Bagalamukhi

Also Known As: also Bagala; widely called Pitambara-devi, “she who is dressed in yellow”; the name is usually read as “crane-faced”, from Sanskrit baka, “crane”, though some Varanasi teachers hold it to be a corruption of Valgamukhi, “bridle-faced”; hailed in her hymns as Brahmastra-rupini, “she whose form is the Brahmastra”
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Bagalamukhi is the Tantric goddess of stambhana, the power to stun, freeze and silence, which she works by seizing an enemy’s tongue and raising her club over him.
Role in Mythos: She is one of the ten Mahavidyas, the Great Wisdom goddesses of Shakta Tantra, and the one most consistently tied to supernatural powers over other people.
Relation to Humans: Devotees dressed in yellow invoke her to silence opponents, win disputes and lawsuits, turn enemies friendly and gain siddhis, sometimes wearing her yantra as an amulet. Her thousand-name hymn also calls her the giver of wisdom and of final liberation, so the same goddess is asked for a won court case and for release from rebirth.

Everything about her is yellow. The verse a worshipper recites to call her to mind begins in the middle of an ocean, where a pavilion of jewels stands over an altar, and on the altar a lion throne, and on the throne a goddess whose skin, dress, ornaments and garland are all the same shade of gold. Her left hand has closed on the tongue of an enemy and drawn it out of his mouth. Her right hand holds a club high above him. The blow has not fallen yet. In every telling it is about to.

This is Bagalamukhi, eighth in the usual order of the Mahavidyas, the ten Great Wisdom goddesses of Shakta Tantra. Some of the ten are famous well beyond Tantric circles. Bagalamukhi is not one of them. She is a specialist, and her speciality is a single word: stambhana, the power to stop things. A tongue in mid-sentence, an army in mid-charge, a fire in mid-blaze, a rival’s mind in mid-thought. Where other goddesses kill, she freezes, and the stories suggest she regards killing as a matter that can wait.

Three stories account for her, and they do not agree. In the first, set in the Krta Yuga, the first and best of the world ages, a storm rose that threatened to tear the universe apart. Creatures died, and even Vishnu, reclining on the cosmic serpent, was disturbed. He went to a sacred pond called Haridra, which means turmeric, and performed austerities there, praying to the goddess Tripura-sundari. She appeared, lighting the whole world, and brought Bagalamukhi out of the turmeric water. The new goddess played for a while in the yellow pond. Then she stilled the storm. That pond is one explanation for the yellow, and for her other name, Pitambara.

The second story is the one her images actually show. A demon named Madan performed austerities and won the boon of vak siddhi: whatever he said came true. He used it to kill people. The gods, out of their depth, worshipped Bagalamukhi, and she went after him. She caught hold of his tongue and stopped his speech, and with it his power, because a demon whose words are weapons is disarmed the instant he cannot talk. Before she could kill him he asked to be worshipped alongside her. She agreed. That, the story says, is why he is still there in every picture, tongue in her fist, waiting for the club.

The third story belongs to Shiva’s household on Mount Kailasa. Parvati grew so hungry that her body ached, and asked Shiva for food. He told her to wait and went back to his yoga. She asked again; he put her off again. At last she put Shiva himself into her mouth and swallowed him. Smoke began to pour from her body. Shiva then emerged and pronounced judgement: a woman who has disposed of her husband is a widow, and the woman who left her husband by swallowing him would be known as Bagalamukhi, while the smoke would become the goddess Dhumavati. It is not the most flattering origin a goddess has ever been given. The religious historian David Kinsley, who gathered all three, thought they were too unlike each other to be variants and read them as three separate meditations on who she is.

The name is a puzzle of its own. The usual reading is “crane-faced”, from baka, crane, and the third story seems to play on it, since a crane swallows its prey whole. Yet she is almost never drawn with a bird’s head. One Kangra painting from around 1800 gives her a crane’s head; other accounts mention the head of a duck or the nose of a parrot. A priest of the Kashi Vishvanath temple in Varanasi told Kinsley that the true name is Valgamukhi, from valga, the bit in a horse’s mouth, because her power controls an enemy as a bit controls a horse. Another informant said valga meant “to paralyse”. Kinsley found the bit reading unsupported by any image and the paralysis derivation etymologically dubious. Nobody has settled it.

The yellow, at least, is not in doubt. Instructions for her worship tell the devotee to wear yellow, sit on yellow cloth, offer yellow things wherever possible and count the mantra on a rosary of turmeric beads. Her temples are often painted yellow inside and out, so that a visitor walks into a room the colour of turmeric. Why yellow, the texts mostly do not say. Informants have offered gold, the sun, ripe grain, fire, the earth element and the turmeric of South Indian weddings.

A hymn to her preserved under the name of the Rudrayamala Tantra lists what her mantra does to the world, and it reads like a catalogue of reversals. The debater falls dumb. The king becomes a pauper. Fire turns cold. The angry man goes quiet, the wicked man turns decent, the swift runner goes lame, the proud man shrinks and the know-it-all goes blank. Another verse of the same hymn seats her on a corpse, the body of an enemy she has thrown down from her throne, and the closing verses promise that anyone who carries her yantra on the arm, the hand or the neck in battle will see kings, enemies, maddened elephants, snakes and lions bewildered before him. The hymn calls itself the Brahmastra, after the god Brahma’s irresistible weapon, and warns that it is to be given only to a disciple devoted to his guru.

That is the frank side of her cult, and Kinsley did not soften it. More than any other Mahavidya she is worshipped for results: to paralyse rivals, to attract others, to win court cases, to counter the planets, to gain wealth, and in the darker manuals to kill at will, with offerings for that purpose burned in a cremation-ground fire. An amulet described in the Tantrasara carries the plea that she arrest the speech of the wicked, paralyse their faces, fix their tongues and destroy their intellect. The same goddess is called, in her thousand-name hymn, the giver of wisdom and of moksha, and a monk of the Ramakrishna order told Kinsley that her conquest of the tongue means self-control over greed, speech and taste.

Public shrines to her are few, since most of her worship is private sadhana. Kinsley visited a small one near Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, where the image was kept under clothing and a silver mask, and another in the woods outside Bankhandi in Himachal Pradesh, a town whose name means “where the arrow split the ground”. There the priest said she had come from Tibet after killing demons who attacked her devotees, that the king of Kangra had established her worship, and that she was unmarried. A painting in that temple showed her riding a crane while the bird attacked the demon with beak and claw and a second crane flew in to help. The whole building was yellow. Only the head of the image showed, in rough black stone.

The most famous of her temples is the Pitambara Peeth at Datia in Madhya Pradesh. An ascetic remembered as Swamiji Maharaj arrived there in the late 1920s and installed her image in the mid-1930s, during the struggle for Indian independence, and Kinsley was told he invoked her power of stambhana against the country’s enemies more than once. A shrine to Dhumavati stands in the same complex, the two goddesses of the third story still housed together.

Her power is total and narrow. She can stop speech, motion, thought and intent, and she can give a devotee the opposite gift, a forceful tongue that no opponent can answer. What she does not do, in any story, is finish the job. The club stays raised. The demon who once talked the world to death is still alive in her grip, still being worshipped at her side, because he asked.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bagalamukhi in Hinduism?

Bagalamukhi is a Hindu Tantric goddess, one of the ten Mahavidyas or Great Wisdom goddesses, usually counted eighth in the group. She is known as the goddess of stambhana, the power to paralyse, silence and stop an enemy. Her images show her pulling a demon’s tongue with her left hand while raising a club in her right.

Why is Bagalamukhi associated with yellow?

Bagalamukhi is also called Pitambara-devi, “she who is dressed in yellow”, and one origin story has her appear from a pond of turmeric called Haridra. Her worship calls for yellow clothes, yellow offerings and a rosary of turmeric beads, and her temples are often painted yellow. The texts rarely explain why, and suggested meanings include gold, the sun, ripe grain and the earth.

Why does Bagalamukhi hold a demon’s tongue?

The image comes from the story of the demon Madan, who won the power to make everything he said come true and used it to kill people. Bagalamukhi seized his tongue and stopped his speech, which ended his power. He asked to be worshipped with her before she could kill him, so he appears beside her in her images.

What does the name Bagalamukhi mean?

The name is usually read as “crane-faced”, from the Sanskrit baka, crane, although Bagalamukhi is rarely shown with a bird’s head. Some Varanasi informants say the original name was Valgamukhi, from valga, the bit used to control a horse. The religious historian David Kinsley found neither explanation fully convincing.

Where is the main Bagalamukhi temple?

The best-known Bagalamukhi temple is the Pitambara Peeth at Datia in Madhya Pradesh, where an ascetic known as Swamiji Maharaj installed her image in the mid-1930s. A shrine to the goddess Dhumavati stands in the same complex. Other Bagalamukhi temples include one at Bankhandi in Himachal Pradesh, painted entirely yellow.