Buddhist patrons
The Bhauma-Karas took the Toṣalī country of coastal Odisha in the eighth century and ruled from near modern Jajpur. Their early rulers were Buddhist, and the great monastic complexes at Ratnagiri, Udayagiri and Lalitagiri — the Puṣpagiri group, among the most important Buddhist sites in eastern India — reached their height under their patronage.
Later rulers of the line turned to Śaiva and Śākta worship, and the sixty-four yoginī temple at Hirapur, a small circular open-air shrine near Bhubaneswar, belongs to this period.
The queens
Six women of the dynasty ruled as sovereigns, issuing charters in their own names with full royal titles — Tribhuvanamahādevī, Daṇḍimahādevī, Vakulamahādevī and others. Female rule as regent occurs elsewhere in Indian history; a succession of reigning queens over several generations, recorded in their own inscriptions, is without close parallel.
The reasons are not documented. The pattern coincides with a period of Śākta prominence in the dynasty's religion, and the two have often been connected, though the connection is inferred rather than stated in any source.
The dynasty gave way to the Somavaṃśīs in the middle of the tenth century.
Further reading
- Bhattacharyya, N. N. History of the Sakta Religion. Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine. University of California Press, 1986
- Kinsley, David. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. University of California Press, 1997
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.