriage with members of lower castes, and if performed within the caste, then with members of one's own family. Thus all rules and taboos are violated in the quest to obtain Kali’s blessing.

  The Origin

  To understand the rise of Kali as an important member of the Hindu pantheon, one has to appreciate how Hinduism evolved and transformed over 4000 years. In its earliest phase, known as the Vedic period, the focus of Hinduism was on the sacrificial ceremony known as yagna through which priests sought to invoke celestial beings and control the workings of the world. Later, with the rise of heterodox belief systems such as Buddhism in the fifth century BC that challenged ritualism, the Hindu religion became more speculative and monastic. Then, from the fifth century to the fifteenth century AD, Hinduism became increasingly theistic: a personal God came to the fore, shaped in songs and stories, enshrined in temples, invoked and adored through the ritual puja. This process was fuelled by Brahminical appropriation and accommodation of non-Vedic, probably Tantrik, deities, beliefs and practices, which were widespread amongst the masses who, for centuries, had found themselves snubbed by Vedic rituals and intellectual elitism. It is from this non-Vedic space that the goddess now known as Kali in all probability entered the Hindu pantheon along with many other gods and goddesses. But while some deities, like Krishna, Shiva and Durga, could make their way to the centre stage of mainstream Hinduism, Kali always remained at the periphery of Hindu culture—her form challenging even the most accommodating of worshippers.

  The name Kali appears for the first time in the Mundaka Upanishad written some time around the fifth century BC. There Kali is one of the seven tongues of Agni, the god of fire. But it is not until a thousand years later, after a brief mention in the Mahabharata, that Kali rises to prominence in the Devi Mahatmya, also known as the Chandi Patha, dated around the sixth century AD. With the compilation of chronicles known as the Puranas and the Tantras from the fifth to the fifteenth century, Kali’s tales were told and her invocations recorded with increasing frequency. The standard iconographic representation, by which Kali is known today in most households, came into being only in the seventeenth century when she became the focus of a popular goddess-based devotional movement in Bengal. Before that, the only representation of Kali was as Chamunda—emaciated, ugly, and dreadful.

  Vedic fear and distrust

  All Hindus accept that the Vedas form the foundation of Hinduism. These are a set of scriptures that include compilations of hymns known as the Samhitas, ritual manuals known as Brahmanas, ascetic speculations known as Aranyakas, and metaphysical discourses known as the Upanishads. These were compiled between 2000 BC and 500 BC by cattle-herding Indo-European tribes called Aryans, who came to dominate the Indian subcontinent around this time.

  There is no mention of Kali in the Rig Samhita, which reached its final form around 1500 BC. The focus is on male deities such as Indra, Agni and Soma. Female goddesses are mentioned infrequently and generally play a minor role. Most Vedic goddesses such as the dawn-goddess Usha, the earth-goddess Prithvi, the speech-goddess Vach, and the mother-goddess Aditi, are benign. But there is one called Nirriti (meaning ‘decay’) who is associated with destruction and death. Hymns request this goddess to stay away. She is described as having dark complexion, wearing dark clothes and residing in the south. Many scholars are of the opinion that Nirriti is the Vedic Kali.

  The Jaiminya Brahmana dated around the eighth century BC tells the story of Dirgha-jihvi, an ogress, who like Kali has a long tongue and insatiable sexual appetite.

  Dirgha-jihvi or ‘the long-tongued one’ used to lick up the divine drink, Soma—produced during the yagna—that was much loved by the gods. Exasperated by her actions, Indra, king of the gods, wanted to grab her, but he could not get hold of her. So he said, ‘Let no one perform any sacrifices at all, for Dirgha-jihvi licks up the Soma produced.’ Now, Sumitra, the son of Kutsa, was handsome. Indra said to him, ‘Go seduce Dirgha-jihvi.’ When Sumitra approached her, she said, ‘You have just one sexual organ, but I have many, one on each limb. This won’t work.’ Sumitra went back and informed Indra of his failure. ‘I will create sexual organs for you on every limb,’ said Indra. Equipped with these, Sumitra went back to her. This time she welcomed him with open arms. They lay together. Once he had his way with her, he remained firmly stuck in her. Finding the ogress pinned to the ground, Indra struck her down with his thunderbolt.

  The fear of Nirriti and the demonization of Dirgha-jihvi have led to speculations that these hymns express the discomfort of the patriarchal Aryans each time they encountered the Kali-like goddesses worshipped by the non-Aryan agricultural communities, who were probably matriarchal.

  A century or two after the Jaiminya Brahmana, the Vedic priests put together the Mundaka Upanishad, where Kali is the name of one of the seven quivering tongues of the fire-god Agni, whose flames devour sacrificial oblations and transmit them to the gods. The verse characterizes Agni’s seven tongues as black, terrifying, swift as thought, intensely red, smoke-coloured, sparkling and radiant. Significantly, the first two adjectives, kali (‘black’) and karali (‘terrifying’), recur in later texts to describe the horrific aspect of the goddess. Karali additionally means ‘having a gaping mouth and protruding teeth’.

  Between the third century BC and the third century AD, one finds clearer evidence of appropriation of non-Vedic deities, beliefs and practices. Kali first appears unequivocally as a goddess in the Kathaka Grihyasutra, a ritualistic text that names her in a list of Vedic deities to be invoked with offerings of perfume during the marriage ceremony. Unfortunately, the text reveals nothing more about her. In the Mahabharata and the Ramayana that were being composed around this time, goddesses, including Kali, are given more character; they are usually independent and (hence) wild, appearing as manifestations of divine rage and embodiments of the forces of destruction. In the Mahabharata, for example, the nocturnal bloodbath by Ashwatthama at the end of the eighteen-day war, when the innocent children of the Pandavas are slaughtered rather dastardly while they are asleep, is seen as the work of ‘Kali of bloody mouth and eyes, smeared with blood and adorned with garlands, her garment reddened—holding noose in hand—binding men and horses and elephants with her terrible snares of death’.

  Non-Vedic and pre-Aryan

  Despite the importance given to the Vedas in modern Hinduism, it is clear to scholars that Hindu practices such as plant-, animal-, mineral- and idol-worship have roots in non-Vedic, probably pre-Aryan, times. Unfortunately, until the script of the Indus valley civilization is deciphered or some other epigraphic discovery is made, there will be no evidence, only speculation about the extent and nature of this pre-Vedic milieu that let itself be dominated by the Vedic ideology w
ithout losing its hold in the spiritual imagination of the common man.

  Study of the early history of India is a highly contentious field. Much of the past is irretrievably lost, and attempts to assemble the surviving fragments are all too often coloured by feelings of nationalism, ethnic pride, religious belief, lingering resentment towards colonialism, and the legacy of the pioneering European scholars who injected their own Judeo-Christian prejudices and views of history into an area where they clearly do not belong. Today, wildly conflicting theories abound, and even the best are not without serious anomalies. Therefore at present there is simply no way to make sense of all the data at hand. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Indian religion, throughout its long history, has always consisted of two intertwining strands—the Vedic and the Tantrik—with the latter including everything that is not Vedic.

  For many, the great Indus valley civilization stretching from the western shores of the Indus river to the eastern shores of the Ganga was the heartland of Tantrik ideology, rooted in goddess-worship, fertility, magic and shamanism. This urban civilization was at its peak around 2500 BC and waned in significance around 1500 BC, about the same time that the Vedic ideology came to dominate the land. This has led many scholars to reach the highly contentious conclusion that the Aryans probably overran and perhaps assimilated the Indus valley civilization.

  Recent research suggests that climatic changes, rather than invasions or unchecked immigrations, were responsible for the collapse of the Indus valley civilization. Since hymns in the Vedas refer to a mighty river Saraswati that dried up, forcing the Aryans to move east towards the Ganga, many scholars have come to believe that the Indus valley civilization was in all probability the Saraswati civilization. They hypothesize that like most urban centres, the cities of the Indus–Saraswati valleys accommodated various belief systems from the patriarchal Vedas to the matriarchal Tantra. They point to the city at Kalibangan where archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a series of seven Vedic fire altars, while years of excavation at the same site has yielded two goddess figurines. In contrast, the contemporaneous cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were centres of thriving goddess cults, attested by the recovery of thousands of figurines of goddess from the ruins.

  Archaeological sites in Zhob and Kulli valleys, in the hills of Baluchistan, have revealed peasant cultures that predate the Indus valley civilization. These isolated hamlets produced female figurines of baked clay. Most interpreters believe that these idols had a ritual purpose and were in all probability fertility goddesses. That the features of these figurines border on the grotesque has led many to conclude that these goddesses were intended to inspire horror and may have served as a prototype for later-day images of fearsome goddesses like Kali.

  The Matsya Purana suggests that Kali originated as a tribal goddess indigenous to one of India’s inaccessible mountainous regions, Mount Kalanjara in north central India, east of the Indus valley floodplain. But owing to the date of the Purana’s composition, this evidence regarding Kali’s place of origin cannot be taken as particularly reliable.

  The earliest documentary evidence of the worship of wild and independent goddesses outside the Vedic fold comes from Tamil Sangam literature dated from the third century BC to the third century AD. It mentions the Kali-like goddess of war and victory, Korravai, to whom buffaloes were sacrificed and for whom forest warriors, the Marvars, were exhorted to ritual suicide.

  Tantrik roots

  It is not clear whether Tantrik practices were a reactionary rejection of Vedic values, or whether Vedic taboos evolved only to stay away from Tantrik pollution. But for as long as Tantrik and Vedic religions have coexisted on Indian soil, they have influenced each other. The earliest Vedic hymns, dated 2000 BC, are tinged with Tantrik elements, and at the heart of Tantra scriptures, dated no earlier than AD 600, lies the sublime metaphysical philosophy of the Upanishads, which form the culmination of Vedic thought. Be that as it may, there are clear distinguishing features between the two tributaries of Hindu thought. Tantra views the world not as maya or delusion, as Vedic metaphysicians claim, but as the source of power, shakti. In the Tantrik scheme of things, it is not caste or gender that determines one's accessibility of spiritual wisdom as in the Vedic world, but one's worthiness in the eyes of the guru. Female forms embody enchantment and temptation in Vedic mythology, but in Tantrik narratives they take the form of powerful wilful deities who are privy to the mysteries of life and who need to be appeased or forced into revealing their secrets. This is the cultural matrix from which Kali emerged—a world of fertility, magic, sacrifice, the deification of natural forces, mind–body control, and lofty speculation over the nature of reality.

  Cults of Kali or her manifestations are in evidence from amongst the earliest Tantrik texts. Her worship was popular among cremation-ground ascetics such as the Aghoras and wandering alchemist–sorcerers of the Nav Nath tradition, who invoked Kali and practised yoga in order to acquire eight siddhis or occult powers that would enable them to change shape or size, defy the laws of space and time, and perform miraculous feats.

  In the Jayadrathayamala, Kali is identified with states of consciousness. The Nigama-kalpataru and the Picchila Tantra declare that of all mantras Kali’s is the greatest. The Yogini Tantra, the Kamakhya Tantra and the Niruttara Tantra, all proclaim Kali the greatest of all forms of the Devi. In the Nirvana Tantra, the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are said to arise from her like bubbles from the sea, endlessly arising and passing away, leaving their source unchanged. The Kamada Tantra states unequivocally that Kali is attributeless, neither male nor female, pure, and the imperishable supreme reality known in the Upanishads as the Brahman from which the universe manifests and into which it returns.

  Rituals to invoke Kali, as documented in the Kulachudamani Tantra, Karpuradistotra and Niruttara Tantra, involved flesh, blood, funeral ash, skulls, alcohol, hallucinogens, corpses, sex—everything that was considered inauspicious and polluting by the Brahminical order. These rituals were a closely guarded secret, restricted to those initiated into the Tantrik order. For the rest, Kali seemed like a distant goddess who was far removed from conventional social values and who was willing to bestow power on anyone, even those with questionable moral and ethical standards, who satisfied her craving for blood. This fear and suspicion of Kali expressed itself in popular literature and secular texts of the medieval period, which have been less than sympathetic to the goddess, often painting a lurid and truly horrifying picture of Kali, exacting and demanding human sacrifice. For instance, in Bhavabhuti’s play Malati Madhava, written in the eighth century, the heroine is abducted by a witch who seeks to sacrifice her at the altar of Chamunda in order to acquire occult powers.

  Rise of theism

  Following the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, Hinduism went through a radical change. The old Vedic order collapsed and a new form of spirituality came to dominate the land, one that involved the adoration of a personal god. Three deities vied for supremacy in the new order: Shiva, Vishnu and Mahadevi. Their followers were known as Shaivas, Vaishnavas and Shaktas respectively. Their narratives and rituals were recorded in chronicles known as the Puranas. One such Purana, the Markandeya, contains within it the foundational text of all subsequent Hindu Devi cults. This book within a book is known as the Devimahatmya, the Shri Durga Saptashati, or the Chandi Patha, which describes the triumph of the Devi as Durga over demons such as Mahisha, Madhu and Kaitabha, and Shumbha and Nishumbha.

  The seventh chapter of Devimahatmya describes Kali springing forth from the furrowed brow of the goddess Durga in order to slay the demons Chanda and Munda, generals of Shumbha and Nishumbha. Here, Kali’s horrific form has black, loosely hanging, emaciated flesh that barely conceals her angular bones. Gleaming white fangs protrude from her gaping, bloodstained mouth, framing her lolling red tongue. Sunken, reddened eyes peer out from her black face. She is clad in a tiger’s skin and carries a khatvanga, a skull-topped staff traditionally associate
d with tribal shamans and magicians, one that suggests Kali’s origin amongst fierce, aboriginal people. In the ensuing battle, much attention is placed on her gaping mouth and gnashing teeth, which devour the demon hordes. At one point, Munda hurls thousands of discuses at her, but they enter her mouth ‘as so many solar orbs vanishing into the denseness of a cloud’. The eighth chapter of the Devimahatmya paints an even more gruesome portrait. Having slain Chanda and Munda, Kali is now called Chamunda, and she faces an infinitely more powerful adversary in the demon named Rakta-bija. Whenever a drop of his blood falls on earth, an identical demon springs up. When utter terror seizes the gods, Durga merely laughs and instructs Kali to drink the drops of blood. While Durga assaults Rakta-bija so that his blood runs copiously, Kali avidly laps it up. The demons who spring into being from the flow perish between her gnashing teeth until Rakta-bija topples drained and lifeless to the ground.