Female beauty, female power: Seeing Devī in the Saundarya Lahari

The Saundarya Laharī is a Sanskrit hymn of one hundred verses praising the Great Goddess, Devī, daughter of the mountain, beautiful consort of Siva, lord of the three cities.1 The hymn is popular and widely known, reproduced and commented upon. It has been translated into numerous Indian languages and a number of times into English. It is rooted in the context of South Indian tantra and is one of the more accessible flowerings of that tradition. Indeed, it seems of interest to scholars as a source of clues regarding its tantric context and what it tells us about tantra. Although by my reading the Saundarya Laharī is situated in that context in order to move beyond it toward a simpler and more public devotional discourse, and although my concern is to highlight how the Saundarya Laharī might contribute to a contemporary constructive Hindu/feminist theology,2 a few words on the tantric context are nevertheless in order.