Navaratri Series — Day 6 — Baghor Kali
How old is Goddess worship in India? For the answer, we have to go back in history for nearly 11,000 years pre-dating the Harappa settlements to the palaeolithic era. The oldest shrine of Goddess in India is located in Madhya Pradesh’s Baghor known as Baghor Kali Temple.
In Hindu scriptures, the Goddess is prakriti or Nature while the God is consciousness. Without nature (Goddess), consciousness (God) cannot exist and without consciousness Nature’s existence will never be validated. This is conveyed through the allegories of relationship between God and Goddess via different forms like Shiva and Shakti, Ram and Sita, or Vishnu and Lakshmi. In the evolutionary science, it is nature that came first and then humans and at last the human consciousness. In the Hindu theology as well, the Goddess is always present, and she awakens the human consciousness in form of awakening Shiva or Vishnu. Perhaps, this is the reason why Goddess worship in India predates the oldest God worship as well. In this regard, Baghor Kali shrine becomes important temple of the Goddess in India.
Baghor Kali shrine is a simple shrine built on a platform under a Neem tree in Baghor village. Here, the Goddess manifests in form of a triangular yantra made of a stone. The triangles form quite important geometric figure in many religions as that is the closed figure with least number of lines. The triangle often indicates the womb of the mother Goddess in which the world is imagined to be existing. Similarly, in Greek mythology, Gaia is the mother Goddess in whose womb resides the earth. Human civilization is born within her. Here, the Goddess is known by the name Kali, the primal one who controls the time. A later evolution of womb worship manifests in worship of Lajjagauri figurines or temples like Kamakhya of Assam.
The Baghor Kali shrine for a large part of time was, and continued to be, worshipped by the tribals living around the area. Being located in the dandakaranya, shrine remained away from the gaze of any invaders. In 1980s, a group of researchers studying Harappan age sites decided to find the history of Baghor shrine and found out that the site belongs to palaeolithic age and is at least 11,000-year-old making it to the oldest continuously worshipped shrine in the world. The area surrounding Baghor is also populated with many old shrines dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Devi.
Day 6 of Navaratri — Baghor Kali Temple located in the central region of the Indian Sub-continent.
