Devi- Hindu GodDeity"Supreme Mother"

Before the Gods

In the Devi Bhagavata Purana, before creation begins, there is only water and darkness. The Goddess alone exists. She divides herself into three powers and fashions Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, giving each a task: create, preserve, destroy. The power to do any of it belongs to her.

The Devi Mahatmya opens at the other end of a cosmic cycle. Vishnu sleeps on the coils of Shesha, adrift on the primordial ocean. Brahma sits on the lotus growing from Vishnu's navel, and from Vishnu's earwax two demons emerge: Madhu and Kaitabha. Brahma cannot fight them. He prays not to Vishnu, who lies unconscious, but to Yoga Nidra, the Goddess as cosmic sleep. She withdraws from Vishnu's eyes. He wakes, fights the demons for five thousand years, and kills them on his thighs. But he could do nothing until the Goddess released him.

The Buffalo Demon

Mahishasura, the buffalo demon, won a boon from Brahma: no man and no god could kill him. He overran the three worlds and threw the gods out of heaven. Every male deity failed to stop him. In desperation, each god poured out their tejas, their divine fire, and the flames converged into a single blazing form: a woman.

Shiva gave her his trident, Vishnu his discus. Every other god armed her in turn. Himavan gave a lion to ride. She took every weapon and rode toward the demon armies.

The battle lasted nine nights. Mahishasura shifted between forms: buffalo, lion, elephant, man with a sword. Each time, Durga cut him back. In the final moment, as he burst from the severed neck of the buffalo in human form, she pinned him with her foot and drove the trident through his chest. The gods reclaimed heaven. The festival of Navaratri remembers the nine nights of battle.

I Alone Exist

Shumbha and Nishumbha, two demon brothers, conquered the three worlds and sent messengers to court the Goddess. She answered with a vow: only the man who defeated her in combat could claim her.

The demon generals came first. Dhumralochana marched with sixty thousand troops; the Goddess reduced him to ash with a single syllable. Chanda and Munda came next; from her darkened brow sprang Kali, black-skinned and skeletal, who devoured their armies and brought the generals' severed heads back like trophies. For this she earned the name Chamunda.

Then came Raktabija, the blood-seed demon. Every drop of his blood that touched the ground spawned a copy of himself. The battlefield filled with his doubles. Kali spread her tongue across the earth and drank every drop before it landed, while the Goddess struck the killing blow.

Nishumbha fell. Shumbha faced Devi alone and protested: she had relied on other powers, other goddesses. Her answer ended the argument and the war. "These are all projections of my own power. I alone exist in this world. Who else is there besides me?" One by one, the Matrikas dissolved back into her body. She fought Shumbha alone and killed him.

Sati's Fire

Sati married Shiva against her father Daksha's wishes. When Daksha held a great sacrifice and invited every god except Shiva, Sati went uninvited to confront him. Daksha mocked Shiva before the assembly. Sati walked into the sacrificial fire.

Shiva lifted her body and began to dance. The dance shook the cosmos. Stars fell. The earth cracked. The gods feared the universe would come apart. Vishnu followed Shiva across the sky and, with his Sudarshana Chakra, cut Sati's body into pieces so Shiva would have nothing left to carry. He stopped. The pieces fell across the subcontinent.

Each place where a part of Sati's body landed became a Shakti Pitha, a seat of the Goddess's concentrated power. The Kalika Purana names the major sites: Kamakhya in Assam, where the yoni fell, and Hinglaj in Balochistan, at the subcontinent's western edge. Traditions count 4, 51, or 108 pithas in all. Pilgrims still walk the circuit.