Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

death of his wife, hurried at once to the scene of the tragedy and decapitated Daksa. He then took the
body of his beloved Sati, laid her across his shoulders and began a funeral procession across all India.
The other gods wanted to free him from the corpse and set about dismembering it, piece by piece,
without Shiva noticing what they were doing.
The places where the fragments fell were destined to become holy sites known as Shakta pithas.
There where Sati’s vulva came to land the most sacred location was established. In some texts there is
talk of 24, in others of 108 pithas, the latter being the holy number of Buddhism. At Sati’s numerous
graves cemeteries were set up forthwith, at which the people cremated their dead. Around these
locations developed a many-sided, and as we shall see, extremely macabre death culture, which was
nurtured by Tantrics of all schools (including the Buddhist variety).
In yet another version of the Sati legend, the corpse of Shiva’s wife contained a “small cog — a
symbol of manifest time -, [which] destroyed the body of the goddess from the inside out. ... [It] was
then dismembered into 84 fragments which fell to earth at the various holy sites of India” (Hutin,
1971, p. 67). This is indeed a remarkable variant on the story, since the number of famous Maha
Siddhas (Grand Sorcerers), who in both the Buddhist and Hindu tradition introduced Tantrism to
India as a new religious practice, is 84. These first Tantrics chose the Shakta pithas as the central
locations for their rituals. Some of them, the Nath Siddhas, claimed Sati had sacrificed herself for
them and had given them her blood. For this reason they clothed themselves in red robes (White,
1996, p. 195). Likewise, one of the many Indian cemetery legends tells how five of the Maha Siddhas
emerged from the cremated corpse of a goddess named Adinatha (White, 1996, p. 296). It can be
assumed that this is also a further variation on the Sati legend.
It is not clear from the tale whether the goddess committed a sacrificial suicide or whether she was the
victim of a cruel murder. Sati’s voluntary leap into the flames seems to indicate the former; her
systematic dismemberment the latter. A “criminological” investigation of the case on the basis of the
story alone, i.e., without reference to other considerations, is impossible, since the Sati legend must
itself be regarded as an expression of the mystifying ambivalence which, according to René Girard,
veils every inaugural sacrifice. All that is certain is that all of the originally Buddhist (!) Vajrayana’s
significant cult locations were dedicated to the dismembered Hindu Sati.
Earlier, however, claims the Indologist D. C. Sircar, famous relics of the “great goddess” were said to
be found at the Shakta pithas. At the heart of her cult stood the worship of her yoni (‘vagina’) (Sircar,
1973, p. 8). We can only concur with this opinion, yet we must also point out that the majority of the
matriarchal cults of which we are aware also exhibited a phallic orientation. Here the phallus did not
signalize a symbol of male dominance, but was instead a toy of the “great goddess”, with which she
could sexual-magically manipulate men and herself obtain pleasure.
We also think it important to note that the practices of Indian gynocentric cults were in no way
exempt from sacrificial obsession. In contrast, there is a comprehensive literature which reports the
horrible rites performed at the Shakta pithas in honor of the goddess Kali. Her followers bowed down
before her as the “consumer of raw meat”, who was constantly hungry for human sacrifices. The
individuals dedicated to her were first fed up until they were sufficiently plump to satisfy the
goddess’s palate. On particular feast days the victims were decapitated in her copper temple (Sircar,
1973, p. 16).