This Watercolor on paper painting of Mahavidya Chinnamasta Riding Lion by Kailash Raj depicts the goddess in her most recognizable form. She is drawn with blue skin with tinges of red on some parts, consistent with how deities are described bearing this complexion. Chhinnamasta also means “she whose head is severed” thus depictions of this Mahavidya consistently show the goddess bearing her chopped head drinking from three streams of blood. She is also traditionally pictured naked but is painted half-clothed in this depiction. Two of her four hands hold her head, while the other carries a sword, and the remaining hand holds a drinking bowl. Chinnamasta is also carried by a fierce lion, drawn large enough to carry her effortlessly.
Chinnamasta is the goddess of contradictions, seen most obviously in her iconography--teeming with life even with a severed head. She is written as both the "eater" and the "eater of food", a goddess who can give life as much as she can take it. Being a deity teeming with paradoxes, she revered for her fierce disposition as well as her ability to help one achieve Ananda or bliss. This painting powerfully showcased such contrast, with the goddess looking mighty and ferocious with her lion against a stretch of land and environment of calm.
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