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.For the pe-riod we are examining here, the Koch kings ruled over western Assam in-cluding Kamakhya, beginning in the early sixteenth century.Here, patronageof Brahmins began earlier and more vigorously than in the Ahom kingdom,with the rule of Visva Simha in the early sixteenth century.Encouraged both bythe Koch kings and the regional Bhuyan landlords in the area around Kama-khya, Brahmins from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Bengal migrated into westernAssam during the Koch rule.117 Throughout this time period Brahmins hada much more substantial position in state government in the Koch king-dom than in the Ahom kingdom.Even some of the most well-known Hindupreachers, such as the sixteenth-century Saxkaradeva, the well-known Vaiq-pava preacher, moved from the Ahom kingdom to the Koch kingdom becausethe political climate was especially favorable to a Hindu preacher.118The Koch kings, though they also patronized Vaiqpavas and Saivites, wereprimarily Saktas, worshipers of the goddess, and particularly, worshipers of thegoddess at Kamakhya.Indeed, the Koch king, Naranarayan, and his brotherSukladev/Chilaraya rebuilt the temple at Kamakhya in 1565 after the Muslimgeneral Kalapahar sacked it.This is the same Naranarayan/Naranarayapa wesaw earlier in the story where the priest Kendukalai betrays the goddess atKamakhya in order to let the king, Naranarayan, watch her dance.The Ahomkings also eventually became Saktas as well, but they only shifted decidedlytoward Sakta Tantrism later in the seventeenth century.Sakta TantraWhile we find in Assam from the fifteenth century onward the propagation ofVaiqpavism, the worship of forms of the god Viqpu, which I will discuss inmore detail below, and which was certainly an important social movementfrom the beginning of the sixteenth century onward, nevertheless Assam has appendix 1 183a reputation as a pre-eminent site for Saktism, that is, for worship of thegoddess.Especially, we find worship of the goddess in its Tantric forms, whichinvolves elaborate ritual and the praxis of the six acts (qatkarmapi), ritesdesigned with a specific end including rites of pacification as well as rites ofdestruction and of harming.Certain forms of Tantra, and in particular SaktaTantra, are characterized by a transgressive ritual praxis, that is, the use ofillicit substances such as meat and alcohol as ritual implements, along withritualized sexual union.This use of illicit substances is generally designated asthe left-handed path (vamamarga, vamacara).As Edward Gait notes, throughout Assam Saktism was prevalent, and wefind there especially the practice of left-handed rites, involving transgres-sion.119 In literature as well, Kamakhya in Assam gains the reputation as theexemplary site for left-handed praxis.Gait also tells us that Sakta Tantra is a religion of bloody sacrifices, from which even human beings were not ex-empt.When the new temple of Kamakhya [sic] was opened, the occasion wascelebrated by the immolation of no less than a hundred forty men, whoseheads were offered to the goddess on salvers made of copper. 120 M.M.Sharmaconvincingly construes this as Gait s misreading of the word paik, which refersto the system of laborers for the state being assigned to the temple and not tohuman sacrifice.121 On the other hand, Chutiya kings in eastern Assam likelydid practice human sacrifice to the goddess Tamresvar%2ł.122 Also, the Tung-khungia Buranji records an incident in the seventeenth century where the Ahomking asks one of his ministers to supply a sacrificial victim for the Chutiya citySadiya.The minister chooses a strong young man named Bhotai who hadkilled a bear that entered into the minister s house.The Buranji tells us, Havingseen such courage and pluck on the part of Bhotai, the [minister] thought ofsacrificing him at the Deoghar [temple] of Sadiya. 123 Examples like these,mixing Ahom and tribal practices along with Sakta practices, may help explainAssam s notorious reputation.One interesting incident we find in the Ahom Buranji records that in abattle with Muslims in 1616 c.e., the Ahom king defeated the Muslims andthen made a garland (mupdamala) of the decapitated heads of the defeatedMuslim soldiers.124 This image, of course, strikingly reflects portraits of thegoddess Kal%2ł with a garland of severed heads around her neck.It also suggestseither the influence of Tantric images of Kal%2ł on practices in Assam, or aninfluence of Ahom war practices incorporated into Tantric literature, or pos-sibly both.While Tantric rites to the goddess, the Sakta Tantric practice, especiallyof the left-handed variety, typically employs the otherwise illicit substancessuch as meat and liquor, in considering this practice in Assam, however, we 184 appendix 1should keep in mind that Assamese food and drink practices were much moreliberal than elsewhere in India.Most of the population was nonvegetarian, andeven Brahmins in the medieval period in Assam mostly consumed a non-vegetarian diet.125 As I noted above, even the generally orthodox dharmasastrawriters for the Kamarupa school allowed for Brahmins to follow a nonvege-tarian diet in Assam.126 This liberal attitude regarding food and drink in As-sam, as well as the general attenuation of caste distinctions in Assam,127 lendsitself to an easy incorporation of the transgressions of food and caste that wefind throughout Sakta Tantrism.One might argue, thus, that in this case theuse of apparently transgressive items in the Tantric ritual, such as meat, maynot have functioned particularly as an instance of transgressive ritual whichwe find as an important feature of Tantric praxis elsewhere and in other timeperiods.After all, in the Assamese region the people generally ate meat, theAhom kings ate meat, and Brahmins in Assam also conformed to local cus-toms and ate meat.In this case, the transgressive element in using meat for therites would be minimal.Considering this, one wonders to what degree and in what ways the goal ofTantric practice in Assam had to do with transgression, particularly in terms oftransgression as a defiance of codes of purity, and associated with dietary re-strictions.Rather, we might conjecture that the goal would be likely less abouttransgression, and not especially a practice designed to uproot a brahminicalsense of limited caste-bound identity such as we find in Abhinavagupta.128Instead, the practice would serve other more magically oriented functions.Wedo, in fact, particularly in the texts used for this study, find very little attention totranscending caste identities.On the other hand, the general attitudes of theAssamese would make Tantric practices involving meat and liquor more so-cially acceptable and thus make it easier for such practices to actually bepracticed and to spread.For my own use here I understand transgression to operate for these latertexts associated with Kamakhya less along the models that Sanderson finds inhis study of Brahmins in the earlier period, before and during Abhinavagupta stime,129 and that Urban uses in his study where he focuses on the KalikaPurapa from the tenth through eleventh centuries
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