The princess and the beheaded sisters: The forgotten Indian women gurus of Tantric Buddhism

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Bibek Bhattacharya A thousand years ago, generations of Indian Buddhist women fought patriarchy and the caste system, worked miracles and inspired profound religious change. This is their story An 11th century miniature painting from Bengal depicting Bodhisattva Tara as a guru dispensing boons to a Buddhist 'siddha' community.
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When Kali Puja rolls around in Bengal, people come in droves to the pandals to gape at the clay figurines of goddess Kali's frighteningly monstrous, charnel ground retinue. One figure that holds immense awed fascination is Chinnamasta, the severed-headed goddess, one of the 10 mahavidyas of Hindu Shakta tantra.
When Kali Puja rolls around in Bengal, people come in droves to the pandals to gape at the clay figurines of goddess Kali's frighteningly monstrous, charnel ground retinue. One figure that holds immense awed fascination is Chinnamasta, the severed-headed goddess, one of the 10 mahavidyas of Hindu Shakta tantra.
This fascination is unsurprising, because Chinnamasta stands naked on a corpse or a couple having sex, brandishing a sword in one hand, and her own severed head in the other, while two lines of spurting blood from her neck splatter into the mouths of her two attendants, women as naked as the goddess, Vairochani and Varnani. The third, central stream of blood lands in the mouth of her severed head.
Chinnamasta seems to have been a popular—if minor—goddess in Bengal and some other parts of India, for a very long time. One might think that this fascination stems from the strong presence of Shakta cults (tantric groups that worship Shakti or feminine power) in these places. The real reason though, is that Chinnamasta is a tantric Buddhist Vajrayana goddess, who was at the centre of a strong cult in India in 9-10 century CE. Back then she was called Chinnamunda Vajravarahi, and her attendants Vajravairochani and Vajravarnani. Some of the great adepts of this cult were women mahasiddhas (the great awakened ones). THE MASTERS OF TANTRA
The subject of the participation of women in Indian Buddhism is not very well understood by historians. While this is in part a result of a paucity of sources, we do know that Indian Buddhist communities, at various times, supported robust sanghas of nuns. This ebbed and flowed depending on the shifting political tides in South Asia, probably reaching its lowest point when Brahminical caste strictures and patriarchal norms became hegemonic around 1,000 years ago.
However, what has received even less attention is the role played by Buddhist laywomen in popular Mahayana and Vajrayana cults. The Mahayana placed a great deal of importance in the direct participation of the Buddhist laity in rituals and learning, believing it to be the best way of countering Brahminical social influence. By the time its tantric cousin Vajrayana became widespread around the 8th century CE, the focus had turned firmly towards non-monastic ritual specialists among Buddhist householders. For in Vajrayana, there is no real dichotomy between nirvana and samsara, merely a difference in perception. Anyone could become a Buddha, in just one lifetime. One just needed the necessary spiritual training. Also Read | The Buddhist ateliers of ancient Magadha
It is in this context that we find the rise of Buddhist tantric specialists—Vajracharyas, panditas and siddhas. Many of them were women gurus who founded transmission lineages of monks, lay specialists and later Tibetan lamas that exist to this day in Nepal and Tibet.
One such woman was Lakshminkara, also known as Lakshmi or Srimatidevi. A Kashmiri princess and the sister of Indrabhuti, the king of Oddiyana (in the Swat Valley in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), Lakshminkara was no ordinary Buddhist.But her struggles with a patriarchal society and her ultimate rejection of its strictures to pursue the life of a Vajrayana sadhaka is emblematic of the times.
We cannot be entirely sure if there were one or more women gurus with that name, or exactly when she lived, but most scholars place her sometime in the 9th century CE, at a time when the popularity and political prestige of Vajrayana was at its zenith in India. Also Read | The other Kalis
Her biography is maintained in quite a few histories of Indian siddhas, though most only survive in the Tibetan translations of lost Sanskrit and Apabhramsa originals. One of these is the well-known 12th century work Chaturasiti Siddha Pravritti (The Lives of the Eighty-Four Mahasiddhas) by Bihari monk Abhayadatta.
The 84 mahasiddhas are the folk heroes of Vajrayana—masters of the mahamudra (the great seal of enlightenment), composers of mystical dohas(spiritual songs), writers of tantras and workers of miracles who had attained Buddhahood through intense yogic practices. They were a diverse bunch: Princes and kings, basket weavers and fishers, cowherds, wine sellers, tribals, sex workers and Brahmins who had converted to Buddhism.
Stories of their lives are replete with miracles and acts of profound kindness, but also trenchant critiques of the caste system and wilful breaking of taboos—from sexual to religious. By breaking every rule, they showed the ultimate meaninglessness of human laws and logic before the ultimate Buddhist truth—the void, or sunyata.
But they were scholars too, writing key tantra texts, as well as commentaries on tantras, meditation and visualisation manuals, and songs in local languages in order to introduce esoteric Buddhist concepts to common people. They took disciples from all sections of society, and began transmission lineages that still exist. THE PRINCESS AND THE BEHEADED SISTERS
So, who exactly was Lakshminkara? Here's a brief version of her biography, mostly based on the scholar Miranda Shaw's translation in her book Buddhist Goddesses of India.
A princess from a Buddhist kingdom, Lakshmi was betrothed to Jalendra, a Hindu king of Lankapuri. When she travelled to her fiancé's kingdom, she was shocked to learn that he was fond of hunting. The sight of piles of slaughtered animals horrified her and she decided not to marry him. She gave away her dowry, stripped off her clothes and retreated to a cremation ground, vowing to give her life over to attaining enlightenment.
Lakshminkara would spend seven years meditating and mastering the Buddhist tantric practices in a cave, finally attaining a heightened spiritual state. She was served upon by a large retinue of disciples and celestial spirits. Her reputation as a great siddha attracted people from across Lanka, including Jalendra, who asked her to be his guru. She refused, instead directing him to learn from one of her disciples. A statue of Vajrayogini from the 11th century CE, found in Rajgir, Bihar.
Lakshminkara's personal deity was Vajrayogini, and she seemed to have focused especially on the severed-headed emanation of Vajrayogini—Chinnamunda. Of the three extant Buddhist sadhanas on Chinnamunda, two are by her. The Chinnamunda Vajravarahi Sadhana is preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist cannon, translated from the Sanskrit original by a Newari pandit from Kathmandu called Varendraruchi. The other one, called Lakshmi-sadhana, is preserved in Newari, also translated by Varendraruchi.
A third Chinamunda sadhana by the siddha Sabara exists in the great Sanskrit Vajrayana meditation manual, the Sadhana-mala, which was compiled in the famous monastery of Vikramashila, near Bhagalpur, Bihar, in the 11th century. Also Read | Chasing Buddhas across Bihar
The other main source of Chinnamunda's cult were also women—the mahasiddha sisters Mekhala and Kanakhala. They were from Maharashtra, and likely lived in the 10th century CE, a few decades after Lakshminkara. The story of the sisters is another stark commentary on how the tantric path allowed women to overturn the pressures of patriarchy. They were engaged to be married to two brothers when they were subjected to a sustained campaign of gossip accusing them of being women with loose morals. The joint wedding was broken off and the sisters became social outcasts.
It was then that they met renowned Bengali Buddhist mahasiddha Kanhapada aka Krishnacharya. He was passing through their town with a huge entourage of disciples. Mekhala, the elder sister, told Kanakhala that rather than running away from their troubles, they should seek the freedom of the Vajrayana path. When they asked him to teach them, Kanha agreed and initiated them in the practice of Chinnamunda.
The sisters undertook the practice together for the next 12 years, before travelling to Bengal to meet Kanha. When they declared that they had attained the siddhi of the Chinnamunda practice, Kanha demanded that they show their mastery by cutting off their heads. Without missing a beat, Mekhala and Kanakhala drew swords out of their mouths and beheaded themselves with a flourish. Brandishing their heads in their hands, they levitated and started dancing and singing: 'We have destroyed all distinctions between samsara and nirvana, we have united vision and action…we know no separation between self and others." A miniature painting from 11th century Bengal of the Tantric Buddhist goddess Kurukulla.
Kanha hailed them as great siddhas, restored their severed heads to their bodies and authorised them to teach. According to the 17th century Tibetan historian Taranath's biography of Kanha, Mekhala and Kanakhala's performance even persuaded a local Bengali king to convert to Buddhism. Another time, the sisters came across a group of Shaiva tantric yogis who started heckling them. The sisters magically transported the yogis and their houses to a far away desert, and allowed the yogis to return only once they had apologised.
Mekhala and Kanakhala's song of enlightenment survives in Tibetan translation. As does an instruction manual teaching would-be sadhakas the yoga and meditation techniques of visualising the deity Chinnamunda, and through this practice, experiencing the mahasukha (the Great Bliss). A HIDDEN TRADITION
Lakshminkara, Mekhala and Kanakhala are but three women in a long list of named and unnamed Indian female masters of Vajrayana. These include the gurus of famous male siddhas like Sarahapada, who was taught by an unnamed tribal arrow-maker, who later became his consort. Then there was the 11th century Niguma, an important teacher in the lineage of the tantric Buddha Chakrasamvara.
Others, like the housewife guru Manibhadra, or Vajravati, a Kashmiri Brahmin who rejected prejudice to learn from a siddha from a caste of basket weavers, serve as paradigmatic figures in the radical ideology of equality that underpins Vajrayana. All of them lived at a time when Buddhism was in its final, most socially radical phase in India. Squeezed between the oppressive political power of a resurgent Hinduism and weaponised caste rules, and the ever-present threat of violent military campaigns, the lives of the tantric siddhas became exemplary beacons of a life rooted in love, compassion, self-liberation, and a community of proud outcastes. Also Read | How the Kanheri Caves tell us a secret history of Mumbai
Although now entirely forgotten in India, these siddhas were popular enough that many were imported into Hindu siddha traditions like that of the Shaivaite Natha-yogis. The lives and songs of other Buddhist masters were to be adopted by radical anti-caste Hindu groups like the Sahajiya Vaishnavas and later the Bauls. Goddesses like Chinnamunda Vajravarahi, whose entire tradition revolves around fiercely independent women, were absorbed by Hindu tantric traditions as Chinnamasta, in turn making these traditions more popular and humanistic in outlook. This secret revolution from within may well constitute the greatest victory of India's Buddhist women masters. Topics You May Be Interested In