Who Are the Shaktas?

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DOCTRINES: Shaktas are Hindu devotees of the Goddess

(Devi) in one of her forms. The goddess is manifested

in gentle, beautiful forms such as the goddess

Tripurasundari, or in ferocious, terrifying forms such

as Kali. Shaktas identify absolute reality with the

Goddess and her gentle or ferocious manifestations are

but different aspects of her. Kali, although

terrifying, is the mother of the universe and the

destroyer of ignorance. Through Kali's grace the

devotee is liberated from karma and the cycle of

reincarnation (samsara). Shaktas will practice

devotion (bhakti) to the Goddess and at a popular

level the Goddess is worshipped at innumerable, local

shrines throughout India. Indeed, most villages will

have their own goddess. The great goddess manifested

as Durga is worshipped in her own temples, whereas

local, low-caste goddesses will be worshipped at local

shrines. These low caste goddesses, while accepting

vegetarian offerings, also demand alcohol and blood

sacrifice as well. It is necessary to appease

ferocious goddesses such as Shitala or Mariyaman,

goddesses of smallpox and other diseases, with blood.

 

HISTORY: Goddess worship may go back to the Indus

valley civilisation. The Hindu revelation, the Veda,

contains some hymns to different Goddesses, but

literary evidence for an all-encompassing great

goddess only comes with the Epics and Puranas (3rd

cent BCE- 10th cent CE). These texts, particularly the

Devibhagavata Purana and Devimahatmya, tell the myth

of the goddess Durga, how she slays the buffalo demon

and is superior to all the gods. The goddess becomes

particularly important with Tantrism and there are

Tantras to the ferocious Kali as well as Tantras to

the gentle Tripurasundari. The Kali cults tended to be

associated with the cremation ground asceticism of the

skull-bearing Kapalikas, though worship of Kali was

not restricted to these groups and today is very

popular, especially in Nepal and Bengal. Indeed, the

famous Hindu mystic Ramakrishna (1834-86) was a

devotee of Kali and the Bengali poet Ramprasad Sen

composed devotional poetry to her. Worship of

Tripurasundari is the focus of the Shri Vidya

tradition.

 

SYMBOLS: The Shaktas worship the Goddess in various

iconographic representations. Kali, for example, is

black, girdled with severed arms, with a garland of

severed heads, with a lolling tongue and eyes rolling

with intoxication, dancing on the corpse of Shiva. The

Goddess can also be worshipped as as the beautiful

Tripurasundari, as a crooked old woman (Kubjika) or as

a young girl.

 

ADHERENTS: There are no figures for numbers of

Shaktas. One of the problems is in distinguishing a

Shakta from a non-Shakta in Hinduism. In one sense any

person who worships the Goddess is a Shakta, though

membership of specific traditions would be more

restricted.

 

HEADQUARTERS/MAIN CENTRE: Local goddesses are

worshipped throughout India, though worship of the

great Goddess Kali is particularly prevalent in Bengal

and Nepal. There are traditionally four places of

pilgrimage (pithas) - at Uddiyana in the Swat valley,

Jullunder in the Punjab, Purnagiri (location unknown)

and Kamarupa in Assam. Kamarupa is the only site in

use.

 

Source: The Overview of World Religions Project,

http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/hindu/devot/shaktas.html

 

 

 

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