Kechaikhaiti or Tamreswari Temple at Sadiya: Sacred Geography, Deori Ritual Authority, and the Cultural Memory of a Frontier Shrine

Abstract

This paper studies Kechaikhaiti, also known in later and Sanskritized usage as Tamreswari or Dikkaravasini, through the history of the shrine associated with Sadiya and the Chutia polity of medieval upper Assam. The argument is deliberately cautious: rather than treating the temple only as a site of legend, the paper reads it as a frontier institution where political authority, non-Brahmanical ritual practice, sacred geography, and later historical memory intersected. The available evidence comes from three kinds of sources: early textual references to Dikkaravasini in the sacred geography of Kamarupa, colonial and gazetteer descriptions of the ruined temple and its Deori priesthood, and modern historical and religious studies by scholars including Edward Gait, Maheswar Neog, Banikanta Kakati, Jae-Eun Shin, S. L. Barua, and Byomakesh Tripathy and Sristidhar Dutta. The paper finds that Kechaikhaiti or Tamreswari is best understood neither as a purely tribal goddess outside history nor as a simple form of pan-Indian Shakti worship. She represents a layered regional tradition in which local goddess worship, Chutia state formation, Deori ritual authority, and later Brahmanical interpretation coexisted without fully erasing one another.

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