Tripura Sundari: The Third Mahavidya, Shodashi, Lalita and the Sri Chakra

Tripura Sundari is the third of the ten Mahavidyas, and in the many traditions that follow her she is the first. Her name means the beauty (sundari) of the three cities or three worlds (tripura). She is also called Shodashi, “the sixteen-year-old”, Lalita, “the playful one”, Rajarajeshwari, “queen of queens” and Kamakshi in the Tamil south. Unlike several of the other Mahavidyas, she is shown as gracious and beautiful, and she stands at the head of a long tradition of philosophy and devotion, the Sri Vidya.

This page covers her image, the stories, the tradition and its texts, and her temples. It is tradition, set out as tradition, and not a guide to practice.

Form and iconography

She is shown as a young woman of great beauty, with a red or rose-coloured complexion, three eyes and the crescent moon on her crown. She has four arms, holding a noose (pasha), a goad (ankusha), a bow made of sugarcane and five flower arrows. In the tradition’s reading, the noose is desire, the goad is anger, the sugarcane bow is the mind and the five arrows are the five senses and their objects. She sits on a lotus on a couch whose legs are the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra and Ishana, and whose seat is Sadashiva, in the full descriptions of the Lalita tradition, and in many images Shiva as Kameshvara holds her on his lap.

The Sri Chakra, a diagram of nine interlocking triangles, is her symbolic form. It is worshipped as her body, and in temples of the south it is installed as the central object. The descriptions of the diagram in the texts are detailed, and we do not reproduce them.

The story as tradition tells it

The best-known narrative is the Lalitopakhyana, the story of Lalita, which is part of the Brahmanda Purana. It tells how the Goddess arose from the fire of consciousness, at the request of the gods, to destroy the demon Bhandasura, who had arisen from the ashes of Kama, the god of desire, burnt by Shiva. She appears in a great chariot with her army and her ministers, the goddesses Mantrini and Dandini. After a long war, in which the weapons of the demon’s army are met by those that arise from her own fingers, she brings the demon to an end, and the world is restored. The thousand names of this goddess, the Lalita Sahasranama, are given in the same Purana as a hymn spoken by her attendant goddesses; see the Lalita Sahasranama page.

The story of Sati in the hub shows her as the third of the ten forms; in the Sri Vidya tradition she is not the third but the source of all, and the other nine are her manifestations. This is one of the places where traditions differ, and neither view cancels the other.

Sri Vidya

Sri Vidya is the name for the tradition of her worship and philosophy, with its own mantra, its own diagram and its own texts. It has two broad streams, the Samaya, which is largely inward and philosophical, and the Kaula, which uses outer ritual. The famous hymn Saundarya Lahari, “the wave of beauty”, of a hundred verses, is attributed by tradition to Adi Shankaracharya, though scholars debate the authorship. Several Shankaracharya monasteries of the south, including Sringeri, are associated with the worship of Sri Chakra and Tripura Sundari in some way, and the tradition of Sri Vidya has preserved a long line of teachers.

We name these only to show that her tradition is a long one. The practice is taught to initiates, and it is not set out here. A page of this sort is not a way into it, and teachers of the line say that it is done by a guide.

What the form means

In the readings that devotees give, Tripura Sundari is beauty as the nature of reality. The three cities are said to be the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep, or the three worlds, and the goddess is the consciousness that lies beyond all three. The sixteen years of her age are taken as the full measure, with the fifteen phases of the moon and a sixteenth that is not seen. A reader who prefers a plain reading may take it that she is the goddess who stands for grace and for the delight of the world, and that is how she is usually felt.

Where she is worshipped

The Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur in Tripura state, also called Matabari, was built in the early sixteenth century, and the tradition counts it as a Shakti Peetha where the right foot of Sati is said to have fallen. At Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, the Kamakshi temple is one of the great goddess temples of the south and is linked with Sri Vidya, and the Meenakshi temple of Madurai honours a related queen goddess; see the Meenakshi Pancharatnam. The Kamakhya complex in Assam has a tradition that links its main shrine with Tripura Sundari. In Karnataka and elsewhere, Rajarajeshwari temples are many. We do not give timings, fees or rules; check each temple’s own site.

Festivals

Her observances fall in Navratri, in particular the fifth day of Sharad Navratri, which in the Lalita tradition is Lalita Panchami; see the Sharad Navratri page and the Navratri day by day page. Her jayanti is commonly given on Magha Purnima, though calendars differ and we give no date. The tradition of the Sri Chakra puja at Navratri is kept in many southern temples.

The Lalita Sahasranama is the main text of her devotion on this site. The Devi Suktam and the Bhavani Ashtakam are shorter hymns to the Goddess.

Frequently asked questions