popular print
- Museum number
- 2019,3030.4
- Description
-
20th century print of Ramakrishna and Kali, chromolithographic print, India.
- Production date
- 1900-2000
- Dimensions
-
Height: 34.50 centimetres
-
Width: 28 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- All descriptive text taken from Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution (I. Ramos), draft of a manuscript accompanying an exhibition with the same working title planned for G35, Spring 2020.
Ramakrishna was the pujari (priest) of Dakshineswar temple, dedicated to Kali and situated north of Calcutta. The goddess appeared to him in vivid visions and the murti enshrined in the temple was said to come to life before him. Like Bamakhepa, he maintained an intimate and child-like rapport with the icon, embracing it, dancing with it and talking and singing to it. In a print he appears alongside Kali riding an airborne chariot above Dakshineswar. Her ambiguous identity as mother and ferocious deity is again apparent, reflecting a vision he once received of the goddess in her capacity as creator and destroyer of the universe: he saw a beautiful woman emerge from the Ganges, give birth and begin to cradle her child. Then, assuming a terrifying form, she devoured the child and re-entered the water. Ramakrishna was initiated into Tantric rites, including engagement with the ‘Five Ms’, by a female guru, Bhairavi Brahmani, during the early 1860s, from eating fish out of a skull-cup to reportedly consuming human flesh from the cremation ground.
- Location
- Not on display
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 2019,3030.4
