Taraतारा

Tara (तारा) — the star, from the root meaning to cross over — is the second of the ten Mahavidyas: the goddess who carries beings across the ocean of existence as a boat carries passengers over water. She stands closest to Kali in appearance and temperament, yet her emphasis is distinct — where Kali confronts, Tara saves. As Nilasarasvati, the blue Sarasvati, she is also the goddess of the rescuing word, granting eloquence and knowledge to those she favours.

Iconography

She is visualised deep blue, short of stature and full-bellied, clad in tiger skin, a garland of heads at her neck, standing in the archer's stance upon a supine Shiva amid a burning ground. Her four hands hold sword, scissors, blue lotus and skull-cup. Her fierce aspect is honoured as Ugratara, and as Ekajata she wears her hair in a single matted lock. The scissors, tradition explains, cut attachment — the last thread binding the devotee to samsara.

The stories

Bengali tradition gives her a maternal core beneath the terrifying surface. When Shiva swallowed the halahala poison at the churning of the ocean and burned with its fire, Tara is said to have taken him on her lap and nursed him as a mother nurses a child, her milk cooling the poison. This image — the goddess suckling Shiva — is central to her cult at Tarapith. Scholars also note her shared history with the Buddhist saviouress Tara of the Vajrayana traditions; the two lines of devotion have long flowed close together in eastern India and the Himalayas.

Tarapith

Her great seat is Tarapith in Birbhum, West Bengal, where temple worship adjoins a famous cremation ground used for tantric sadhana. The shrine is inseparable from the memory of Bamakhepa, the ecstatic nineteenth-century saint who lived there as her wild and wholly trusting child. At Tarapith the Mahavidya doctrine is lived plainly: the goddess of the burning ground is the mother who ferries her children home.