many faces of KALI..... sankarrukku- continued ....

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Kali is thought to have originated as a tribal

goddess indigenous to one of India's inaccessible

mountainous regions. The Matsyapurana gives her place of

origin as Mount Kalanjara in north central India, east

of the Indus Valley floodplain. But owing to the

late date of the Puranas' composition, this evidence

regarding Kali's place of origin cannot be taken as

particularly reliable.<br>At least thousand years before the

Matsyapurana, the name of Kali first appears in Sanskrit

literature between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE. The

reference, in Mundakopanishad 1.2.4, names Kali as 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, smoky colored, sparkling, and radiant.

Significantly, the first two adjectives -- kali and karali --

"black" and "terrifying," recur in later texts to

describe the horrific aspect of the goddess. Karali

additionally means "having a gaping mouth and protruding

teeth." This verse scarcely suffices to confirm that Kali

was a personified goddess during the age of the

Upanishads, but it is noteworthy that the adjective that

became her name was used to characterize an aspect of

the fire god's power. Just as fire dissolves matter

into energy, the goddess Kali dissolves the material

universe into undifferentiated being at the end of a

cosmic cycle. <br>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.<br>During the epic period, some time after

the fifth century BCE, Kali emerges better defined in

an episode of the Mahabharata. When the camp of the

heroic Pandava brothers is attacked one night by the

sword-wielding Asvatthaman, his deadly assault 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"

(Mahabharata 10.8.64-65). Although the passage goes on to

describe the slaughter as an act of human warfare, it

makes clear that the fierce goddess is ultimately the

agent of death who carries off those who are

slain.<br>Kali next appears in the sacred literature during the

Puranic age, when new theistic devotional sects displaced

the older Brahmanical form of Hinduism. In the fourth

and fifth centuries CE the Puranas were written to

glorify the great deities Vishnu, Shiva and the Devi --

the Goddess -- as well as lesser gods. One such

Purana, the Markandeya, contains within it the

foundational text of all subsequent Hindu Goddess religion.

This book within a book is known as the Devimahatmya,

the Shri Durga Saptashati, or the Chandi.

 

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from david nelson's book- many faces of kali- posted by shriman

sankarrukku

 

jai mahakali!

 

jai gurudeva!