Kali, Hinduism's most fearsome goddess, is worshipped above all as a loving mother
Kali's iconography is deliberately terrifying, a goddess tied to time, death and destruction. Yet in Bengal, where she is most widely revered, devotional songs address her as a mother, and devotees approach her the way a child runs to a parent. To such devotees, she offers protection and liberation.
Kali, also called Kalika, is often described as the most famous of the many Hindu goddesses. She is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, goddesses who grant liberating knowledge, and she dominates tantric worship and the Kalikula tradition. Shakta and Tantric schools go further, treating her as ultimate reality itself. In modern times she has also become a powerful emblem for women.
Her name plays on two Sanskrit words that sound alike: one meaning time, the other meaning black. Popular etymology merged them, so Kali can be read as she who rules time or as the dark one. The word appears in the Atharva Veda, but its first use as a personal name comes in the Kathaka Grhya Sutra. Indologist Wendy Doniger traces her roots to deities of pre-Vedic village, tribal and mountain cultures that Sanskrit traditions gradually absorbed and reshaped.
Her first major entrance in Sanskrit literature is the sixth-century Devi Mahatmya. In one episode the goddess Kaushiki grows so furious at two attacking demons that her face darkens and Kali bursts from her forehead. The best-known story involves Raktabija, a demon who spawns a copy of himself from every drop of blood that touches the ground. As duplicates flood the battlefield, Durga calls on Kali, who catches the drops before they land. The scholar Kinsley describes her as Durga's wrath given bodily form.
Other texts offer different origins. In the Linga Purana, Shiva asks Parvati to defeat a demon who can only die at a woman's hand; she merges with Shiva and re-emerges as Kali, and her rage calms only when Shiva steps in. In the Vamana Purana, Parvati is offended when Shiva calls her the dark blue one, sheds her dark complexion through austerities to become golden Gauri, and the discarded sheath gives rise to Kali.
Source: Kali
