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

 

6. Graveyard

Her often-wild hair shows her “unrestrained power and freedom.”  Sometimes she sports a snake or a tiger-skin as well.

 

  
She is often shown in graveyards, or with grave-yard jackals as her companions.  Her association with battlefields and graveyards dictates her most common association with blood, death, and destruction.  She is a liminal character, hanging out on the verges of society, performing a necessary but “unclean” function, and thus remaining beyond the control of normal human structures of order.

 

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