by Ira Trivedi
Perched at the summit of the Nilachal hill beside the sacred Brahmaputra River in Assam, the Kamakhya Devi temple has been revered for 1,200 years as one of India’s most frequented Devi temples, and the country’s most powerful centre of Tantra. The Kamakhya Devi Temple is the source of the Yogini Kaula, one of the oldest forms of Tantra, a form of Hinduism which dominated the country from the sixth century onwards. The Tantras—a large body of texts, composed between about 650 CE and 1800 CE proposed strikingly transgressive ritual actions which violated all conventions of Hinduism and advocated engaging in activities such as drinking wine and menstrual blood, eating meat, and having sex with ‘forbidden’ women, such as women married to other men.12
The Kamakhya Devi temple is the top tourist attraction in Guwahati, and even on a Tuesday afternoon the approach to the shrine is choked with traffic, people and animals. My fellow pilgrims are an eclectic bunch—raucous families, wandering sadhus, and an inordinately large number of young couples. I strike up a conversation with a young man from Patna who is here with his young wife and I discover that that they, like many others, have come to the temple to pray for a child. The Kamakhya Devi is not just the Goddess of sex, but also of fertility.
The most arresting visual at the temple is that of goats. Hundreds of goats roam around freely in the temple complex. Most of them are baby goats, but there are a fair number of adults too, of varying heights and girth, some with long beards, others with big horns. All of them are black or white and as I later learn—male. The goats wander confidently around the temple complex, blissfully unaware of their imminent death, bumping into pilgrims, head-butting each other, and defecating with abandon.
According to the rules of sacrifice in the ancient scripture Kalika Purana, birds, tortoises, alligators, goats, boars, buffaloes, iguanas, deer, crows, yaks, black antelopes, hares and lions, fish, human blood, and, in the absence of these, horses and elephants, are all acceptable offerings to the divine Goddess. Thankfully human sacrifice was outlawed in 1835 (though I heard rumours of it happening furtively) and now only male animals are sacrificed, most commonly goats and pigeons, and on major festival days—buffaloes.
A visit to the Goddess is not for the faint-hearted. I see more than one bleating sacrificial lamb being dragged to its death, and am witness to the assassination of tearful baby goats and unassuming pigeons. Their heads are severed from their bodies by a leviathan butcher whose white clothes are tinged pink with baby goat blood and who, without a flicker of an eye, chops off goat heads and screws off pigeon heads as easily as bottle caps. I discover that all of these goats have been ritually bathed, worshiped and purified with mantras before being executed. Their heads will be mounted at the altar of the Devi, while their bodies will be sent to the temple kitchen where goat meat will be distributed to the pilgrims as prasad.
I wander around the temple premises, noticing some interesting stone carvings on the walls—that of a woman in a squatting position who appears to be giving birth, and another of a fierce pregnant woman with a quiver of arrows at her side. I am taken by surprise when a man with his hair coiled into thick braids and a discoloured loin-cloth covering his body comes up behind me and furtively whispers in my ear that for 300 he will organize a special puja for me, one that will guarantee not only a speedy marriage but also the birth of a rajkumar. Fifteen minutes later, I find myself face-to-face with a ten-year-old girl in her school uniform; she is meant to be the incarnation of the Goddess. The loin-clothed man is serving as the priest. The ritual begins with me washing the girl’s feet, pouring water on them from a bowl meant to be the yoni, or female genitals of the Goddess. I then make a border around the girl’s feet with red dye; this is meant to portray blood. The bowl of water is then placed between the girl’s feet and I’m made to repeat mantras said first by the priest and then I pour water, rice, or flower bits over the girl’s feet. The concept of this puja is that the Goddess will enter into the body of the virgin girl and bless me. After a quick ten minutes, my man gives the girl 50 and she goes scampering away to school.
As for me, I am purified and ready to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, an underground cave housing the main idol. After alternately pushing and waiting in a queue for three hours, I finally descend into the sanctum sanctorum of the Devi. The cave is small, and many fervent pilgrims use force to kowtow before the Goddess and get a sip her purifying waters. If it weren’t for the sheer cushion of all the other human bodies holding me up, I could easily be crushed underfoot.
The main idol is a block of stone with a curious vagina-like cleft running through it called the yoni. It sits in a pool of water formed by a natural spring running beside it. Devotees touch the stone with their hands and take the water from the spring, drinking it and sprinkling it over their heads.
Once a year, during the Ambubachi festival, the water in the pool turns red because of an increased supply of iron flowing through it, signifying the holiest of days for the temple, the days of the Goddess’s yearly menstruation. The Ambubachi festival is considered the most auspicious time of the year for devotees because it signifies fertility and a woman’s power to reproduce. During this time, farmers in the region stop their work, many people fast, and some don’t even comb their hair as a form of penance. This practice of earnest worship during the Goddess’s menstruation is in sharp contrast to most temples in India where women are forbidden from entering when they are menstruating.
I wriggle my way out of the crowded underground cave, and make my way to a nearby tea-stall, where I befriend the young vendor, Darshan, whose full-time occupation I discover is priest-in-training; he runs the tea-stall on the side. He is friendly and forthcoming, and he agrees to talk to me, speedily putting his younger sister, a smiling teenager, in charge of his stall; we seat ourselves next to a lazy, large-eyed billy goat and get talking.
Eight generations of Darshan’s family have been priests at the temple, and he has been reading Tantric texts since he was very young. The thoughtful young man tells me that the temple gets many visitors from the West who come to learn about Tantra, though unfortunately Tantra in the West is associated almost exclusively with ‘Tantric sex’.
He explained to me that Tantric rituals were a lot more than just sex. In fact, sex was just a means to an end, a means of awakening latent energies in the body and of attaining spiritual liberation; female power or shakti was at the centre of all their worship and rites. For example, powerful female yoginis would drink a cocktail of semen and menstrual blood and use sexual rites to awaken the kundalini shakti.
After speaking to Darshan, as I wandered around, I began noticing how much sexual symbolism there was at the temple—from the figures carved in the wall, to the worship of blood, particularly the Goddess’s menstrual blood, to the sexually explicit lore and myth attached to the temple. I found it ironic that in a country where today prudish parents, governments, and various institutions have almost suffocated sex out of existence, here sex was not just accepted, but worshipped by millions.
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The temple of Kamakhya Devi is just one example of India’s rich sexual past. From the time of the Rig Veda (1500-1000 BCE) to the age of the Kamasutra (ca. 300 CE) and to the courts of the Rajput and Mughal kings many centuries later, from the elite down to the peasant, in ancient Indian culture, sex was not taboo. It was discussed openly in books, religious and fictional, and depicted in paintings, hymns and folktales, which celebrated ‘women with breasts like mangoes’13 and their numerous lovers. Many Hindu gods and goddesses were depicted as romantic couples, and ancient Indian temples, such as Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, and Ajanta and Ellora in Maharashtra are full of images, often erotic and sexually explicit, of sacred gods, goddesses and apsaras (heavenly nymphs).
From the earliest times, Hinduism has been characterized by two simultaneous forces: erotic and ascetic. The early religious texts, the Upanishads were the first texts to introduce this dichotomy—the path of the householder where the goal is t
he worldly pursuit of family, work and so on, and the other path, that of the renunciate, where the focus is on spirituality and attaining liberation from the cycle of life, death and reincarnation. This tension, between sex and celibacy, between the sensual and the spiritual, appears throughout the vast realm of Hinduism, and manifests itself in a multitude of forms.
The Shiva lingam, perhaps the mostly widely worshipped and venerated Hindu symbol illustrates this tension. The lingam or the sexual organ of Shiva first appears in the Mahabharata (300 BCE to 300 CE). The same phallus is seen as both as a potentially procreative phallus and a pillar-like renouncer of sexuality.14 In Hinduism, Shiva is seen as the perfect husband to his wife Parvati, the adulterer who chases the divine Mohini, as well as the ultimate renunciate. He is worshipped, celebrated and accepted in all these forms.
The two Hindu gods who have crossed over from religion and myth and have arguably had the greatest impact on Indian society are Rama and Krishna, both of whom have appeared in seminal texts over the centuries. Rama and Krishna live on in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people everywhere in the country, participating in their hopes and joys, sorrows and grief, and in their song and dance. They have been assimilated into the Indian psyche as no other deities have been and have had a tremendous effect on shaping the Indian perspective of love and relationships, their appeal transcending religious affiliations and regional boundaries.
As with generations before me, I too grew up listening to stories of Rama and Krishna and they formed my first impressions of love and marriage. Both Rama and Krishna are avatars of Vishnu; they are born on earth in the form of men to rid the world of evil. Though they are essentially the same, they have strikingly differing outlooks towards love, marriage and sex, mirroring the schizophrenia of the Indian mind. Krishna is as playful as Rama is serious. He is known for mischief and romantic dalliances with Radha and the gopis. Krishna is a prankster and eternal schemester whereas Rama is dogmatically righteous and moral. Rama has only one wife, whereas Krishna has 16,108. Rama is fair-skinned whereas Krishna is dark. Krishna is leela purushottam, the Supreme Being, whereas Rama is maryada purushottam, the epitome of propriety. Both Rama and Krishna illustrate a holistic worldview about what constitutes the ideal life, but it is Krishna who is said to be the purna or complete avatar of Vishnu, combining in himself all the sixteen rasas whereas Rama lacks shringar—the erotic element.
Let’s first take a look at Rama—the seventh avatar of Vishnu, the eldest son of Dasharatha, the King of Ayodhya who had four sons by three wives. Rama marries Sita, who was miraculously born from the earth to King Janak. The love story begins when Ram goes to Janakpurdham, the kingdom of Janak, to compete for the hand of Sita. There he defeats many powerful and eligible princes by lifting the Shiv Dhanush, Shiva’s sacred bow, and wins Sita as his bride. The blessed life of Rama takes an unexpected turn when he is banished to the forest because of a ploy hatched by his stepmother Kaikeyi, so that her own son Bharata can become king. Sita follows her husband into a dangerous exile of her own volition, setting the standard, so to speak, of wifely loyalty, patience, unconditional support and sacrifice.
During the last year of their fourteen-year exile, Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, kidnaps Sita, beguiling her through his wizardry. Rama embarks on a mission along with his loyal brother Lakshmana and the monkey god Hanuman to rescue Sita from the island of Lanka. Rama kills Ravana, fulfilling the principal reason for his birth—to rid the universe of the tyranny of Ravana. The story does not end here. A tragic twist to the tale occurs when the people of Ayodhya question their queen’s chastity. After all, she was kidnapped by a demon king and spent some time in Ravana’s kingdom. Though it breaks Rama’s heart to do so, he sends Sita away because Rama believes that his foremost duty as a king is towards his subjects and it is his dharma to maintain a moral standard in his kingdom.
King Rama separates from his queen even after she passes an agni pareeksha, or the test of fire—a metaphorical test of virtue. In the end Sita walks into a fire, performing self-sacrifice. Rama continues to rule Ayodhya with a broken heart for the next 11,000 years.
Rama focuses obsessively on duty. He loves Sita dearly yet is obliged to send her away. Sita remains devoted to her husband, come what may. She is the epitome of female purity, virtue and sacrifice complementing the qualities of her husband–the ‘perfect man’. These character traits are important to understand because they are at the heart of the epic and its somewhat dogmatic function to inculcate morality in society. After all, the Ramayana is not just an epic of adventure and love, though it is that too, but a revered religious text that many people consider a guide to life.
Rama and Sita’s romantic equation sets high standards for lovers in this nation. First, because the romantic relationship has to be validated by the sacred act of marriage, and a happily married couple stands for the most successful of love stories. Second, it asks of each partner a steep price for conjugal conduct—husbands must be willing to wage wars for the sake of their wives, and women must follow their men into exile. Third, the couple must be ready to make sacrifices for the sake of society, even at the cost of the marriage itself.
The Radha–Krishna love story is far more radical given that it is one of passionate love and a consequent disregard for conventions. As the diametrical opposite of the disciplined, sensible Rama we have Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu. Krishna spends his childhood incognito in the idyllic village of Vrindavan where he discards all semblance of princely propriety. He is an incorrigible, lovable playboy who consorts with his love Radha and the other village girls in the meadows of Vrindavan. The notes of his flute are carried along the ripples of the sacred river Yamuna while he sings and dances his ways into the hearts of all those around.
The Radha-Krishna relationship is a brazen one and the couple breaks many social conventions at once. They engage openly in numerous sexual encounters including the one most celebrated, the ras lila, the antithesis of domestic bliss. Throughout the course of their village romance, Krishna and Radha are not married; they never speak about marriage, or get married. In his teenage years, Krishna leaves his birthplace to kill the demon Kamsa—the purpose for which he is born on earth, and to take up his princely duties–never again to return. Eventually Krishna becomes the King of Dwarka, and marries 16,108 women.
Krishna is the ultimate lover and the greatest part of erotic literature in ancient India deals with his stories. His ras lila with the gopis—the cowherdesses of Vrindavan—described to be sexual congress, is mentioned in the Harivamsha, which was composed before the fourth century CE. The Sanskrit classic, Gitagovinda, written by Jayadeva in the twelfth century CE was the most important landmark in the development of Krishna’s role as lover. In this text, Krishna’s sensitivity to the needs and feelings of women is portrayed beautifully. In the last canto of the text, which is said to be written by Krishna himself, Radha, in languorous post-coital bliss, commands Krishna to paint her feet, comb her tresses, and do whatever she commands him to do. (The story goes that Jayadeva had gone to the river for his bath when Krishna assuming his form completed the last couplet of his work and ate the food prepared by his wife. When Jayadeva discovered the stanza completed and his food eaten, he interpreted it as divine sanction). The impact of the Gitagovinda was extraordinary and within just a century or two of its having been written, it acquired enormous popularity and influence. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, several writers continued Jayadeva’s romantic legacy. As Pavan Varma writes in The Book of Krishna, ‘the cumulative result was that the love lore of Krishna and Radha moved out from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to the dust and din of daily life. Their erotic love play made a transition from the refined if passionate milieu of Sanskrit poetics to the earthy and seductive medium of the lingua franca of the masses.’15
I always wondered why Krishna never married Radha and when I explored this I discovered that several sources give different reasons.16 Some say t
hat Radha was already married, others say that Radha and Krishna had a spiritual love that had nothing to do with marriage, while others say that by not getting married they were making a statement. Perhaps my favourite reason was told to me by a roving swami in Vrindavan: a Vaishnavite council, comprising high-level saints, met in the seventeenth century to reach a final verdict on Radha’s relationship with Krishna. They concluded that Radha must be Krishna’s lover because it was not possible to have the degree of passion that they shared in a husband-wife relationship. The Krishna-Radha love story never culminated in marriage, yet it remains the most celebrated story in the life of Krishna. Paintings, miniatures and statues aside, there are numerous temples across India that have the couple installed as deities—the only example of a romantic relationship not involving formal marriage being worshipped in a gloriously public way. The Radha–Krishna relationship has also influenced many movements in art and literature, the best-known being the Bhakti movement of which Meerabai, a Hindu princess from Rajasthan, was one of the most significant figures, known best for her devotional poems and songs. Besides the Gitagovinda by Jayadeva, several religious and artistic movements looked to the Krishna-Radha romance for inspiration—Vaishnava poetry by Govind Das, Gyan Das and Mukund Das are some other popular ones, though many, many more exist. In the sixteenth century CE, a number of love cults with Radha and Krishna as their presiding deities emerged. One major figure in the movement was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu whose followers worshipped him as an incarnation of God. It is said that he longed for Krishna just as a lovelorn Radha did.
