Lajja Gauri Artwork

Aditi is the Primal Creatrix. The name Aditi means ‘boundlessness’ and ‘freedom’ and conveys the concept of liberty from suffering and bondage. In the Rig Veda, the name is mentioned Eighty times, denoting the importance given to this goddess in the early Vedic times. She is the divine mother of all the Vedic gods and thus the source of the entire evident reality: past, present and future, ‘all that has been and will be born’. She is born from what she gives birth to and is self- procreative. Aditi’s womb is unambiguously identified with the centre of the earth and hence mother earth is another aspect of her cosmic presence. This primal deity has been represented mostly in the form of the more popular ‘Lajja Gauri’ (also known as Aditi Uttanpad) in Indian goddess iconography. The image of a headless naked woman with her legs bent and opened wide to expose the female genitalia, is older than the Indus Valley Civilization. But in India the first example of such an image comes from an Indus Valley Seal. She is popularly associated with fertility rituals but such association must be a narrow interpretation of the original scope of this deity. The association might be directly related to the figurative representation of the deity. This enigmatic form of a woman with a blooming lotus for her head is usually portrayed with legs opened and raised in a manner ambiguously suggesting either childbirth or sexual receptivity. Hence, hinting at the creative and regenerative powers of a fertile womb.