The field and the seeker: Presence, non-exhaustion and the Kumārī in Śākta sources

Is the Goddess a woman? Devotional and critical readers of the Śākta traditions have both tended to answer too quickly, and in opposite directions. This article slows the question down. It asks whether any single form, including the body of a woman or a girl, can be taken as the whole of what is worshipped, or as anyone’s possession. I separate four claims about divine presence (non-exclusive presence, full presence, non-reduction and non-possession), test them against selected Upaniṣadic, epic, Purāṇic and Tāntric sources, and mark each as a textual finding, an interpretive reading or an ethical proposal. The four do not stand on equal ground. The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (4.3, 5.10) and the Devī Māhātmya (1.64-65, 10.5, 11.6) support a manifestation of the divine that is not confined to one form. Full presence in a particular form is a coherent theological reading, but it does not follow from plurality; the peace invocation traditionally recited with the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad offers a resource for it, not a proof. The Gītā’s distinction between kṣetra and kṣetrajña, read with the Kena Upaniṣad, the Devī Māhātmya and the Lalitā Sahasranāma (names 341-345), shows that the Goddess cannot be placed on the field side of that line alone: she is named the field, its ruler and the protector of field and knower. I then treat attentive joining (manaḥsaṃyoga) as one operation of worship and offer an analytical model that distinguishes mediation, ritually attributed presence and enduring divine form. The model records what a rite attributes, not what is metaphysically the case. Comparing Bengali Kumārī Pūjā with Nepal’s Royal Kumārī, I show that Devī Bhāgavata 3.26-27 draws its main line at the age of ten and selects girls by caste and bodily condition, while the rule that the Goddess leaves a girl at menarche belongs chiefly to the Nepalese office. Such rules are better read as rules of rites and offices than as facts about the Goddess (compare kṣayavṛddhivinirmuktā, name 344). Non-possession is argued as an ethical proposal, illustrated but not established by the Devī Māhātmya. The article concludes that the Goddess need not be exhausted by the form through which she is worshipped, and that the welfare and continuing agency of a living participant call for independent ethical consideration.