Today, in a weekly discussion group that discusses Tantrāloka, one of my dear friends had several questions about the great Mahāvidyā with a severed head, Chinnamastā. Originally from Dharamshala, her family deity was Chinnamastā but she was lately entertaining doubts in her mind whether to continue worshiping a deity of supposed Buddhist origin. I did mention to her that trying to label a primordial power as ‘Hindu’ or ‘Buddhist’ or something else was meaningless, and I do not know if she was convinced.
My Guru, śrī Cinmudrānandanātha attained his mahāsiddhi through the upāsanā of Chinnamastā. Right after he had attained the siddhi and the direct revelation of the Great Goddess in Nepal, he was approached by a then minister of the King of Nepal, who had landed himself in a strange problem. He had acquired the wrath of an ascetic who performed the Rudradaṇḍa prayoga on the minister’s son. This prayoga involves the invocation of the extremely fierce form of Bhadrakālī named Gṛdharkarṇī whose Dhyāna is as below:
atiraudrī mahādaṃṣṭrā dīrghakeśī kṛśodarī |
pramattanayanā ghorā dīrghaghoṇā madānvitā ||
snigdhagambhīranirghoṣā nīlajīmūtasannibhā |
bhrukuṭyāgnīvasandīptā mahāvadanabhīśaṇā ||
daṃṣṭrāṣṭā kopatāmroṣṭḥī raktadīrghatanūruhā |
triśūlairugradordaṇḍā narakīṭapalāśinī ||
atiraktāmbarā devaraktamāmsāsavapriyā |
śiromālāvicitrāṅgī pibantī śoṇitāsavanm ||
nṛtyantī ca hasantī ca piśācagaṇasevitā |
piśācaskandhamāruhya bhramantī vasudhātalam ||
ṣaṅkarasya mukhotpannā yoginī yogavallabhā |
itthaṃbhūtā bhadrakālī mātṛbhiḥ parivāritā ||
It is said that during the destruction of Dakṣayajña, Mahārudra created the ferocious śakti named Gṛdhakarṇī who feasted on the flesh of the devas or the celestials who sided with Dakṣa Prajāpati. Later, she was propitiated by Hiraṇyākṣa and Rāvaṇa to gain victory over the devas. It is said that Devaguru Bṛhaspati, who tried to arrest the march of Rāvaṇa through the prayoga of Pāśupatāstra mantra, was defeated and paralyzed for seventy-two minutes by śukrācārya through the Rudradaṇḍāstra prayoga that invokes the fearful presence of Gṛdhakarṇī, the vulture-eared Goddess. Her Māraṇa prayogas revealed by Pippalāda are said to be much more fatal than even those involving Dhūmāvatī.
The ascetic had resorted to Rudradāṇḍāstra prayoga against the minister’s son by performing homa with dhattūra, uttering the twenty-seven lettered mantra of Gṛdharakarṇī. To save the minister’s son, our Guru resorted to the prayoga of his iṣṭadevatā Chinnamastā, where he used the sixteen-lettered Mahāvidyā of the Great Goddess with a sampuṭa of the ūrdhvāmnaya vidyā of the same Goddess, combined with Turīyā Gāyatrī in anuloma-viloma fashion. With the grace of the Great Goddess, the child was saved and the prayoga was successful. This also earned him the good-will of the Nepal Royal Family, which, at that time, housed yet another great practitioner and scholar of Tantra. The good-will he thus established continued till a few years ago and enabled us to get some rare books and manuscripts collected by that member of the Royal family who himself had mastered the Tantra śāstra.