77 - Discourses on Tantra Volume One
Chapter 20
The Pervasive Influence (4)
Not only that, there is also a difference in meaning between kálii and shyámá. First, it is a fact that Kálii or Shyámá, who is worshipped as a goddess nowadays, has no relation to Shiva. Then, regarding her colour, in one part of the shloka she is described as meghavarńa, that is, grey-black [“having the colour of a cloud”] (Kálii the wife of Shiva was a non-Aryan girl, so she may have been that colour); then again she is described in the same shloka as shyámá. The word shyámá in Sanskrit has two meanings. One meaning is “green”. Kálii, who is grey-black, cannot be shyámá in this sense; there would be an inconsistency in meaning, a contradiction in the shloka itself. The second meaning is,
Shiitkále bhaveduśńá griiśme ca sukhashiitalá;
Atasiipuśpavarńábhá sá shyámá parikiirttitá.
“One whose sweet behaviour enables one to feel warm even in winter and cool in the summer, one whose body emits the glow of the atasii flower (that is, a golden colour), is called shyámá.” By this definition of shyámá also, the foregoing shloka would be self-contradictory.
So we find that neither the goddess Durgá worshipped nowadays nor the goddess Kálii, is the wife of Shiva.
No goddess having eight or ten arms can be the wife of Shiva: He had only two arms. Similarly the Káliká Shakti having four arms cannot be the wife of Shiva.
Shiva had a third wife – Gauṋgá. She was a Mongolian girl with a yellow complexion, born in Tibet. I said a little while ago that Gaorii had a son, Bhaerava, and Kálii had a daughter, Bhaeravii. Gauṋgá had a son Kárttikeya, or Kárttika, or Sanmukham, or Śad́ánana. (In Tamil Sań-mugam, Bálasubrahmańyam or Murúgam).
Bhaerava, the son of Párvatii, was an ardent spiritualist, a Tantric sádhaka. Bhaeravii, the daughter of Káliká, was also an ardent spiritualist and a sincere practitioner of Tantra; but Gauṋgá’s son, Kárttika, was of a different mould. Because of this Gauṋgá was very sad at heart; she was very unhappy with her only son. To remove Gauṋgá’s mental unhappiness, Shiva used to treat her with the utmost courtesy. People would complain that Shiva was not so soft and courteous in His dealings with Párvatii and Kálii as He was with Gauṋgá. He was pampering Gauṋgá too much – as if Shiva was dancing in joy, with Gauṋgá seated on His head.
On the basis of this saying, Shiva was depicted in the Puranic Age with Gauṋgá tied to His matted locks of hair. Then a story was concocted in some Purana that the water discarded after washing the feet of Viśńu, flowed down from heaven, and Shiva supported the flow on His head; then this flow became the River Gauṋgá [Ganges]. That is, Gauṋgá the wife of Shiva became the River Gauṋgá. Actually this River Gauṋgá has no relation whatsoever to Shiva. The story continues that from Shiva’s head the river flowed in four directions –
Svargete Alakánandá marttye Bhágiirathii,
Pitrloke Mandákinii pátále Bhogavatii.
One of the flows went towards heaven and became known as Alakánanda; one went to the earth and became known as Bhágiirathii; the third one went to Pitrloka [Realm of the Ancestors] and became known as Mandákinii; and the last one, flowing to the underworld, became known as Bhogavatii.
These are mere tales of the Puranas. The River Gauṋgá has no relation to Gauṋgá who was the wife of Shiva. “Gauṋgá” the river is derived from gam plus gam plus d́a plus t́á (to show feminine gender). Ga means a vast tract of land; gá means a woman who is moving; so a woman who is coming from a distant land and going towards another distant land a woman who is flowing from Gauṋgottarii, the starting-point of the River Ganges, to Gauṋgáságar, the mouth of the river through a 1500-mile stretch of land is called “Gauṋgá”. This River Gauṋgá [the Ganges] has no relation to the wife of Shiva.