In the cavernous, dark hall of the museum at Allahabad Universitys Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, a 10,000-year old goddess sits upside down.Her form is of a triangular stone, naturally patterned with five concentric triangles that would face downward if placed correctly. Regardless, and even from within the dust-coated glass display, she exudes power, for that is what she is.She is Shakti—Mother Goddess of SanatanaHinduism.Her name isBaghor Kali.The stone was found in 1982 by a joint team of archaeologists from the Universities of Allahabad and California, Berkeley, led by professors GR Sharma and J Desmond Clark, assisted by J Mark Kenoyer and JN Pal. While excavating the site named Baghor-1 in Sihawal tehsil, at the feet of the Kaimur range in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh, the team found a curious circular platform of sandstone rubble about 85cm in diameter.This platform was around a metre below surface level, and in the centre of it was the stone, with an accentuated pattern of concentric triangular laminations. Of their esoteric find, Sharma and Clark later wrote in the Journal Antiquity (LVII, 1983): The alternating light and dark colours (of the triangular bands) ranging from a yellowish red to a reddish brown, present a very striking pattern.From archaeological and ethnographic contexts, the team concluded that the platform was a man-made assemblage, its makers being a group of final Upper Palaeolithic hunter/gatherers, sometime between 9000 BC and 8000 BC.The age and form of their findings was startling, but the realization that what they had found was the oldest shrine in all of India would have escaped the archaeologists if not for help from the goddess herself. As Sharma and Clark write: If it had not been for the fact that we had occasion to visit the shrine of Kerai Ki Devi, about one km northeast of Baghor-1, the significance of the excavated stone would have certainly been overlooked.At this living shrine, the team found yet another raised platform of rubble blocks, with six stones set up in the middle, all with coloured triangular laminations identical in nature to the stone they had found. In addition was a figurine at the back, called Angari Devi or Angarmati by locals.The worshippers at the shrine were the Kol and Baiga tribals, ancient inhabitants of these parts with Dravidian affiliation who, as the team found, use this same type of colourful natural stones with concentric geometric laminations, often in the form of triangles, as a symbol for the female principle or the Mother Goddess, Mai.The archaeologists soon discovered that the entire region had such shrines scattered here and there in the countryside and villages, including one to Kalika Mai with a near-perfect triangular form and pattern, at the house of the Baghor-1 site watchman.Yet another impressive one was found in Medhauli village at the base of a big neem tree. It was evident that the original Shakti-worship of the ancient Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers had not perished even after the passage of 10,000 years, but had continued and thrived among their tribal descendants and their later co-regionists.At all these places, which I recently had the good fortune to visit, offerings of sindoor (vermilion) and coconut are made, and heads are shaved to honour Mai – variously named Kerai, Kari, Kali, Kalika or Karika.She is firmly believed in not just by the Kol and Baiga but also caste Hindus and even Muslims, who have coconuts offered to her by the hands of the former. The goddess protects all and bestows health and prosperity to all.Although the Baghor-1 dig site now seems to have been obscured by grassland again and its rubble dispersed, the Kerai Ki Devi Mai shrine is a sight to behold, with nothing around as far as the eye can see except streams, ponds, rocky hill ranges and grassland — and the Mother lording over it all in splendid, magnificent isolation.It was my father who told me about her, many years ago, when he came across an article in New Scientist about the excavation. What struck him was that she was called Mai, which is what our clan goddess Kali in Isipur village, Pratapgarh, has been called for generations.What struck me was the pattern on the stone, for the inverted triangle is perhaps the oldest symbol of the divine feminine, representing the yoni — the womb of creation. This exalted symbol finds its full, sophisticated expression in the yantra forms of tantric tradition.Considered to be the abstract, geometric forms of Hindu deities, the highest and most common of yantras is held to be the Sri-Yantra or Sri-Chakra. Composed of five inverted Shakti triangles intersecting intricately with four upright Shiva triangles, this pattern represents the entirety of creation as being born from the union of Shiva and Shakti in the form of goddess Lalita.Its importance can be gauged from the fact that this yantra was duly consecrated and installed by the Adi Shankaracharya, in every temple he established. All other yantras are said to be derived from it, and this belief seems to be upheld rather strikingly if the four upward-pointing Shiva triangles are removed from its design.The form thus obtained — five inverted concentric triangles — is the pattern on the Baghor stone, the symbol of pure Shakti, the yantra of the primordial Kali Mai.To those who carpingly question the timelessness of Sanatana Hinduism, perhaps even the 10,000-year old Kali of Baghor will not suffice for an answer. To those who genuinely question what is Sanatana or eternal about this oldest of Dharmas, I humbly offer the following reply: It is She who is eternal —Shakti, Kali, Karika, Angari, Lalita — call her what you will, she is the Mother Goddess, Mother Nature, the mother even of Gods. Indeed, entire ages, eras, civilizations, cultures, religions, even gods come and go, but Mai is forever.(Writer is a logic tutor and author)

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