Historically grounded scholarship on the tantric goddesses known as Mahāvidyās has been lacking to date. Jae-Eun Shin's monograph thus fills an important vacuum in the study of Indian religions, complementing the phenomenologically-oriented monograph of the late David Kinsley.Footnote ¹ The book is based upon the author's doctoral thesis from the University of Delhi (Department of History) and more recent published articles. Shin's principal contention is that the Mahāvidyās, best known as a set of ten, are products of complex historical processes associated with Brahmanical Hinduism's localization in eastern India, in a dialogical relationship with local cultures.

This is a work in five chapters, inclusive of the introduction and conclusion. Its heart is Chapter 3, “Making of the Mahāvidyās in the Śākta Upapurāṇas and Tantras in Eastern India,” and Chapter 4, “Locating of the Mahāvidyās in the Sacred Landscape.” It is here that the author makes her most original contributions, in my view. Chapter 2, “Grouping of Multiple Feminine Divinities,” concerns the background and precursors to the Mahāvidyās in first- and early second-millennium sources. This long chapter (pp. 56–161) first chronicles the development of goddess groups identified as precursors to the Mahāvidyās: early first-millennium mother-goddess (mātṛ) groups, the mid-first-millennium Brahmanical Seven Mothers (saptamātṛs), and the still later tantric goddesses known as yoginīs. The third section mainly concerns Tārā and Chinnamastā, two prominent Mahāvidyās with Mahāyāna Buddhist roots, as well as the Jaina tantric goddesses known as vidyādevīs. Making this chapter ambitious are its long forays, based largely on secondary literature, into such complex issues as the formation of Śāktism, the rise of tantric goddess cults and yoginī temples, and the histories of Kālī and Tripurasundarī. Important insights emerge, such as parallels between the Mahāvidyā Mātaṅgī and the Jaina Vidyādevī Vajrāṅkuśī, who is also a Vajrayāna goddess (pp. 133–34); locating these jewels nonetheless requires shifting through a rather long review of often outdated scholarship.

Chapter 3 begins with a useful account of brahmanical expansion and state formation in eastern India, then proceeds to the compilation of the east-Indian Śākta Upapurāṇas, carrying forward the arguments of Kunal Chakrabarti.Footnote ² The highlight of this chapter is its examination of Mahāvidyā narratives from the Devībhāgavata, Bṛhaddharma, and Mahābhāgavata Purāṇas, which the author interprets in light of evidence from the Kālikāpurāṇa, Devīpurāṇa, Devīmāhātmya, and other purāṇas, Smṛti literature, and Śākta tantras (such as the the Toḍala) and digests. Here Shin offers a fascinating account of the Brahmanical negotiation of tantric traditions and of the Mahāvidyās’ transformation – their “subjugation” and “domestication.” As she observes, the puranic incorporation of material from tantras was “selective and contradictory” (p. 186), shaped by multiple religious agendas and dispositions. Shin's nuanced readings probe the construction of Vedic authority vis-à-vis the tantras, the negotiation of religious identity and social hierarchy, and the influence of Vaiṣṇavism and Śrīvidyā. Less convincing is the suggestion (pp. 178–80) that the emaciated, fierce goddess Kṣemaṅkarī of the circa eighth–ninth century Devīpurāṇa (chapter 39) is a precursor to the cult of Kālī and the Mahāvidyās. The only basis for this seems to be the fact that Kṣemaṅkarī has an entourage of eight unnamed vidyā-goddesses (vidyāṣṭaka); but this is a weak link, for fierce deities with retinues of eight mantra-goddesses are not unusual in period tantras.

Chapter 4 concerns the religious history of Nīlācala hill in Assam, site of the famous Kāmākhyā temple. Unusually, the hill also features temples of the Daśa (ten) Mahāvidyās. Shin weaves together more than a millennium of this site's history, from its possible origins as a tribal sacred site and Gupta-era cave temple to its emergence as the seat of Kāmākhyā, its early-modern reconstruction, and ongoing patronage. Shin provides an illuminating account of the social history of the site and its evolving place in sacred geography.Footnote ³ One of the chapter's highlights is its analysis of the Kālikāpurāṇa's “reformulation of Tantric sacred geography in a regional context” (p. 268), part of the larger process of the “Puranic reshaping of Tantric sacred geography” (p. 273). The chapter also advances an intriguing hypothesis: that the ten Mahāvidyās on Nīlācala supplanted an earlier yoginī cult – possibly a yoginī temple – around the twelfth century. In this regard, the material evidence Shin adduces is not on its own convincing: period images of Cāmuṇḍā, Vārāhī, and Bhairavī (if correctly identified) found in the area do not necessarily intimate a larger set (or sets) of yoginīs or mātṛs, since these goddesses could be cult deities in their own right. On the other hand, the Kālikāpurāṇa speaks of yoni shrines of eight yoginīs surrounding Kāmākhyā, the original yoni, and Shin's hypothesis that these were later supplanted by shrines of the Mahāvidyās is tantalizing. The chapter's final section concerns Kāmākhyā's later transformations, including the site's restoration by the Koches at the height of their political power in the mid-sixteenth century, and subsequent patronization by the Ahom rulers. In this process the Mahāvidyās became increasingly benign, puranic goddesses, despite their roots in tantric yoginī cults. Chapter 5, the conclusion, weaves together the historical picture painted in earlier chapters and offers further reflections on the socio-religious implications of the Mahāvidyās.

This book certainly enriches our understanding of the history of the Mahāvidyās. Shin assembles a detailed genealogy for each of the main goddesses, from the ubiquitous Kālī to the obscure crane-faced Bagalāmukhī, and provides the best account to date of when and how the famous group of ten and less well-known groupings of twelve or more came together. No doubt further advances are possible given how vast and poorly charted medieval tantric literature remains. For instance, Michael Slouber has recently clarified the history of Tvaritā, a tantric goddess associated with cure of snakebite sometimes included among the Mahāvidyās.Footnote ⁴ Two of the Mahāvidyās, Mātaṅgī and Dhūmāvatī, are attested somewhat earlier than Shin notes, appearing in the circa twelfth-century Śāradātilaka, though they are not there called mahāvidyās.Footnote ⁵ Dhūmāvatī also appears in the circa thirteenth-century Matsyendrasaṃhitā.Footnote ⁶ The contention that Mahāvidyā groups are first attested in the Mahākālasaṃhitā, and that this text dates to as early as the tenth century, surely requires revision, for it only comes into evidence in citations in very late sources, such as the seventeenth-century Tārābhaktisudhārṇava.Footnote ⁷ Further research is needed to clarify the chronology of the east-Indian Kaula literature composed between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, where the Mahāvidyās likely first appear.

One of the concerns of Chapter 1 is the history of the terms vidyā and mahāvidyā. Shin notes correctly that vidyā is a term for mantras “almost exclusively applied to goddesses in Tantric traditions” (p. 25). There is much more to be said, though: the evidence from first millennium Śaiva tantras (of which one branch is the Vidyāpīṭha, the “Vidyā-mantra Corpus”) is scarcely considered, and likewise early Buddhist tantric and dhāraṇī literature, which includes texts such as the Mahāpratisarā-Mahāvidyārājñī (“The Great Amulet, Great Queen of Spells”).Footnote ⁸ Shin advances the fascinating claim that vidyās represent religious lore and supernatural powers “owned by those living beyond the confines of settled agrarian society”; she claims that “the ambiguous power of the forest and its people were abstractly conceptualized and defined as vidyā” (p. 27). Examining literary representations of magic and marginal peoples is certainly important, but Shin's conclusion here rests on limited evidence: two tales, from the Bṛhakathāślokasaṃgraha and Divyāvadāna, featuring a vidyādharī “sorceress” from the forest-dwelling mātaṅga community. I highlight this case because it exemplifies two larger issues in the book: first, there is a tendency to conflate “Tantra” with “tribal.” Simply put, more rigor and nuance are warranted. Second, the book takes pre-eleventh-century tantric literature rather haphazardly into account. Fortunately, these limitations do not usually detract from Shin's core contributions in Chapters 3–4.

In some ways, the author's historical perspective on the tantric traditions has much to commend: she explicitly disavows the simplistic views of earlier scholarship, which tended to equate “Tantrism” with autochthonous and indigenous traditions, matrilineal cultures, goddess worship, and fertility cults (p. 29). These views fail to account for the diversity of tantric traditions, the limited roles of goddess worship in the earliest Śaiva tantric literature and in the mainstream Śaivasiddhānta, and the formative influence of Brahmanical asceticism (the Atimārga), among other grave problems. Instead, Shin recognizes that tantric traditions “have never been a singular or static … but multiple, diachronic and dynamic processes which have proceeded in many different directions according to sects, localities and periods” (p. 30). She highlights the complex, shifting relationships between tantric and Brahmanical traditions, which “have been both alternative and incompatible” as well as “dependent and complementary” (p. 33). This laudable view is nonetheless undermined by a tendency to identify the core of tantric traditions with “popular and heterodox religious customs” (p. 31).Footnote ⁹ A more complete model might view tantric traditions in dialogue not only with Brahmanism (besides Jaina and Buddhist mainstreams), but also local traditions – all of these being dynamic and mutually constitutive. For instance, Shin quotes Chakrabarti's observation that “there is no anomaly in [Kāmākhyā] remaining a tribal deity and also becoming a Brahmanical deity. One does not negate the other” (p. 181). This observation may be profitably extended: there is no anomaly in Kāmākhyā simultaneously being a tantric deity, which is not reducible to “tribal.”Footnote ¹⁰

This book's accounts of tantric sources and history frequently require revision, for outdated or clearly untenable views alternate with sound modern scholarship. For instance, Shin briefly revives the defunct “Kālachakrayāna” and “Sahajayāna” (pp. 115, 260), and gives credence to the existence of Śrīvidyā in seventh-century South India based on an improbably early dating of the Tirumantiram (pp. 101–2). Particularly problematic is near-silence concerning the śākta tantras composed centuries prior to the east-Indian Kaula corpus in which the Mahāvidyās feature. Most of the extant first-millennium Bhairavatantras and Kaula tantras are Śākta in orientation, to various degrees. The history of Kālī, in particular, can hardly be complete without consideration of this literature. Shin however maintains that “most of the Tantras inclined to Śākta faith seem to have been composed after the twelfth century or even later in the eastern region” (p. 35). Earlier tantras seem largely to have been excluded from consideration based on mistaken assumptions: (1) that they are Śaiva and therefore not Śākta (in fact the boundary between these categories is fluid); (2) that they belong to a Kashmirian tradition distant and distinct from the east-Indian Śākta tantrasFootnote ¹¹ (in fact this literature circulated widely and is only in part from Kashmir); (3) that they do not predate the early Śākta purāṇasFootnote ¹² (the Devīpurāṇa in fact draws extensively on such tantrasFootnote ¹³). Not recognizing the critical contributions of early śākta tantras to the making of puranic Śāktism leads Shin, like many others before her, to overemphasize the Devīmāhātmya's importance (pp. 74–75).

The book contains numerous illustrations, most of which are the author's own photographs. It is regrettable that the publisher did not include at least some of these in higher quality reproductions; what appear to be color photographs of the Daśa Mahāvidyās (figures 1.1–1.10), for instance, have been indifferently reproduced in black and white. The contemporary lithographs (figures 3.1–2) of Mahāvidyās would be particularly welcome in larger, sharper color reproductions. The book would also benefit from more careful copyediting: the English goes awry in places, and there are occasional errors in the Sanskrit diacritics. None of this detracts from the study's multiple contributions.