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Abhinav Pandey

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Tārābāī

A figure from the books

#Tarabai

Tārābāī · 1675–1761

In the books · 1 chapter

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Who this is

Devotional poetry and song — Śākta bhakti, the worship of the Goddess; founder of Shyāmā Sangīt, the Bengali Kālī-song.

“A Bengali clerk filled his employer's account books with songs to Kālī and was pensioned rather than punished — and the songs he went home to write turned the goddess of terror into somebody's mother.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 159

The big idea, in the book's words:

“He took the most terrifying deity in the Hindu imagination — Kālī of the cremation ground, black, garlanded with severed heads — and sang to her as a small, aggrieved son sings to his mother, complaints included. He did not soften her. He claimed her. Bengal has been singing along ever since.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 159

From the book

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