Last Updated on May 11, 2013 by
~~OM~~
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Question: I’ve heard that Shree Maa is associated with Kamakhya, will Swamiji comment.
Swamiji: She is the Goddess of Kamakhya. She is more than associated with Kamakhya, She is the soul of Kamakhya. And I want to tell a personal story if you don’t mind.
One day Maa was walking towards the boats, we were going to visit Umananda. Umananda is an island in the middle of the Brahmaputra. And a number of devotees were walking across the sandy beach down to the boats, to take the boat ride to the island on which stands a beautiful temple to Shiva. And the Brahmaputra is a great river. And this temple is submerged about four months of the year underneath the water, and then the other eight months of the year the water drains out, and as it drains out, the island appears. It’s an amazing temple!
We were walking maybe a dozen or more devotees with Shree Maa across the sandy beach down to where the boats were docked, and when we got about half way across the beach all the boat men came running up across the sand and started bowing down to Maa in the sand. And they were calling, “Mago Mago ashun ashun!” And they were saying, “Mother, You please come!”
And She led us down to the boats, and there were a couple of passengers sitting in the boats waiting for the boats to fill up so that the boat could leave. And the boat men said, “Uto, Ut, Ut, Ut, Ut, Ut! (Get out of the boat, Get out of the boat!) Make this empty, Shree Maa has come!” So I was looking at this in astonishment, because you know to get a rickshaw or boat is really an attainment. And here they were clearing the boats, Shree Maa has come.
So we sat down in the boat and as the boat man was rowing us towards the island Umananda, I struck a conversation with him. And I was speaking Bengali, he was answering in Assamese, and I had a friend, Paithi, who was translating where I got stuck. And he told a story of a day when there was a great storm on the Brahmaputra river. And Shree Maa was on the boat, on the steamer that goes between Gauhati, up the Brahmaputra, and it goes to Jorhat and many other towns along the river because the easiest way of communication was along the river. They don’t have so many highways, so they take the steamer, that was an accomplishment.
And when the storm hit the steamer, all the passengers were terrified and started screaming because there were waves and rocking, and everyone was afraid that the boat was going to go down and probably take them with it! And Shree Maa sat at the bow of the ship and started singing. And first, everybody looked at Her like She was nuts! And then the wind calmed down and it stopped raining and everybody sat down in a circle around her.
And ever since then She was known as the Goddess of Kamakhya. She became Shree Maa of Kamakhya. They all revered her with such esteem. And this was told to me by a boat man that I had never met, and he had no need to impress me. We were going to pay the fare no matter what.
So, that’s Shree Maa’s relation with Kamakhya. She did tapasya there. She spent many years on the mountain.
Kamakhya is a mountain on the edge of Gauhati city, and on the other side is the Brahmaputra river. There’s the temple of Kamakhya, and then there are several tirthas, other temples for other Goddesses. Just like Vaishno Devi is to North India, just like Meenakshi Devi is to South India, Kamakhya is to East India. It’s the most prominent Goddess temple in the region. And Shree Maa did tapasya there for many years, She’s very well known and very highly regarded.
So, that’s Her relationship with Kamakhya. Om Sam Saraswatyai Namaha. Namaste.