Description
Kalii (Sanskrit: काली ), also Kali or Kali, is a goddess in Hindu mythology and one of the three wives of Shiva. Shiva is said to have had three wives: an Aryan (white) woman named Gaorii or Parvati, a woman of Mongolian ethnicity named Gaunga, and Kalii, a dark-skinned woman of mixed ethnicity. The goddess Kalii should not be confused with the male demon Kali from the Mahabharata, who is the lord of the Kali Yuga. She has a fearsome appearance with wildly wide eyes, a protruding tongue, and four arms. She usually holds a sword in one hand and a severed head in the other. She wears a necklace from which hang 51 human heads. She is usually depicted in a dancing pose, or sometimes standing with one foot on her fallen husband Shiva. She is also called Kalikamata (black earth mother) or Kalaratri (black night). The Sikhs worship her as Kottavei. Kalii, also called Kaoverii, had a daughter named Bhaeravii, who, like her father and mother, practiced tantric sadhana. Because this tantric sadhana involved nighttime meditations at the cremation grounds, Kalii became worried about Bhaeravii one night and went looking for her daughter at the cremation grounds. There, in the dark, she stumbled upon her husband Shiva, who awoke from his meditation and shouted, "Who are you?" Kalii was extremely embarrassed by her behavior and stuck out her tongue in shame. She wanted to say, "I am Kalii," but then changed her mind and briefly considered giving her daughter's name, but that wasn't really possible either. So it came out as, "I am Kaoverii." This occurred some seven thousand years ago. One of Kalii's other epithets is Kaunkalamalinii, the epithet for Kalii when she wears her necklace of skulls around her neck during her blissful samadhi. Much later, during the post-Shiva tantra period and the Buddhist tantra around the beginning of our current era, Kalii was accepted as a tantric goddess, and even later, during the Puranic period, Kalii began to be worshipped as a Puranic goddess. However, this Kalii, or Kalika Shakti, has nothing to do with Shiva's wife from thousands of years earlier. The worship of the Puranic goddess Kalii is based on the Kalika Purana, which was written long after the historical Kalii.
Tibet (Tibetan: བོད་, Bod) is a geographical area and a former independent state on the Tibetan Plateau. Historically, it has its own people, culture, language, and two religions: Bon and Tibetan Buddhism. Since the 1950–51 invasion of Tibet, it has been part of the People's Republic of China and is politically divided among several Chinese provinces, including the entire Tibet Autonomous Region and parts of Sichuan and Qinghai. Culturally, Ladakh and Sikkim in India, Bhutan, and some parts of Nepal are also considered part of Tibet. The Tibet Autonomous Region is bordered to the south and west by Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. From north to east, it borders the provinces of Sinkiang (Turkestan), Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan. Until 1950, when the People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet, Tibet was an independent country with a theocratic government. In remote areas of Tibet, power was held by local warlords. Before 1950, the most important religious and political leader was the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. In 1959, he fled to India, where he led the government-in-exile until the democratic reforms of 2000.
Tibet
