A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion, Geography, History, and Literature c5.777

c5.777

KĀLIKĀ PURĀNA. One of the eighteen Upa Purānas. “It contains about 9000 stanzas in 98 chapters, and is the only work of the series dedicated to recommend the worship of the bride of Siva, in one or other of her manifold forms as Giri-jā, Devī, Bhadra-kālī, Kālī, Mahā-māyā. It belongs, therefore, to the Sākta modification of Hindu belief, or the worship of the female powers of the deities. The influence of this worship shows itself in the very first pages of the work, which relate the incestuous passion of Brahmā for his daughter, Sandhyā, in a strain that has nothing analogous to it in the Vāyu, Linga, or Siva Purānas. The marriage of Siva and Pārvatī is a subject early described, with the sacrifice of Daksha and the death of Satī. And this work is authority for Siva’s carrying the dead body about the world, and the origin of the Pīthasthānas, or places where the different members of it were scattered, and where Lingas were consequently erected. A legend follows of the births of Bhairava and Vetāla, whose devotion to the different forms of Devī furnishes occasion to describe, in great detail, the rites and formulæ of which her worship consists, including the chapters on sanguinary sacrifices translated in the *Asiatic Researches* (vol. v.). Another peculiarity in this work is afforded by very prolix descriptions of a number of rivers and mountains at Kāmarūpa Tīrtha, in Assam, and rendered holy ground by the celebrated temple of Durgā in that country, as Kāmākshī or Kāmākshyā. It is a singular and yet uninvestigated circumstance, that Assam, or at least the north-east of Bengal, seems to have been, in a great degree, the source from which the Tāntrika and Sākta corruptions of the religion of the Vedas and Purāṇas proceeded.”—*Wilson*.