Name Susan Barton Young
School Deering High School
Project Title Kali: Cross-Cultural (Mis)Understandings

 

Images/Attributes & Their Interpretations


Kali is one of the most distinctive of the Hindu Pantheon, and is generally pretty easy to detect from her iconography. Noted attributes include: a blue or black color (as befits a goddess known as the "dark" one); a strikingly red and lolling, outstretched tongue; an often emaciated appearance; multiple arms holding variations of a sword, a severed head, a skull-cap bowl, various weapons, as well as hands in typical "fear not" mudras; a garland made up of 50 skulls and a girdle of severed arms; sometimes depicted in a graveyard with jackals; sometimes dressed in a tiger or lion skin; wild hair.

 

This site was created by (Susan Barton Young) at the NEH Summer Institute "Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region," held at the College of the Holy Cross, Summer 2006