The goddess Kāmākhyā: religio-political implications in the tribalisation process

This article examines the cross-cultural influence that worked on the absorption process of the goddess Kāmākhyā (Assam) within the Brahmanic pantheon, through a correlation of textual and historical-religious evidences. In Assam the cross-cultural interaction, between local tribes and Indo-Aryan speakers, began around 200 BCE–100 CE—when the Vedic culture had already changed from its earlier theological pattern. Therefore after had been influenced by a long cross-cultural negotiation, the early medieval North-eastern purāṇas transformed the dakṣayajña myth, legitimising the temple of Kāmākhyā on Nīlācala as the greatest śākta pīṭha (seat of power), where the yoni (vulva) of Satī is preserved. In this way, the śākta purāṇas reconnected Nīlācala–Kāmākhyā not only to the sexual symbolism, but also to an ancient cremation ground and its death imaginary—a fact that the systematisation of the yoginī cult (ninth–eleventh century) into the Yoginī Kaula school corroborated. In this cross-cultural context, the early medieval Assamese dynasties emerged tied to the danger of liminal powers—linked to both the heterodox śākta-tantra sects and tribal traditions—whom were harnessed by the kings through exoteric and esoteric rituals practised at Kāmākhyā.