KUMAR! is a goddess who has been a recognized member of the Hindu pantheon for at least 2,500 years. Throughout the long history of her worship she has displayed qualities of a highly ambiguous2 kind: on the one hand, she is literally by name 'virgin' or 'chaste young girl'; on the other, she is classed as one of a group of mother goddesses who are also the sexual partners of leading male deities. For example, in the Taittiriya Ara~1yaka, a third or fourth century BC text, Rudra's spouse Ambika is addressed as Kanyakumali (Muir 1967, IV: 426-7 and Chattopadhyaya 1970:153-5 5).
The University of Sydney acknowledges that its campuses and facilities sit on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have for thousands of generations exchanged knowledge for the benefit of all.
Learn more