Kamakhya Temple

Maa Kamakhya Temple is in Kamrup Metropolitan District of Assam in India. It is located at about 7 km from Guwahati, the capital city of Assam, and is one of the biggest Shakti shrines in the country. The temple is built high aloft a hill called Neelachal Parbat or Kamagiri. The presiding deity of this Temple is Goddess Kamakhya or Sati, who was one of the numerous incarnations of Goddess Durga or Goddess Shakti.

This temple is dedicated to different forms of Mother Shakti, namely Sundari, Tripura, Tara, Bhuvaneshvari, Bagalamukhi and Chinnamasta. Comprising three major chambers, the present structure is considered as a sacred complex.

The western chamber is rectangular in shape, while the middle chamber is square in shape. The middle chamber consists of inscriptions and images of Naranarayana. The most sacred shrine is located within the temple, which is also the third chamber.

The third chamber with a yoni-like cleft in the bedrock is in the form of a cave. The temple also has a natural spring, which flows through the cleft. This spring helps in keeping the chamber moist.

Dedicated to different forms of Lord Shiva, there are five temples within the complex of Kamakhya temple. In addition, the temple complex also houses three temples of Lord Vishnu, present in the form of Kedara, Gadadhara and Pandunath.

There is a legend attached to this temple, which goes way back to the mythological age. According to the legend, Sati the wife of Lord Shiva (one of the holy Trinities in Hindu mythology) killed herself at a ‘Yagya’ ceremony that had been organized by her father Daksha, because she could not bear the insults hurled at her husband by her father.

On hearing the news of his wife’s death, Shiva, the destroyer of all that was evil flew into a rage and punished Daksha by replacing his head with that of a goat. Torn between misery and blind fury, Shiva picked up the corpse of his beloved wife Sati and performed a dance of destruction called the ‘Tandava’. The intensity of the destroyer’s fury was so overwhelming that it took several Gods to pacify his anger. In the midst of this struggle, Sati’s corpse accidentally got cut into 51 parts by the disc in the hands of Lord Vishnu (also one of the Trinities in Hindu mythology), and her female genitalia or ‘Yoni’ fell on the spot where the Kamakhya temple stands today.

The former temple was destroyed by Kala Pahar, which was later reconstructed in 1565 by Chilarai, who was the reigning king of the Koch dynasty. King Nara Narayana of Cooch Behar rebuilt the temple in 1665 after it had suffered destruction at the hands of foreign invaders. The temple consists of seven oval spires, each topped by three golden pitchers, and the entrance spirals down to a curvy path of some distance, which specially links the main road to the temple. Some of the sculptured panels of the temple carry depictions of Gods and Goddesses of Hindu pantheon carved in a delightful pattern.

The greatest shrine of tantric Shaktism find mention in the inscription of the Allahabad pillar of Samudragupta.

Nearby pages
Kamakshya Devalaya, Kamal Sreemani, Kamar, Kamchatka, Kamdev, Kameng, Kamlang Wildlife Sanctuary