Chhinnamasta

The river is cold, the bathing has gone on too long, and two hungry women are asking for something to eat. That is where the best known account of Chhinnamasta begins, and nothing in so ordinary an opening prepares the listener for the next minute. The goddess Parvati, bathing with her attendants Dakini and Varnini in the Mandakini, tells them to wait until they get home. They ask again. They ask a third time, calling her the mother of the universe and pointing out that mothers feed their children. Parvati looks around, finds nothing to give, and takes off her own head with her fingernails.

Three jets of blood rise from her neck. One curves to the left and falls into the mouth of Dakini. One curves to the right and falls into the mouth of Varnini. The third goes straight up and comes down into the mouth of the severed head, which the goddess is holding in her own left hand and which is, by every account, perfectly content. When all three have had enough she sets the head back on her shoulders and the party goes home.

The story is preserved in the Pranatoshini Tantra, a late compilation that credits it to an older text, and the same work gives a second version with a different river and a sharper temper. In that telling the two attendants spring out of the goddess’s own body in a moment of fury, and Shiva, coming on his wife afterwards and finding her pale, takes a wrathful form of his own. A third story, passed along by word of mouth, puts her at the churning of the ocean: she drinks the share of the nectar of immortality meant for the demons and then beheads herself so they cannot get it back. The tellings disagree on nearly everything except the act.

Her picture is one of the most carefully specified in Indian art, and painters have followed the instructions for centuries. She is a girl of sixteen, slender and full-breasted, her skin red as a hibiscus or orange as flame, her hair loose down her back. She wears no clothes. A snake crosses her chest in place of the sacred thread, a garland of heads hangs to her knees, and a third eye is set in the brow of the face she carries. Her right hand grips a curved blade. She stands with one leg straight and one bent, the stance of an archer, and what she stands on is a couple making love: Kama, the god of desire, and his wife Rati, lying on a lotus, usually with Rati on top. Behind them the ground is a cremation field. Dakini stands pale on one side and Varnini red on the other, each with a skull bowl.

It is a great deal to take in. Sex and death and food are all in the one frame, and the figure in the middle is giving and receiving in the same gesture. Readings pile up accordingly. To some she is desire mastered, since she stands on Kama and is plainly not distracted by him. To others she is desire as fuel, the couple’s energy rising through her body and out of her neck as the three channels that yogic teaching runs along the spine. The simplest reading is the one the first story supplies. Life feeds on life, and here is a mother who has cut out the middle steps.

She was not always Hindu. A goddess of exactly this shape, called Chinnamunda, appears in Buddhist ritual texts earlier than in any Hindu one, as a form of Vajrayogini, and tradition has her worshipped by the wandering adepts of the ninth century. The Buddhist figure stands alone, without the couple underfoot or the snake across the chest. Somewhere around the turn of the first millennium the image crossed into the goddess traditions of eastern India, and there she found a place among the ten Mahavidyas alongside Kali and Tara.

The Mahavidyas have their own origin, and it is a domestic quarrel. Sati, daughter of Daksha, learns that her father is holding a great sacrifice and has invited everyone except her husband Shiva. She wants to go. Shiva forbids it. Sati’s anger then does something his has never done: it multiplies her. She becomes ten goddesses who close in on him from ten directions, and whichever way the lord of destruction turns to leave, one of them is standing there. Chhinnamasta is the one who blocks him on the right. He gives his permission.

On an ordinary morning at Rajrappa, where two rivers meet in the hills of Jharkhand, none of this looks especially frightening. Pilgrims queue with coconuts and sweet rice pudding, bells ring over the sound of the falls, and the goddess they have come to see is a natural rock under a metal cover with no head to speak of. At Chintpurni in the Himalayan foothills she is a rounded stone, and most of the families who climb the steps think of her as a form of Durga who takes worries away. The ascetics on the same steps know her by the other name.

That split is written into the manuals. Her gifts are large: victory over enemies, command of speech, freedom from fear, and at the far end release from rebirth altogether. Her terms are severe. The texts reserve her full worship for the kind of practitioner they call a hero, someone prepared to perform it at midnight in a cremation ground, and they say that a householder should think of her only in the abstract. A woman who takes up her mantra, one manual warns, will become a dakini and lose her husband and son. Worship done wrongly brings the goddess in person, and she takes the head of the offender and drinks.

There are limits on her side as well. She has few temples and no large festival of her own outside the Kathmandu Valley, where her chariot is drawn out once a year. She has almost no stories beyond the ones told here; she does not slay demon kings or marry or go to war. Everything she is has been packed into a single image. A goddess who can survive her own beheading has not managed to become popular, and the same manuals that praise her spend a good deal of ink keeping people away from her door.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Chhinnamasta?

Chhinnamasta is a Hindu Tantric goddess whose name means “she whose head is severed”. She is one of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of wisdom goddesses that also includes Kali and Tara. She is shown holding her own cut-off head while three streams of blood from her neck feed the head and her two attendants.

Why did Chhinnamasta cut off her own head?

In the best known story, Parvati was bathing in the Mandakini river when her attendants Dakini and Varnini begged her three times for food. Having nothing else to give, she cut off her head with her fingernails and fed them with her blood, then put her head back. Another version says she drank the demons’ share of the nectar of immortality and beheaded herself so they could not recover it.

What does the couple under Chhinnamasta’s feet mean?

Chhinnamasta stands on Kama, the god of desire, and his wife Rati, who are making love on a lotus. Some read this as the goddess having mastered desire, since she stands above it undisturbed. Others read the couple as the source of the energy that rises through her body and leaves her neck as three streams of blood.

Is Chhinnamasta a Hindu or a Buddhist goddess?

She is both. A goddess of the same form, called Chinnamunda, appears in Buddhist ritual texts earlier than in Hindu ones, as a form of Vajrayogini. The Hindu Chhinnamasta adds the couple under her feet and the snake she wears as a sacred thread.

Where is Chhinnamasta worshipped?

Chhinnamasta has few temples. The best known are Rajrappa in Jharkhand, where she is worshipped as a natural rock under a metal cover, and Chintpurni in Himachal Pradesh, where she is a rounded stone. She also has a yearly chariot festival in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.

Related Entries

Kali, Devi, Parvati, Sati, Shiva, Daksha, Durga, Kama, Rati, Dakini, Kaal Bhairav, Tara