Search Results

Although Hindus recognize and revere a variety of different, discrete goddesses, they also tend to speak of “The Goddess” as a singular and unifying deity. This chapter focuses on three dimensions of the Goddess in Hindu traditions, grounding all observations in specific texts and contexts. First, the chapter examines the nature of the Goddess as a cosmogonic/cosmological creative force that creates, sustains, and permeates the universe. Second, it explores the Goddess as a being worthy of devotion who is also manifest as individual goddesses. Finally, it probes the nature of the Goddess as potential role model for human women, who in many contexts are viewed as special manifestations of the Goddess. The chapter looks at major themes in each category and the critical issues that these themes raise.

This chapter shows how māyā, on behalf of Kṛṣṇa, makes manifest all the ingredients of creation, and, through a sequential series of developments, forms those ingredients into a plurality of universes, bodies, and minds, known as the temporal (phenomenal) realm. It specifically explores māyā’s relation to material creation, concentrating on the Bhāgavata’s Sāṁkhya account of the manner in which māyā transforms into the various elements of the temporal realm. In the course of this examination, we will attempt to compare the Bhāgavata’s Sāṁkhya system to that of classical Sāṁkhya, specifically with regard to such standard Sāṁkhya categories as puruṣa (the individual self), prakṛti (the physical world), ahaṁkāra (false identification), the guṇas (qualitative energies), the twenty-three elements, and so on.

With the premise that the Viṣṇu on Freud’s desk implies an unmanifest goddess, chapter 9 answers why Bose’s gift was not a Bengali goddess like Kālī or Durgā. It looks further at the iconography of Ananta, Viṣṇu, and the Goddess at the south Indian Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple studied by Dennis Hudson, and then at the Śākta or Goddess-oriented text of the Devī-Māhātmya. Vaikuṇṭha Perumāḷ temple panels show Pañcarātra vyūha manifestations of Viṣṇu’s creative and destructive roles, and also images of Viṣṇu’s two wives plus an invisible Nīlā as his yoganidrā, who awakens him. The connection with the Devī-Māhātmya comes through in this temple’s iconography of Madhusūdana, related to Viṣṇu lying on Ananta. The Devī-Māhātmya, a pan-Indian text especially popular in Bose’s Bengal, supplies a version of the Madhusūdana myth, and is Bose’s likely reference point for his gift to Freud.