II. Harnessing the Goddess: The Codification of Śākta Iconography and Ritual

[Śmaśāna Kālī] is like a dark cloud of soot. Her eyes are red, her hair is wild, and her body is emaciated and terrible. With her left hand she holds a cup full of wine and meat, and in her right hand she holds a freshly severed human head. She smiles and eats rotten meat...Having contemplated her in this way, one should invoke the Goddess in the cremation ground; or the householder should worship her in the home, with good food, fish and meat.

Bṛhat-Tantrasāra (BTS 461)

Probably the most lasting contribution of the Bṛhat-Tantrasāra is its role in the codification and consolidation of Śākta iconography and ritual. As the "most comprehensive and popular of the numerous digests in Bengal," regarded as "authoritative for all Tantric worship," the Bṛhat-Tantrasāra describes the images of the major deities of the Hindu pantheon and the types of pūjā that would become standard in northeast India to the present day.³⁶ Kṛṣṇānanda helped standardize, for example, the cult of the ten Mahāvidyās (usually identified as Kālī, Tara, Bhuvaneśvarī, Bhairavī, Pracaṇḍacaṇḍikā [Chinnamastā], Dhūmāvatī, Bagalā, Mātaṅgī and Kamalā) which had been growing in popularity since the 14th century (see figs.1, 3).³⁷ Rather significantly, Kṛṣṇānanda not only systematized the iconography of the classical Hindu pantheon; but he also ignored many of the popular folk and tribal deities prevalent in Bengal, such as Manasā, Dharma and other non-brāhmaṇic deities which were enormously popular among the lower classes of the countryside. ³⁸

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