Kamakshi (Kanchipuram)

Kamakshi Shakti Peetha at Kanchipuram is one of the three supreme Shakti sites in India (the Kamakshi–Meenakshi–Vishalakshi trinity). The presiding goddess Kamakshi (she whose eyes radiate desire and love) is worshipped here in one of the finest examples of South Indian temple architecture — the Kamakshi Amman temple, with its towering gopurams, golden kumbhas, and a gold-plated sanctum.

Kanchipuram, the 'City of a Thousand Temples,' has been a centre of Hindu civilisation for over two millennia — a Pallava capital, a centre of Vedic learning, and the seat of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, one of the four cardinal mutts established by Adi Shankaracharya (or by successive acharyas in his lineage). The Kamakshi Peetha is identified with Sati's navel falling here — the navel as the umbilical source of creation, the centre of life. Kamakshi is also the supreme Lalita — the Srividya tradition's great goddess — and a living Shankaracharya presides over her temple administration.

Sati's navel — the nabhi, the centre and source of all life — fell at Kanchipuram. Kamakshi, the desire-eyed goddess, arose here. According to the Kanchipuram tradition, Parvati/Shakti performed tapas here to marry Shiva, fashioning a Shivalinga from sand under a mango tree. Shiva tested her by flooding the place, but she held the linga firmly, and Shiva revealed himself. The Kamakshi form — seated in full lotus, armed with a sugarcane bow and flower arrows, the weapons of love — represents Shakti as cosmic erotic power, the desire that sustains creation.