Sakti

“ Siva's consort Pārvatī or Umā likewise, especially in her manifestation as Kālī, is the energy that destroys, that makes the world involve or draw itself into the quiescent state from which it started or evolved. In fact a sect of worshippers called Sāktas, "the adherents of Sakti or Energy," affirm that this Sakti, the feminine element in god, is the sole, if not the preponderating, cause of all visible phenomena. It may be noted that the word sakti is of the feminine gender in the Sanskrit language. Almost every human or divine activity has been personified as a goddess ”

“ That is the common property of all the children of men.
A main feature in the religion of the Tiyan is that it is largely connected with Sakti worship. Some Brāhmans indulge therein, but they are unable, like the Tiyans, to use arrack in connection with it, and are obliged to use, instead of this requisite, milk or honey. Siva, not exactly a Vēdic entity, and Sakti, are supposed to be the two primordial and eternal principles in nature. Sakti is, perhaps, more properly the vital energy, and Sakti worship the worship of the life principle in nature. ”

“ Sakti is Force. Originally a sect of Hindoos worshipped force and matter as eternal. The word being in the feminine gender, its personification is a female divinity of supernatural powers, and every occupation which called for great exercise of energy and power at once selected her as tutelary goddess, and she is now the most popular of all the three and thirty millions of the Hindu pantheon. ”

“ When a man dies before this separation or transfer has been accomplished, a Brāhman must be called in, who, with a silver image representing the deceased, makes symbolic transference of the Sakti spirit. It must be done somehow, or the soul of the deceased cannot attain salvation. It is said that, like many other things in this land, Sakti worship has undergone degeneration, that such lofty ideas and feelings as may have once pervaded it have more or less disappeared, and that the residue is not very edifying. ”

“ The Kāsyapa-Silpa sets down that the image of Skanda may be made of two, four, six or twelve hands and may have either six faces or only one. The symbols generally are the sakti, arrow, sword, discus, noose, a bunch of peacock's feathers, shield, bow, plough, rosary and the postures abhaya and varada. When the image has two hands, the left hand holds a cock (kukkuta) and the right hand a sakti (the Tamil vēl) [77] Hēmādri speaks of him as wearing a red cloth and riding on a peacock. ”

“ To the actions of evil and other spirits are attributable most, if not all of the ills and joys of life. The higher Hinduism is far above them. Nevertheless, we find among them the worship of the obscure and mysterious Sakti, which, unfortunately, is practiced in secret. Nobody seems to be in the least proud of having anything to do with it. ”

“ They are also worshippers of Sakti in any of her following manifestations, namely, Bala, Thripura, Mathangi, Ambika, Durga, Bhadrakāli, the object of which is to secure accuracy in their astrological predictions. Further, every member of the caste proficient in astrology daily offers, after an early bath, his prayers to the seven planets. Among the minor deities whom they worship, are also Mallan, Mundian, Muni and Ayutha Vadukan, the first three of which they worship for the prosperity of their cattle, and the last four for their success in the training of young men in athletic feats. ”

“ This ingenuous conception seems to have taken deep and complete possession of the Hindus; it dominates in their most subtile abstractions, and embodies itself in a thousand forms to their vivid and luxuriant imagination. The Saktians, a sect wedded to sensual materialism, represent Máyá as a Saktí or energy of Siva; she is “the mother of the universe;” “non-entity finds no access to this creator, the garment of perishableness does not sit right upon the body of this fascinating empress; the dust of nothingness does not move round the circle of her dominion ”

“ As "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," and Sakti "is an attribute AKASA," it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all one. Indeed, to speak of the "union of Brahmam and Prakriti" instead of "Brahmam and Sakti" is no worse than for a theist to write that "That man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter," whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read "man is a living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter."
*** That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE (in its metaphysical meaning) .—Ed. ”

“ The Tāntras, according to Professor Monier-Williams, inculcate an exclusive worship of Siva’s wife as the source of every kind of supernatural faculty and mystic craft. The principle of female energy is known as Sakti, and is personified in the female counterparts of all the Gods of the Hindu triad, but is practically concentrated in Devi or Kāli. ”

“ In this chal is also represented the battle of the Kurus and Pandavas, and in the lower compartment is described another scene of the battle of the demons with the black form of Sakti. She is represented as a two-armed goddess, standing on a lion and holding swords in both hands. ”

“ In Hindu mythology she is once described as Adya Sakti, Primæval Energy, Primum Mobile of the Gods, again she is said to be Sati, the daughter of Daksha, Cœlum, and next as the progeny of Himavat and consort of the Kailasian Siva, in which last attribute she is compared with the Olympian Juno, consort of Jove of the Greek Pantheon, and with Isis, Isi, the wife of Osiris, Isvara, of ancient Egypt, as also with the Holy Virgin, Alma-mater of Christian theology, with Allahat of the idolatrous Arabs, and with Astarte or Ashtaroth of the early Assyrians. ”

“ As this King was a Sakti worshipper, the crows ceased to harass the Kāpus, who settled down as cultivators. Of the produce of the land, nine-tenths were to be given to the King, and the Kāpus were to keep a tithe. At this time the wife of Belthi Reddi was pregnant, and she asked her sons what they would give to the son who was about to be born. They all promised to give him half their earnings. The child grew into a learned man and poet, and one day carried water to the field where his brothers were at work. ”

“ The road keeps for the most part to the stony barren slopes on the left side of the valley, while the brook flows nearer to the right side, where bright green fields appropriate so much of its water that little is left to flow out of the valley. A path to Nubra follows a side valley on the right. In Sakti we wander in a labyrinth of narrow passages and alleys between huts and chhortens, boulders and walls, mani ringmos and terraces which support cultivated patches laid out in horizontal steps. ”

“ Káli, another incarnation of Sakti, in the war with Raktavija, a demon multiplying his race, as his name implies, from the drops of blood flowing from his body, and touching the earth, is represented as having licked up the blood as it streamed forth from his person with a view to arrest that dreadful propagation. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Saktimati, or Sakri, river rises in the range to the south of the Kawa Kol range, and passes through, or at least hugs, the foot of the Kawa Kol range for several leagues before emerging into the plains; hence the legend of her being the daughter of the Saktimat mountains and the wife (by force) of the Kolahala mountains.
But we have other evidence for the probability of my identification of the Saktimat range of hills. The Vishnu Purân says that the Rishikulya Kumâri and others flow from the Saktimat mountains. ”

“ Viranchi or Brahma the Creator is the aggregation of the perceptible universe. Sakti is therefore above these three, and the consort of Siva. This explains why Kaci is called Tripuraraidhavi, the royal residence of the destroyer of the three cities, the undifferentiated synthetic condition of the three states mentioned above. With regard to the human ego the three cities are the three bodies, gross, subtile and causal, beyond which is the spirit. From this it also becomes clear that Kaci is the eternal Chinmatra which has been well explained by Mr. ”

“ Again, in the Dabistan, a work written in the Persian language, by a travelled Mahometan, about a. d. 1660, and translated by David Shea, for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland (8 vols., 8vo., Allen and Co., Leadenhall Street, London) , we read, vol. ii., pp. 148-160, "The belief of the Saktian is that Siva, that is, Mahadeva, who with little exception is the highest of deities and the greatest of the spirits, has a spouse whom they call Maya Sakti.....With them the power of Mahadeva's wife, who is Bhavani, surpasses that of the husband. ”

“ According to certain interpretations of the Puranas and Tantras, Durga has been made to assume a different character, that is Force, Prakrti, Sakti. But when it is remembered that man's idea of the godhead in the infancy of the world was derived from the manifestations of the sun, moon and stars, the identification of Durga with Dawn, it is to be hoped, will not appear altogether extravagant. Indeed, this theory finds a remarkable confirmation in the Invokation to the Goddess sung by Kalidasa in his Sakuntala or the Lost Ring quoted in the title-page. ”

“ Saktis may be found depicted in temples in any one of the three aspects, the calm, the terrible or the ugly, as distinguished by the particular positions in which they are placed or the circumstances under which they are worshipped. When merely represented as the consorts of the gods they are mild and pleasing in appearance and have only two hands, in one of which is held the lotus bud. More often, however, the goddesses have independent existence. ”

“ When Saktideva, in the fifth book of the “Kathásaritságara,” comes after long travel to the Golden City, and is welcomed as her destined husband by its princess, she warns him not to ascend the central terrace of her palace. Of course he does so, and finds three chambers, in each of which lies the lifeless form of a fair maiden. After gazing at these seeming corpses, in one of which he recognizes his first love, he approaches a horse which is grazing beside a lake. The horse kicks him into the water; he sinks deep—and comes up again in his native land. ”

“ That person who his parents doth support,
Pays honour to the seniors in the house,
Is gentle, friendly-speaking, slanders not;
The man unselfish, true, and self-controlled,
Him do the angels of the Great Thirty Three
Proclaim a righteous man!
Such praise did he receive; and at the end of his life he was born again in the heaven of the Great Thirty Three, as Sakka, the king of the Gods, and there, too, his friends were born again.
At that time there were Titans dwelling in the heaven of the Great Thirty Three.
And Sakka said, “What is the good to us of a kingdom shared by others?” ”

“ The rites are indecent.1934 The mythological stories about the gods have to be converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern mores can tolerate.1935 Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological dramas are represented in front of the image of a deity by men, but in the presence of a general company of men and women.1936 The Sakta worshipers are a sect who worship Sakta, the mighty, mysterious, feminine force recognized in nature, and which they personify as the Mother of the Universe, like the ancient Mother-goddess. ”

“ In most parts of India, if not in all, they are held in deserved detestation; and even the decent Sactas do not make public profession of their tenets, nor wear on their foreheads the marks of their sect, lest they should be suspected of belonging to the other branch of it.... It is some comparative and negative praise to the Hindus, that the emblems under which they exhibit the elements and operations of nature, are not externally indecorous. Unlike the abominable realities of Egypt and Greece, we see the phallic emblem in the Hindu Pantheon without offence ”

“ In these works, almost invariably composed in the form of a colloquy, Siva, as a rule, in answer to questions asked by his consort Parvati, unfolds the mysteries of this occult creed.
The principal seat of Sakta worship is the north-eastern part of India—Bengal, Assam and Behar. The great majority of its adherents profess to follow the right-hand practice; and apart from the implied purport and the emblems of the cult, their mode of adoration does not seem to offer any very objectionable features. ”

“ If we speak to them of God, it appears to them like a dream; and we are compelled to speak of him, not under the name of Menetto, whom they know and serve—for that would be blasphemy—but of one great, yea, most high, Sackiema, by which name they—living without a king—call him who has the command over several hundred among them, and who by our people are called Sackemakers; and as the people listen, some will begin to mutter and shake their heads as if it were a silly fable ”

“ But the flame failed even to heat the pores or the hair on the body of the Wisdom Being, and it was as if he had entered a region of frost. Then he addressed the Brahmin in these words: "Brahmin, the fire that you have kindled is icy cold; it fails to heat the pores of the hair on my body. What is the meaning of this?"
"O most wise Hare! I am Sakka, and have come to put your virtue to the test."
And the Buddha in a sweet voice said: "No god or man could find in me an unwillingness to die."
Then Sakka said: "O wise Hare, be thy virtue know to all the ages to come." ”