Goddess Dakshina Kali – Form and Fact

Dakshina Kali is the most popular form of Goddess Kali in Bengal. She is the benevolent mother, the daughter of Bengal, who always protects her devotees from different mishaps and misfortunes. But how did this form of the goddess become so dear to the devotees of Bengali Shakta sect? Let’s know this fact.

In Bengal as well as in India, Goddess Kali was not worshiped in any house as she was considered as a very fierce goddess. In the worship of Adishakti, the devotees did not make any physical form of the goddess. The goddess was worshiped in a cave, on a rock, in a deep forest, at a village junction, or on the banks of a river. Even then, Goddess Kali could not become the daughter of Bengal. The following story is the fact of Kali’s transformation from the fierce goddess, Devi Kali to a Bengali home girl.

In the seventeenth century, a great saint named Krishnananda Agambagis was born in Navadwipa, Nadia, India, probably between 1600 and 1610 AD. The great saint Krishnananda wanted to give shape to the goddess Kali from her formlessness. But he could understand what the form of Matrimurti (the idol of the mother goddess) could be, as long as the devotee was only eager to see the form of mother. All day and night he prayed to goddess, “Mother, I want your real form.”

The mother goddess could not but fulfill the desire of her child (Krishnananda). One night when Krishnananda was half asleep, he heard a celestial voice, “the first woman you will see at the end of this night will be my true embodiment.”

The next morning, while going out to bathe in the Ganges, Krishnananda saw a poor housewife making cow-dung cakes. She had dung in her left hand, and her right hand was raised high and was kneading. She belonged to a so-called Indian lower caste. Her complexion was black, her body was sallow, her frizzy hair was on her back, and her elbow was covered with vermilion as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. In this situation, she was ashamed to see Krishnananda. After returning home, Krishnananda painted the same image of the housewife in his Manaspat (the canvas of mind)and started making her idol out of Ganga clay. This idol (as an idol of goddess Dakshina Kali) of Krishnananda later became popular in Bengal.

By Krishna Das