The temple at Kamakhya, in Guwahati, Assam, was built in the seventeenth century by the kings of Cooch Behar. However, the deity within is ...
The temple at Kamakhya, in Guwahati, Assam, was built in the seventeenth century by the kings of Cooch Behar. However, the deity within is an ancient one, a tantric goddess, a goddess of the local Khasi and Garo tribes, predating Vedic culture, according to some believers, or even older. But long earlier, the temple was identified with no particular goddess, but was simply a natural rock formation, a cleft in a sheet of stone, resembling – at least to the human eye – a yoni, or the vulva, the entrance to the female genitalia, on the shallow bed of a mountain stream.
Every year, following the first rains, it is said that a red fluid gushes out from the cleft: underground soil according to rationalists, vermilion powder sprinkled by local priests say the cynics, menstrual blood of the earth, hence the goddess, say the believers. For three days, therefore, as part of Ambubachi Mela, the temple doors are shut, to let the goddess rest and regain her fertility.
When I first entered the shrine at Kamakhya many years ago, I felt as if I was entering the womb of the earth.
A flight of steps leads down to a subterranean chamber where a spring flows,...
