Bhairavi Brahmani

Bhairavi Brahmani (fl. 1861–1873) was a Bengali Hindu ascetic, guru and Yogeshwari. She instructed the Hindu mystic Ramakrishna and initiated him into Vaishnava Tantra.

Life Brahmani was born into a Brahmin family in the Jessore district of Bengal, now in Bangladesh. Her date of birth is unknown. Brahmani became an itinerant ascetic and guru. She carried with her the Raghuvir Shila (a stone idol representing lord Rama and all Vaishnava deities) and was well versed in the texts of the Gaudiya Vaishnavism religious movement and Tantrika literature. She wore ochre robes and was about forty years old. They developed a mother-son relationship She became his first formal guru and initiated him into Vaishnava Tantra. Under her guidance, Ramakrishna went through sixty-four major tantric sadhanas one by one, which were completed in 1863. For all the sixty-four sadhana, he took only three days each to complete.

She taught Ramakrishna the kumari-puja, a form of ritual in which the Virgin Goddess is worshipped symbolically in the form of a young girl. When others thought he was experiencing madness, she told him he was experiencing a phenomenon that accompanies mahabhāva, the supreme attitude of loving devotion towards the divine and an extraordinary state of religious ecstasy. Her movements after leaving Ramakrishna and her date and place of death are unknown.

Representation in popular culture In 2021, Aditi Chatterjee portrayed Brahmani in the TV series Karunamoyee Rani Rashmoni.