ABSTRACT
Worship of goddesses or divine feminine manifestations is surely one of the oldest religious expressions on the Indian subcontinent, though as a sectarian or textual movement it became integrated into the more orthodox Sanskritic tradition at a relatively late period. Śākta, that which pertains to Śakti, the power of the universe conceived of as a goddess, is often considered to be the third major Hindu sectarian tradition, after Vaiṣṇava (worship of Viṣṇu) and Śaiva (worship of Śiva) traditions, but it is much more difficult to delineate than either of those. For one thing, all Hindus worship goddesses as part and parcel of a nonsectarian polytheism. For another, goddesses and concepts of śakti saturate the Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva traditions. It is a common saying that all Brāhmaṇs are Śākta because of their daily recitation of the preeminent Gāyatrī-mantra, the prayer to the sun which is personified as the goddess Sāvitrī or Gāyatrī, the wife of Brahmā and mother of the Veda. If one defines as Śākta those who worship goddesses, from the Brāhmaṇ priest who recites his daily Gāyatrī to the men and women of even the lowest castes who propitiate their village and family goddesses, then Śāktas are to be found everywhere. But there is also a sense in which Śāktas are difficult to find, either in scholarly literature or as a label of self-identification among practitioners. In scholarly literature Śāktism is often ignored, subordinated to Vaiṣṇavism or even more commonly to Śaivism, or conflated with Tantrism. It is often misunderstood, especially by Western scholars, even to the point where in a recent world religions textbook, a scholar of Hinduism declares—erroneously—that Śāktism cannot be considered a mārga or path to liberation because it is concerned only with obtaining worldly benefits for the worshiper, not liberation from the realm of saṃsāra (Hein 1993). Because of Śākta association with unorthodox Tantric practices and non-Vedic or tribal cultures, some goddess worshipers are hesitant to label themselves Śākta and practice their tradition in secret or under the guise of Śaivism. As a Bengali saying goes, one should be “Vaiṣṇava in public, Śaiva in private, and Śākta in secret.”
