Matangi (, ) is a Hindu goddess. She is one of the Mahavidyas, ten Tantric goddesses and an aspect of the Hindu Divine Mother. She is considered to be the Tantric form of Sarasvati, the goddess of music and learning. Matangi governs speech, music, knowledge and the arts. Her worship is prescribed to acquire supernatural powers, especially gaining control over enemies, attracting people to oneself, acquiring mastery over the arts and gaining supreme knowledge.
Matangi is often associated with pollution, inauspiciousness and the periphery of Hindu society, which is embodied in her most popular form, known as Uchchhishta-Chandalini or Uchchhishta-Matangini. She is described as an outcaste (Chandalini) and offered left-over or partially eaten food (Uchchhishta) with unwashed hands or food after eating, both of which are considered to be impure in classical Hinduism.
Matangi is represented as emerald green in colour. While Uchchhishta-Matangini carries a noose, sword, goad, and club, her other well-known form, Raja-Matangi, plays the veena and is often pictured with a parrot.
Iconography and textual descriptions
thumb|left|19th century lithography of Matangi.
The Dhyana mantra (a mantra that details the form of the deity on which a devotee should meditate) of the Tantrasara describes Uchchhishta-Matangini, one of the most popular forms of the goddess. Matangi is seated on a corpse and wears red garments, red jewellery and a garland of gunja seeds. The goddess is described as a young, sixteen-year-old maiden with fully developed breasts. She carries a skull bowl and a sword in her two hands, and is offered leftovers.
The Dhyana mantras in the Purashcharyarnava and the Tantrasara describe Matangi as blue in colour. The crescent moon adorns her forehead. She has three eyes and a smiling face. She wears jewellery and is seated on a jewelled throne. She carries a noose, a sword, a goad, and a club in her four arms. Her waist is slim and her breasts well-developed. She is also depicted wearing a garland of white lotus (here lotus signifies multi-colored world creation), similar to the iconography of goddess Saraswati, with whom she is associated with.
According to Kalidasa's Shyamaladandakam, Matangi plays a ruby-studded veena and speaks sweetly. The Dhyana Mantra describes her to be four-armed, with a dark emerald complexion, full breasts anointed with red kumkum powder, and a crescent moon on her forehead. She carries a noose, a goad, a sugarcane bow and flower arrows, which the goddess Tripura Sundari is often described to hold. Another similar legend replaces Sati with Kali (the chief Mahavidya) as the wife of Shiva and the origin of Matangi and the other Mahavidyas. The Devi Bhagavata Purana describes Matangi and her fellow Mahavidyas as war-companions and forms of the goddess Shakambhari.
The Shaktisamgama-tantra narrates the birth of Uchchhishta-Matangini. Once, the god Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi visited Shiva and his wife Parvati (a reincarnation of Sati) and gave them a banquet of fine foods. While eating, the deities dropped some food on the ground, from which arose a beautiful maiden, a manifestation of Goddess Saraswati, who asked their left-overs. The four deities granted her their left-overs as prasad, food made sacred by having been first consumed by the deity. This can be interpreted as the Uchchhishta of the deity, although due to its negative connotation the word Uchchhishta is never explicitly used in connection to prasad. Shiva decreed that those who repeat her mantra and worship her will have their material desires satisfied and gain control over foes, declaring her the giver of boons. From that day, the maiden was known as Uchchhishta-Matangini.
thumb|As in this early 19th century South Indian painting, Raja-Matangi is usually depicted playing the veena and with a parrot in her company.
The Pranotasani Tantra (18th Century) and Naradpancharatra This tale is also found in many Bengali Mangalkavyas. In these texts, however, Parvati is not explicitly identified with Matangi. Matanga Tantra and many other texts including the Shyamaladandakam describe Matangi as the daughter of the sage Matanga. Matangi is herself described as the leftover or residue, symbolizing the Divine Self that is left over after all things perish.
Matangi represents the power of the spoken word (Vaikhari) as an expression of thoughts and the mind. She also relates to the power of listening and grasping speech and converting it back to knowledge and thought. Besides spoken word, she also governs all other expressions of inner thought and knowledge, like art, music, and dance. Matangi presides over the middle part of speech (Madhyama), where ideas are translated into the spoken word and in her highest role, represents Para-Vaikhari—the Supreme Word manifested through speech and that encompasses knowledge of the scriptures. She is described as the goddess of learning and speech, and the bestower of knowledge and talent. She is also called Mantrini, the mistress of the sacred mantras. Matangi is described as dwelling in the Throat chakra—the origin of speech—and on the tip of the tongue. She is also associated with a channel called Saraswati from the third eye to the tip of the tongue. According to David Frawley, her description as impure refers to the nature of the spoken word, which labels things and stereotypes them, thereby hindering actual contact with the soul of things. The goddess is described as one who helps a person to use words in the right way and to go beyond it to seek the soul and inner knowledge, which lie outside the demarcated boundaries of tradition.
Matangi is regarded as a Tantric form of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and the arts of mainstream Hinduism, with whom she shares many traits. Both embody music and are depicted playing the veena. They are also both said to be the Nada (sound or energy) that flows through the Nadi channels in the body through which life force flows. Both are related to rain clouds, thunder and rivers. Though both govern learning and speech, Saraswati represents the orthodox knowledge of the Brahmins while Matangi—the wild and ecstatic outcast—embodies the "extraordinary" beyond the boundaries of mainstream society, especially inner knowledge. Matangi is also associated with Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of knowledge and obstacle removal. Both are related to the elephant and learning. Matangi is also regarded as his mother.
Worship
thumb|The yantra of Matangi, which is used in her worship
Besides the Mahavidya Bagalamukhi, Matangi is the other Mahavidya, whose worship is primarily prescribed to acquire supernatural powers. A hymn in the Maha-Bhagavata Purana asks her grace to control one's foes, while the Tantrasara says that recitation of her mantra, meditation on her form and her ritual worship gives one to the power to control people and make them attracted to oneself.
<blockquote>Om Hrim Aim Shrim Namo Bhagvati Ucchishtachandali Shri Matangeswari Sarvajanavasankari Swaha<br />
"Reverence to adorable Matangi, the outcast and residue, who gives control over all creatures"</blockquote>
thumb|left|upright|Matangi worshipped with other Mahavidyas at a [[Kali Puja pandal in Kolkata.]]
Her mantra may be repeated ten thousand times, repeated one thousand times while offering flowers and ghee in a fire sacrifice, or repeated one hundred times while offering water (Arghya) or while offering food to Brahmin priests. Her yantra (sacred geometric diagram), whether physically constructed or mentally envisioned, The Tantrasara also advises offerings to Matangi of meat, fish, cooked rice, milk and incense at crossroads or cremations grounds in the dead of the night to overpower enemies and gain poetic talent. Oblations of Uchchhishta, cat meat and goat meat to the goddess are said to help achieve Supreme knowledge.
Temples
Matangi is worshipped alongside the other nine Mahavidyas at the Kamakhya Temple in Assam, one of the oldest and most sacred Shakti pithas for Tantra worship. The Modh community of Gujarat worship Matangi as Modheshwari, patron deity of their community. There is a temple dedicated to Matangi located within the Tulja Bhavani Temple complex in Maharashtra.