Saktapramodah Of Deva Nandan Singh

Saktapramoda of Deva Nandan Singh is a liturgical paddhati-style compendium of sixteen independent ritual manuals. The first ten works, comprising the major part of the text, are dedicated to the group of ten Tantric goddesses, referred to as the Ten Great Mahavidyas or Ten Supreme Powers the goddesses Kali, Tara, Sodashi, Bhuvaneshvari, Chinnamasta, Matangi, Tripurabhairavi, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi and Kamala. The next important text closely allied to the worship of the goddesses is the Kumari Tantra devoted to the worship of a young maiden (Kumari). The next group of works comprises the pentad of Tantras devoted to five deities: Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and Surya. These five deities are invoked in almost all forms of ritual worship prescribed by the Vedas, Puranas and to a degree by the Tantras. Each Tantra describes the dhyana of the deity, the yantra, mantras and the method of Tantric form of worship of the deity, along with praise hymns, protective formulas (kavaca) and litanies of divine names, be they a group of hundred names (shatanama) or a thousand names (sahasranama). The first edition of Saktapramoda was published by Raja Deva Nandan Singh, an aristocratic zamindar of Muzaffarpur, Bihar, in the nineteenth century. The present edition brings together a fully edited and revised text with an elaborate introduction (in English), and a comprehensive index along with lithographic images of Tantric deities.