Kamakhya

About Kamakhya

Kamakhya has no idol. Inside her temple on Nilachal Hill in Guwahati, devotees worship a yoni-shaped cleft in living rock, fed by a natural spring — the spot where Sati's womb is said to have fallen, making it one of the 51 Shakti Peethas. The Yoginitantra paints her kumkum-yellow, three-eyed, tongue out, sun and moon as earrings, standing on a corpse atop a red lotus. Ten smaller shrines around her hold the ten Mahavidyas — Kali, Tara, Chhinnamasta and the rest — who all flow from her. Each June, the Ambubachi Mela marks her menstruation: the doors shut for three days, then open to lakhs of seekers.