BOOKS ON GODDESSES IN INDIAN ART

"...the originator of families, the preserver of the established order and the perpetuator of traditions...As the Great Goddess rules the heavens, her earthly counterpart, the woman, rules the home..."

"Rigveda acclaims that \'he who is described as male is as much the female....When invoking her in her entirety, describing her beauty, limb to limb, these hymns did not stop short of anything....Devi Bhagavata is the foremost of scriptures that consider Devi as the Adishakti, the divine power that preceded all things, all beings and all gods....Devi Mahatmya in the Markandeya Purana and other texts relate her origin to the elimination of Mahishasura, a mighty demon who once ruled the earth.....She also created her \'shaktis\', subordinate powers.....As Kali she was ferocious, as Durga, valorous, and as Parvati, Uma or Gauri, lovable and incomparably beautiful."

"The Mother Goddess is India\'s supreme Divinity... In fury or in frown, she is always the same protective, caring, loving Mother with a benign face and a blessing hand... In her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live... She is the eternal upholder of Dharma and truth, the promoter of happiness and the giver of salvation and prosperity but also of sorrows, grief and pain... As Adi Shakti, She represents Prakriti, which operates in and on all things, the manifest or otherwise, materially present or abstract..."

"The earliest term applied to the divine feminine... is Shakti... Specifically, Shakti means power, force and feminine energy. She represents the fundamental creative instinct underlying the cosmos, and is the energizing force of all divinity, of every being and every thing... The yoni or female generative organ is... venerated for its obvious properties of fertility and growth... While Durga is the most potent icon to express the aggressive and destructive behavior of Shakti, Lakshmi is the quintessential goddess who proclaims her creative aspect... (It) is emphasized in the Gandharva Tantra (that) \'She who is the sun, moon, and fire, lays down the purusha (male) and enjoys him from above.\'..."

"providence has blessed women with the primary responsibility of the perpetuation of the human race. Understandably her physical body has been richly endowed for this glorious function… To the connoisseur of Indian aesthetics, the profusion of voluptuous women dominating its canvas comes as no surprise… But while celebrating the female body in glorious images the artist never loses sight of the fact that whatever nature creates, it creates with a purpose. No form is accidental and every natural form must have a divinely ordained function. Whatever be the artistic representation, it must glorify this inherent natural function…"

"A virgin blooming with fresh youth, the luster of her body was like the rising sun. Three-eyed, her face was endowed with the beauty of ten million cupids (Kamadeva)...Blossoming breasts which surpassed even the buds of a lotus (in softness)...Wishing to pay obeisance to her, the gods then got down from their chariot and approached the goddess. No sooner had they done so than she transformed them all into beautiful, young maidens....A weak man is declared to be without any Shakti, nobody says that he is without Shiva, or without Vishnu. They are all called Shakti-less; no one says that this man is Shiva-less…"

Kali\'s fierce appearances have been the subject of extensive descriptions in several earlier and modern works. Though her fierce form is filled with awe- inspiring symbols, their real meaning is not what it first appears…

"...The Great Goddess Durga was born from the energies of the male divinities...The awesome three-eyed Goddess was adorned with the crescent moon...seas trembled as the Goddess engaged the Great Demon Mahisasura...Thus the reveries of Mahisa are exterminated..."

"In classical mythology the raison d\'кtre of Parvati\'s birth is to lure Shiva into marriage and thus into the wider circle of married life from which he is aloof as a lone ascetic, living in the wilds of the mountains. The goddess represents the complementary pole to the ascetic, world-denying tradition in the Hindu ethos. In her role as maiden, wife, and later as a mother, she extends Shiva\'s circle of activity into the realm of the householder, where his stored-up energy is released in positive ways."

"Iconographically, they (Mahavidyas) are individually shown dominating male deities. Kali and Tara are shown astride Shiva, while others like Shodashi sit on the body of Shiva... By subverting... conventional social norms, the adept seeks to liberate his or her consciousness from the... inhibiting categories of proper and improper, good and bad, polluted and pure."

"It is well established in the canons of Indian thought that every woman mirrors in herself the divine feminine... Envisioned as totally naked, the visual tales of her terrible form do not end with her dense black color or with the skirt made up of decapitated hands...(or) the necklace made up of heads she has severed from the torsos of beings...The truth behind the mystery of Kali, it seems, is to not be found by a conventional appraisal of her physical appearance....it is the female of the species who comes out with honors here, by resolutely establishing that when they are wives and when they progress to being mothers, Kali forms an integral part of their characteristic buildup."

The role of the goddess as one who fulfills wishes has remained one of enduring strength and consequence. In the ancient collection of sacred hymns known as the Veda, this aspect of the goddess already becomes manifest. The two most shining examples in this context are The Great Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati.

"Ganga is...(the) divine grace flowing on to our material world, as is visible in the prosperity of the fertile and rich crop-yielding regions adjacent to her banks... The intense devotion and love which her devotees feel for Ganga is no small measure due to the fact that she is the only accessible physical entity that flows both in the heavens and on the earth... Ganga is a river that has been at the core of sacred Hindu lore and tradition... As a mother, Ganga is tangible, approachable, and all accepting... Ganga\'s icon at the (temple) doorway... implies her status as a remover of pollution..."

"people all over India will say approvingly for someone: "He is a Rama like son, a Rama like brother, or a Rama like king. " It is rare however to hear the following as a compliment "Rama like husband or son-in-law."... All of Sita\'s miseries in the confinement of Ravana pale in comparison...to the emotional trauma and humiliation she was subjected to by Rama himself. In a bitter irony, what was to be her moment of deliverance, turned out to be the beginning of another trial... Sita sets a high standard as an ideal wife who stays unswerving in her loyalty and righteousness, no matter how undesirable her husband\'s response... She emerges as a woman that even Agni - who has the power to reduce to ashes everything he touches - dare not touch or harm..."