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Religion

Layered religious traditions across Assam.

Indigenous worship and the Mother

The valley's oldest ground: the indigenous worship of nature and the ancestors, and the cult of the Goddess that rose upon it.

The Kamakhya temple complex lit at night: a cream-and-gold mandapa with a red-banded base in front, dark stone beehive shikharas of the sanctum and subsidiary shrines rising behind, stone steps descending at left

Faith

Saktism

The goddess-worship tradition of the Kamakhya peetha, one of the oldest and most important Sakta sites in South Asia, and the tantric currents that have shaped religious practice across the region for at least two millennia.

An ancestral cult, and a reformation

The medieval centuries brought new faiths: an ancestral spirit-cult from the east, and a devotional reform that remade the valley's religious and cultural life.

The marble-floored prayer hall of the Batadrava Than, with a red-draped throne bearing the sacred manuscript at its centre and brass ceremonial lamps to either side

Faith

Neo-Vaishnavism (Ekasarana Dharma)

The bhakti reform that founded Assam's distinctive Vaishnava tradition, the sattra institution, and a literary, musical, dramatic and visual culture that has shaped the valley for five hundred years.