Kaumariकौमारी

Kaumari is the spear, and she is a girl.

She is the third of the Saptamatrika, the power of Kartikeya — Murugan, Skanda — in female form, and she comes out of him carrying his equipment: the shakti, the spear that is his defining weapon; the peacock he rides; the cockerel on his banner; and in the fuller versions his six faces.

Her name is the thing to notice. Kaumārī is from kumāra — boy, youth, the unmarried one — which is Kartikeya's own title, Kumara, the eternal youth. The feminine of it means girlhood. Alone among the seven, Kaumari is named not for a god's title or a god's weapon but for an age, and specifically for the state of not being married.

That fits her source exactly. In the northern tradition Kartikeya is the celibate god, the brahmachari, who does not marry — which is why the Delhi and north Indian Kartikeya temples have their particular customs. In the Tamil south he is Murugan, who marries Valli and Devasena and is the most beloved god in the country. His Murugan page carries that split. His shakti, in either case, is a maiden with a spear.

And there is a name-collision that a reader will certainly meet and that this page has to handle carefully. In Nepal, the Kumari is a living child goddess — a prepubescent girl, selected by strict criteria, who is worshipped as the embodiment of the goddess Taleju until she reaches puberty. That is a real, current institution with real children in it, it is not the Matrika Kaumari, and the two are related only by a word. This page keeps them apart and says something factual about the Nepali institution below, because readers arrive here looking for it.

She is in this encyclopedia to complete the seven.

The Devi Mahatmya, chapter eight. The shaktis of the gods emerge and fight; Kaumari comes out of Kartikeya in his form, on his peacock, with his spear. The Brahmani page sets out the group's logic and its likely origin in an older and wilder band of mothers.

Kartikeya's own mothers. There is an extra layer here that the other Matrikas do not have. Skanda is himself bound up with mother-goddesses from very early: the Krittikas, the six stars of the Pleiades who nurse him and give him his name; the Mahabharata's frightening band of mothers who attend him and afflict children; and the bala-graha material the Shashthi page carries. Shashthi herself is Skanda's consort or attendant in several traditions.

So the god whose shakti is the third Matrika is a god already surrounded by matrikas before the scheme of seven existed. If the orderly Saptamatrika is a systematisation of something older, Kartikeya's entourage is one of the places the older thing is visible.

The prescription. The Vishnudharmottara Purana, the Amsumadbhedagama and the other Agamic texts specify her attributes, mount and colour, which is why panels agree across a very wide geography.

Seven, eight or more. As on the Brahmani page. Kaumari is in every list.

In the south. Where Murugan is a major deity in his own right, Kaumari appears in Saptamatrika panels in Pallava, Chola and Chalukya temples — and, notably, the Tamil country's enormous Murugan devotion does not produce a corresponding Kaumari cult. She stays a figure in a row.

In Nepal. As one of the Ashtamatrika ringing the Kathmandu valley towns, with her own pith, chariot and festival. The Maheshwari page describes that system.

A peacock and a spear, and she is young.

The peacock. Beneath her or beside her — the clearest identifier in the row after Brahmani's swan and Maheshwari's bull. Sometimes with a serpent in its beak or under its feet.

The shakti. The spear, held upright. This is Murugan's weapon and its presence with a peacock settles the identification absolutely.

The cockerel. On a banner, or at her feet.

Six faces. In the fuller shanmukha forms, mirroring Kartikeya's six heads; more often a single face.

Youth. The sculptors give her a markedly younger body and face than Maheshwari or Indrani in the same row — slighter, with less ornament. It is the one place in the Saptamatrika convention where age is depicted, and it is depicted because her name requires it.

Colour. Red or yellow, where painted.

Position. Third from the left, after Brahmani and Maheshwari, before Vaishnavi.

Distinguishing her. A goddess on a peacock:

— with a spear, in a row of seven, is Kaumari; — with a vina, is Saraswati in her peacock-mounted form; — male, with a spear and a peacock, is Murugan himself, which is far commoner.

Not the Nepali Kumari, who is a living child and is not depicted as a sculpture at all — though her window at Kumari Ghar in Kathmandu Durbar Square is one of the most photographed in Nepal.

Kaumari / Kumari. From kumāra; girlhood, maidenhood.

Karttikeyani, Shanmukhi, Ambika. Further Matrika-list names; Shanmukhi for the six-faced form.

As one of the Saptamatrika. With Brahmani, Maheshwari, Vaishnavi, Varahi, Indrani and Chamunda — all seven now have pages here.

As one of the Ashtamatrika, in Nepal and the Deccan.

Kumari as a Tantric category. Kumari puja — the worship of a prepubescent girl as the Goddess — is a distinct and widespread practice, performed notably during Navaratri across Bengal, Nepal and elsewhere. It is related to Kaumari by concept and vocabulary rather than by identity, and is discussed below.

The Royal Kumari of Kathmandu and the other Nepali Kumaris — a living institution, not this goddess. Discussed below.

Kanyakumari (Kanniyakumari, Tamil Nadu) — the goddess at the southern tip of India, a Shakti Peetha, whose name also means the maiden. A different goddess, with a different story, and the confusion is frequent.

Not Kumari as an ordinary Indian and Nepali surname and honorific, which is extremely common and carries no reference to any of this.

The emergence. Devi Mahatmya eight, as on the other Matrika pages: the power leaves the god and goes to fight for the Goddess.

Raktabija. The group's failure, which belongs on all seven pages. Her spear, like every other weapon in the row, makes more of him with every wound, and the problem is solved by Chamunda drinking the blood before it lands. The Chamunda and Kali pages carry it.

The absorption. In several recensions the Goddess does not return the shaktis to the gods but takes them into herself, declaring they were hers to begin with. The Maheshwari page sets out what that implies.

Skanda's mothers. The material that is properly Kaumari's own, and it is the oldest layer on this page. In the Mahabharata's Skanda cycle a great many mothers attend the young god — some nurse him, some are dangerous to children, and the boundary between a goddess who protects infants and one who takes them is deliberately thin. Shashthi's page is entirely about that boundary, and the Shitala page about another form of it.

A modern reader should understand what those stories are doing. Before immunisation and before paediatric medicine, most children died, and a religion that had to speak about that produced goddesses who were both the danger and the protection. It is not superstition so much as a vocabulary for an unbearable ordinary fact.

The Krittikas. Six stars, six nurses, six mouths to feed him — which is why he has six faces, and why he is Kartikeya. The Murugan page has it.

In Nepal. The Ashtamatrika cycle, and the masked dances, described on the Maheshwari page.

As one of the seven. Group worship, the pre-rite matrika puja, and Navaratri Ashtami. The Brahmani page has the detail.

In Nepal, individually. As one of the Ashtamatrika, with her own pith, chariot and jatra in the Kathmandu valley towns.

Kumari Puja. The worship of a prepubescent girl as the Goddess, performed during Navaratri — most visibly at Belur Math and across Bengal, and in Nepal. A girl is seated, her feet washed, and she is offered worship and gifts. It is widespread, it is generally brief and celebratory, and it is related to Kaumari by vocabulary rather than identity.

The Nepali Kumari, stated factually. Because readers come here for it: in Nepal a prepubescent girl, traditionally from the Newar Shakya or Bajracharya community, is selected by physical and horoscopic criteria and worshipped as the living embodiment of the goddess Taleju. There is a Royal Kumari of Kathmandu and several others in the valley towns. She lives in the Kumari Ghar, appears at windows and festivals — notably Indra Jatra — and her tenure ends at puberty.

The institution has been the subject of sustained public debate in Nepal and of litigation. In 2008 the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled on a petition concerning the Kumaris' rights and directed that their education and other rights be protected, and arrangements have since changed — former Kumaris have spoken publicly, some critically and some warmly, and tutors and schooling provision were introduced. The encyclopedia states this because a page that mentioned a living child goddess and said nothing about the child would be evading the point. The practice concerns real children; their right to education, health and an ordinary life is not a matter of custom but of law, and Nepal's own courts have said so.

And a claim note. Nothing on this page should be read as a statement about outcomes of any rite.

Bhaktapur, Patan and Kathmandu (Nepal) — the Ashtamatrika piths, the chariots and the jatras; the Bhaktapur Navadurga masked dances. Kumari Ghar, Kathmandu Durbar Square, is the Kumari's residence and is a different tradition, as above. The Durbar Squares are UNESCO World Heritage.

Ellora Caves (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, Maharashtra) — Caves 14, 16, 21; UNESCO.

Elephanta Caves (Mumbai, Maharashtra) — UNESCO.

Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal (Bagalkot district, Karnataka) — early Chalukya Matrika rows; Pattadakal is UNESCO.

Kailasanathar, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu) — Pallava Matrika sculpture.

Osian (Jodhpur district, Rajasthan).

Hirapur and Ranipur-Jharial (Odisha) — the Chausath Yogini temples.

The Arupadai Veedu — Palani, Tiruchendur, Swamimalai, Thiruparankundram, Pazhamudircholai and Thiruthani (Tamil Nadu) — Murugan's six houses, and not hers. Listed because the contrast is the point: the god has six great temples and tens of millions of devotees, and his shakti has a place in a row.

Kanyakumari (Tamil Nadu) — a different maiden goddess, and a Shakti Peetha.

Her name is an age. Every other Matrika is named from a god — Brahmani from Brahma, Maheshwari from Maheshvara, Vaishnavi from Vishnu, Varahi from Varaha, Indrani from Indra, Chamunda from two demons she killed. Kaumari is named from *kumāra, which is a word for an unmarried young person, and her name in the feminine means girlhood. In a set defined entirely by whose power each member is, one of them is defined by how old she is and that she has no husband* — and the sculptors carved her younger to match.

The god's entourage was female before the scheme existed. Skanda arrives in Indian literature already surrounded by mothers: the six Krittikas who nurse him, the band of goddesses who attend him, the bala-grahas who take children. The tidy list of seven shaktis keyed one-to-one to male gods came later and over the top of that. Kaumari is the place where the seam shows.

Child-death, and a vocabulary for it. The goddess-world Kartikeya belongs to — his mothers, Shashthi, Shitala — exists because for most of human history most children died, and people needed to be able to speak about it. Treating that material as primitive misses what it was doing. It was the only language available for the most common catastrophe there was.

And a name that a living child now carries. The Nepali Kumari is not this goddess and shares her word. The encyclopedia's position is that the two should not be conflated, that the Nepali institution is a real and much-debated one involving real children, and that whatever a tradition's antiquity, a child's right to schooling, medical care and an ordinary life is settled by law and not by custom — which Nepal's own Supreme Court has held.

Six temples, and a place in a row. Murugan is among the most passionately worshipped deities in India; his six Arupadai Veedu temples draw enormous crowds, and Thaipusam is observed on three continents. His shakti is a figure at position three on a wall, receiving no offering of her own. Of all the asymmetries between the gods and their Matrikas in this set, hers is the widest, and it is worth noticing on the way past.