Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति, IAST: Śakti; 'energy, ability, strength, effort, power, might, capability') in Hinduism, is the "Universal Power" that underlies and sustains all existence. Conceived as feminine in essence, Shakti as devi refers to the personified energy or power of a male deity, often personified as the complementary force of the given Hindu god.
In Tantric Shaktism, Shakti is the foremost deity, akin to Brahman. In Puranic Hinduism, Shiva and Shakti are the masculine and feminine principles that are complementary to each other. The female deity is prakriti, the active, dynamic and creative principle. The male deity is purusha, the passive, unchanging and observing principle. The interaction of both principles is what creates the universe.
The term Shakta is used for the description of people associated with Shakti worship. The Shakti pithas are shrines, which are believed to be the sacred seats of Shakti.
Overview
Etymology The word Śakti is derived from the Sanskrit root śak- ("to be able," "to have a certain capacity or power to do anything.") śak derives from the proto-Indo-European root ḱek- ("to achieve, accomplish, be able, capable.") In Vedic literature, śakti is closely related to śacī, which is also derived from the same root śak, and is used often in instrumental plural and meant "energy", "function" or "power".
According to the Monier-Williams dictionary, Shakti (Śakti) is the sanskrit feminine word-meaning "energy, ability, strength, effort, power, might, capability". Relatedly, Shakta (, ), is used for people and traditions associated with Shakti worship. Shakta became popular from the ninth-century onwards, before that the term Kula or Kaula, which referred to clans of female ancestry, besides to the menstrual and sexual fluids of females was used to describe the believers in Shakti.
Prologue New learners of Hinduism often get confounded by its fluid discourses on the divine. The numerous Hindu deities can make one regard it as polytheistic, such categorization, however, is rather simplistic or misguided. Hindus have since the earliest times viewed the divine as being both one and many, with the two views considered mutually nonexclusive. From around 200 BCE, devotional movements in Hinduism started to group the numerous gods under a sovereign deity, two such common groupings were under Vishnu or Shiva, with the followers known as vaishnava and shaiva respectively. The followers of any of the Hindu goddesses honoured as the supreme goddess became shakta. Starting around 500 CE, Hindu Tantric religious cults developed among the shaiva sects, in the subsequent centuries Tantra developed amongst the sects of Vishnu, Goddesses, Buddha, and other obscure religious traditions. Goddesses and their associated traditions became prominent from the Tantric age.
The idea of God being female may appear radical, but goddesses form the foundation of the ancient Indian religious traditions. Hinduism has been cited by scholars of Religion as having the most extensive living Goddess traditions amongst all the extant religions. The concept of Shakti, as the supreme cosmic power that projects and sustains all existence, forms the basis of Hindu ideations of female deities. Much has been written to describe, define, and delineate Shakti, which, is primarily identified with the feminine and with the numerous Hindu goddesses, seen as tangible expressions-visible personifications of the intangible Shakti—a notion arrived at after centuries of deliberation.
In studying Indian religions and their associated philosophies, one finds terms in combination with Shakti, such as; adya Shakti (primal energy), cit Shakti (energy of consciousness), para Shakti (supreme energy) etc.—all of which, by their association with Shakti indicate that the respective concept is feminine. Though Shakti has broad implications, it mostly denotes "power or energy, which is feminine", and is also a name by which goddesses are referred. The term Shakti also covers maternal religious experiences and spiritual histories transmitted generationally by Hindu female elders.
Origins and development Archaeological excavations have been studied to trace the origins and development of goddess worship cultures. One of the earliest representation of a mother goddess dates back to the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe 20,000 years ago. Though goddess worship cults prevailed since antiquity in India, they gained popularity in the post Gupta era (6th century CE), much of it attributed to their esoteric practices. Apart from the Indian sculptures, the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantras constitute the major literary sources detailing the development of goddess culture in Hinduism.
Pre-Vedic goddess worship The origins of Shakti concept are prevedic. Sites related to the worship of the mother goddess or Shakti were found in Paleolithic context at the Son River valley, where a triangular stone known as the Baghor stone, estimated to have been created around 9,000–8,000 BCE was found. The excavation team, which included Kenoyer, considered it highly probable that the stone was associated with Shakti or the female principle. The representation of Shakti by a stone is an early example of yantra.
Scholars assume that goddess worship prevailed in the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300–1300 BCE) as many terracotta female figurines with smoke-blacked headgear, suggesting their use in rituals had been found in almost all the houses of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Numerous artefacts that appear to portray female deities were also found. This development however is not assumed to be the earliest precursor of goddess worship in India; it has evolved over a long period of time before.
In the Vedic era The Veda Samhitas are the oldest scriptures that mention Hindu goddesses. The Rigveda and the Atharvaveda are the main sources about various goddesses from the Vedic period (). Ushas, the goddess of dawn was the most praised. Though male deities such as Indra and Agni have been more popular in the Vedic era, female deities were represented as personifications of important aspects like: Earth (Prithvi), Mother of Gods (Aditi), Night (Ratri), and Speech (Vāc/Vāk). The Vedic male deities were conceived of as personifications of powerful natural forces (Vayu-air, Agni-fire), who had as their core a nucleic of various powers, shaktis, or, as it was then termed Śacīs.
Śacī is the typical vedic term to denote a deities 'divine powers', and was used in Rigveda mostly in connection with Indra. Most of the goddesses in the Vedic era were presented as wives of gods. They had no special powers nor an individual name either, rather, they took their respective husband's name with feminine suffixes, as with Indrani, the wife of Indra. Though the vedic goddesses had no power, one Rigvedic hymn (10.159) addressed Indrani as Śacī Poulomī and presented her as the "deification" of Indra's power. The term Śacī here meant "the rendering of powerful or mighty help, assistance, aid, especially of the 'deeds of Indra'." The Rig vedic Śacī was a conscious intelligent faculty, rather than a blind physical force, and was thought to be inherently constituted in the male deity. The subsequent usage of the word Gnā lit women in the Rigveda to represent divine female partners, who were distinctly separate principles of 'female energy' and acted in unison with the male gods, is seen as a major step in the conception of Śakti being the divine power that exists independent of a deity and something not inherently present within it.
Eventually, in the Hindu texts, the idea of Shakti being the divine feminine energy became more pronounced as the wives, the gnās, the divine females accompanying the gods, began to personify the powers of their husbands. Despite arriving at this stage, it was only later, after a lot of philosophical speculation and understanding the connecting factor underlying the universe, that the idea of Shakti being the feminine unity that pervades all existence was developed. Precursors to later conceptions of Shakti In the Veda Brahmanas, all the different Gnās (wives of gods) were merged under a singular goddess Vāc, regarded as the most typical gnā. The Devīsūkta in the Rigveda, addressed to the goddess Vāc, became the progenitor of goddess theology that evolved later. Here, (10.125), the Rishis conceived Vāc as "the active power of Brahman proceeding from him"; Verses 1 and 2 presented her as the "Supreme Female Energy" sustaining and stimulating actions of the Vedic gods; in verses 3 and 8, she is considered "Speech" in the feminine form; Verse 4 states, she is the "one great sustaining principle" of all life on earth; verses 5 to 8 assert her as the "subtle ubiquitous principle of energy" that pervades all.
Prominent characteristics of Vāc were subsequently incorporated into the identity of Saraswati, a minor river goddess in the Vedas, but later became the goddess of knowledge and the "Mother of the Vedas". The river Saraswati was worshiped as her waters were believed to provision spirit of fertility along her banks which had abundant crop cultivation. An epithet used for Saraswati in the Rigveda was "Ambitamā" or 'most motherly'. This was one of the earliest conception of motherly nature of female divinity and was later developed fully among the Shakta sects in the Puranic and the Tantric eras.
Late Vedic-Upanishad era The Upanishads did not feature goddesses notably. However, the ideas devised during this era became significant in later conceptions of Shakti. The theory of Shakti advocated in Shakta Upanishads was predicated on the upanishadic idea of Brahman, a gender-neutral Absolute, considered God, whose nature is all-encompassing. The all-pervasive nature of Brahman gave rise to the belief that both human and divine, are in essence similar. This led to the concept of a connecting factor between the absolute and human — called Atman. At this time, unsurprisingly there was no emphasis on the divine feminine, as Brahman is neither male or female.
The early Upanishads postulated a transcendental absolute — it cannot be depicted or understood, but be known only through Jñāna (insight, intuition). The later Upanishads however presented the idea of Saguna Brahman (manifest absolute), thus giving it an accessible form. In the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the impersonal Brahman becomes personal god, portrayed as "manifest Lord or Īśvara", thereby enabling a "theistic relationship" between deity and devotee. The Vedic ideations of Vāc reached their fulfillment in the Shvetashvatara were Ishvara is associated with 'Supreme Śakti' which was not a fully separate principle but belonged to him as his own.
During the classical period The complete identification of goddess with Shakti was not fully realised until the classical period of Hinduism ( to 1200 CE). This period saw the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, including the Bhagavad Gita. These were largely complemented by Puranas, a body of literature built upon the ideas of Upanishads, but primarily made up of myth and legend proclaiming supremacy of a particular deity and equating their nirguna (unmanifest) state with Brahman. Most Puranas were dedicated to male deities, particularly Vishnu and Shiva, later Shakta puranas were allotted to goddess. Shakti worship that receded in the Vedic period became prominent from late classical period (ca. 600 CE) onward during which she was personified as Devi (Goddess). Development in the Puranas