Beyond Fear and Devotion: The Daśa Mahāvidyās, Kāmākhyā, and the Sacred Feminine in Tantric Traditions . By Sneha Das

In this well-researched monograph, spread over five chapters, the reader is reacquainted with constructions of sacred space in historical time as also its living connections with the contemporary. Sneha Das lays claim to two important accomplishments: first, plugging existing gaps in understanding regarding the subject and second, creatively integrating an older emphasis on textual studies with updated historical narratives, the use of epigraphic evidence and ethnographic interrogations. We have here a useful account of the Sakta–Tantric tradition evolving in the ancient Ahom kingdom and its subsequent blending with a larger pan-Indian Hindu culture and consciousness. Also included in this account is the formative history of the cult of the goddess Kamakhya and of the temple that enshrines her presence. This is followed by detailed studies of the Dasamahavidyas, commonly understood as the ten aspects of Cosmic Wisdom, each endowed with profound metaphysical and psychological value or meaning. The Dasamahavidya goddesses reveal a visible range of forms, qualities and emotions, stretching from the fearsome and revolting to the comforting, auspicious, and benign. As the very fulcrum on which the conception rests, the goddess Kali (also identified with Shodashi and Triputrasundari) appears to combine both. She is the naked, black tamasic figure with dishevelled hair, wearing a garland of decapitated human heads, holding the blood-stained scimitar: in short, a very antinomian, un-Brahmanical and unwomanly figure. And yet, paradoxically, she has one of her hands raised in the abhaya mudra oozing with Divine Grace and assuring prospective liberation. In Kamakhya though, she is represented as the yoni or the female genital, suggesting a primitive association with some fertility cult.