kumkum
कुंकुम kumkumaThe red or maroon powder, classically made from turmeric and slaked lime, used to make the traditional bindi and applied in worship. Its red colour signifies auspiciousness and Shakti, the feminine power; a kumkum bindi has long marked a married woman.
Where this term appears
- What the bindi actually means Journal
A red bindi, made classically from kumkum, the vermilion powder of turmeric and lime, has long marked a married woman.
- The Four Streams of Hinduism Essentials
The Shakta mark is the simplest and the most charged: a bindu or streak of red kumkum , the colour of blood and life and the Goddess's own power.
- Reading the Tilaka: Forehead Marks Explained Deities
And the red dot, the bindu or kumkum , sits at the centre of it all, the point of concentration, and on a married woman's brow a sign of her status and auspiciousness.
- The Swastika: An Ancient Symbol and Its Meaning Deities
It is traced in red kumkum or rice flour at the threshold of the home, set at the head of the wedding canopy, marked on pots and lamps and the first page of the new ledger.
- Four in the Morning Treatise
At the centre, the bindu - the point at which the geometry terminates and the Goddess sits - has a small smear of last night’s kumkum, dried and fading.
- The Body, Crown To Feet Treatise
…ssive: the practitioner who is in active external worship may place a kumkum mark on their own forehead in correspondence to the goddess’s, with the gesture being read as the practitioner’s recognition of the i…
- The Fire She Came From Treatise
…gy, but also the colour of the dawn she emerged in, the colour of the kumkum every Sri Vidya practitioner now places on the central point of the Sri Yantra in their morning worship.
- The Lost Book Treatise
Every Friday in households across India, men and women place flowers and red kumkum on its central point - the bindu .