CHAMUNDA, in Hindu mythology, as related in the Durga Mahatmya, an emanation of the goddess Durga, springing from her forehead to encounter the demons Chanda and Munda, de tached to seize Durga by the sovereign of the Daitya. Sumbha having slain the demons, she bore their heads to her parent goddess, told her that, having slain Chanda and Munda, she should thenceforth be known on earth as Chamunda. She is also termed Kali from her black colour, and Karala or Karalavadana from her hideous counte nance (Hind. Theat. ii. _p. 57).. It is to this goddess that all human sacrifices are made by Hindus. One of the ancient Hindu dramatists, Bhava Bhutta, who flourished in the 8th century, in his drama of Malati and Madhava, has made powerful use of the Aghora in a scene in the temple of Chamunda, where the heroine of the play is decoyed in order to be sacrificed to the dread goddess Chamunda or Kali. The disciple of Aghora Ghanta, the high priest who is to perform the horrible rite, by name Kalapa Kundala, is interrupted in his invocation to Chamunda by the hero Madhava, who thus describes the scene (Act V. scene 1) :— ' Now wake the terrors of the place, beset With crowding and malignant fiends. The flames From funeral pyres scarce lend their sullen light, Clogged with their fleshly prey, to dissipate The fearful gloom that hems them round.
Well, be it so. I seek, and must address them.
• • How the noise, High, shrill, and indistinct, of chattering sprites, Communicative, fills the charnel ground.
Strange forms, like foxes, flit across the sky; From the red hair of their lank bodies darts The meteor blaze, or from their mouths that stretch From ear to ear, thick-set with numerous fangs, Or eyes, or beards, or brows, the radiance streams. And now I see the goblin host : each stalks On legs like palm-trees, a gaunt skeleton, Whose fleshless bones are bound by starting sinews, And scantly cased in black and shrivelled skin, Like tall and withered trees by lightning scathed, They move, and as amidst their sapless trunks The mighty serpent curls, so in each mouth, Wide yawning, lolls the vast blood-dripping tongue. They mark my coming, and the half-chewed morsel Falls to the howling wolf ;—and now they fly.' The belief in the horrible practices of the Aghori priesthood is thus proyed to have existed at a very remote period, and doubtless refers to those more ancient and revolting rites which belonged to the aboriginal superstitions of India, antecedent to the Aryan-Hindu invasion and conquest of the country. The worshippers of Sakti of Siva, under the terrific forms of Chamunda, Chinna muttaka, and Kali, are called Kerari, and represent the Aghora Ghanta and Kapalika. The word Chamunda, according to Ward, is from Charia, good, and Mundu, a head. She is said to be identical with the goddess Randi.—The People of India, by J. F. Watson and John William Kaye; Leyden, Asiatic Researches, ix. p. 203.