Dasha Mahavidya: the ten wisdom goddesses

The Dasha Mahavidya (dasha, ten; maha-vidya, great wisdom) are ten goddesses of the Shakta and Tantric traditions, each a distinct form of the one great goddess. They range from the terrifying, such as Kali dancing on the cremation ground, to the gentle and radiant, such as Kamala seated on a lotus. Devotees see in them the whole range of the divine mother: creation and destruction, beauty and decay, speech and silence. They are especially important in Bengal and Assam, the heartland of goddess worship, and they share a family resemblance with Durga, whom Shakta devotees understand as another face of the same power.

The ten at a glance

The most common list and order are below. Texts differ slightly, and the descriptions summarise widely shared iconography rather than any single scripture.

The origin story: Sati and Shiva

The best-known account of how the Mahavidyas appeared is told in Shakta texts composed in eastern India, notably the Mahabhagavata Purana and the Brihaddharma Purana.

Sati, daughter of Daksha, has married Shiva against her father's wishes. Daksha holds a great sacrifice and pointedly does not invite his son-in-law. Sati wants to go anyway; Shiva forbids it. Furious at being refused, Sati reveals her true nature. Her form becomes terrifying, and when Shiva tries to flee, she multiplies into ten goddesses who block him in all ten directions. Shiva, overawed, asks who they are, and she names them one by one as her own forms. He lets her go to the sacrifice, where, insulted by her father, she gives up her body. Her death leads to Shiva's grief and, in the wider story, to the Shakti pithas, the sacred sites where parts of her body fell.

The story makes a theological point: the goddess is not subordinate to the god. Shiva may be the great ascetic, but the ten Mahavidyas show that the power behind him is hers.

Also readGoddess Durga and her family

The ten goddesses

Kali

The first and most important Mahavidya, the goddess of time and transformation. Dark-skinned, naked or skirted with severed arms, wearing a garland of heads, tongue out, she stands on the prone body of Shiva. In Bengal she is above all Ma, the mother, and her worship on the new-moon night of Kartik is Kali Puja, coinciding with Diwali. Her great Kolkata temples are Kalighat, one of the most important Shakti pithas, and Dakshineswar, built by Rani Rashmoni in the 19th century and known for Sri Ramakrishna, who served there as priest.

Tara

Tara, the saviour who "carries across" the ocean of suffering, resembles Kali but is usually blue and pot-bellied. She is honoured in Buddhism as well as Hinduism. Her most famous shrine in Bengal is Tarapith in Birbhum district, closely associated with the 19th-century saint Bamakhepa, and a major place of pilgrimage.

Tripura Sundari (Shodashi)

The beautiful goddess of the three worlds, also called Lalita and Shodashi. She is the centre of the Sri Vidya tradition, which worships her through the Sri Yantra.

Bhuvaneshwari

Queen of the universe, the goddess as space itself, in which all the worlds take shape. She is gentle and nurturing in form.

Bhairavi

The fierce goddess, often red-skinned, associated with destruction of what is impure and with ascetic discipline.

Chhinnamasta

Perhaps the most startling image in Hindu art: the goddess who has cut off her own head, which drinks a stream of her blood while two attendants drink the other two. She is read as an image of self-sacrifice, of life feeding life, and of transcending the ego. A well-known temple is at Rajrappa in Jharkhand.

Dhumavati

The widow goddess, old and unadorned, associated with smoke, inauspiciousness, poverty and loss. She teaches that even what we fear and avoid is part of the goddess.

Bagalamukhi

The goddess who stops and paralyses, worshipped for victory over enemies and in disputes. She is associated with the colour yellow.

Matangi

A goddess of speech, music and learning, sometimes called the Tantric Saraswati, linked with those on the margins of society and with offerings of leftover food, overturning ideas of purity.

Kamala

The tenth Mahavidya is a form of Lakshmi, seated on a lotus and bathed by elephants. She stands for prosperity, beauty and good fortune, and closes the circle that begins with Kali.

Their place in Bengal's Shakta tradition

Bengal's devotion to the goddess, Shakta tradition, is visible in its calendar: Durga Puja in autumn, Kali Puja about three weeks later, Jagaddhatri Puja after that, and Basanti Puja in spring. The Mahavidyas run through this tradition. Kali and Tara are worshipped across the region; poets such as Ramprasad Sen sang to Kali as mother (see Agomoni and Bijoya songs); and in Assam the Kamakhya temple complex includes shrines to the Mahavidyas.

Detailed worship of most Mahavidyas belongs to Tantric practice and is traditionally taken up under a teacher's guidance. Ordinary devotees more often know them as images, stories and pilgrimage sites.

How they relate to Durga

For Shakta devotees, Durga, the Mahavidyas and the Navadurga of Navratri are all forms of one Mahadevi, great goddess. The Devi Mahatmya itself shows the goddess producing other goddesses: in its seventh chapter, Kali springs from her brow to destroy the demons Chanda and Munda. Bengal also identifies Durga with Uma or Parvati, the reborn Sati, so the Sati who manifested the ten Mahavidyas and the Uma who comes home each autumn are understood as the same goddess.

You may see the connection on the pandal itself. The painted arch behind traditional images, the chalchitra, sometimes depicts the ten Mahavidyas alongside scenes of Shiva, and themed pandals occasionally build their whole design around them. Our guide to reading the Durga image explains the rest of what you will see.