In the fifth or sixth century CE, the appearance of a unique text within the Purāṇic fold marked a defining moment in Indian religious history. The Devīmāhātmya, which is the primary text of the Śākta tradition, united many and diverse strands of Indian myth, cult practice, and philosophy spanning at least four millennia and created one great hymn of glorification that proclaimed an all-encompassing vision of the Great Goddess. It revealed her as the omnipotent yet all-compassionate Mother, who is at once the source of this perplexing universe, a protective and guiding presence, and the bestower of supreme knowledge and liberation. From northwest India, the Devīmāhātmya spread rapidly eastward to Bengal, where it became known as the Candì. By the ninth century CE it had spread throughout the southern subcontinent under the title of Śrī Durgāsaptaśatī (“Seven Hundred Verses to Śrī Durgā”).
The Devīmāhātmya forms Chapters 81 through 93 of the Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa. In typical Purāṇic fashion, the sage Mārkaṇḍeya relates to his disciple Krauṣṭuki Bhāguri the history of the world through its cosmic ages (manvantaras). When Mārkaṇḍeya begins his account of the eighth manvantara, the Devī suddenly appears out of nowhere, becomes the focal point of the chapters that constitute the Devīmāhātmya, and then vanishes just as suddenly. Her absence from all other portions of the Purāṇa and the abrupt transitions immediately before and after the Devīmāhātmya point to the likelihood that it is an interpolation by a Śākta redactor rather than a part of the original text.1 Three other facts strengthen that likelihood. Although the Purāṇas typically grew over time by accretion, the text of the Devīmāhātmya remained relatively fixed. Few manuscripts of the entire Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa are known, but many of the Devīmāhātmya survive and attest to its widespread popularity. The Purāṇas generated few commentaries, but the Devīmāhātmya inspired many.2 From the beginning, it seems to have enjoyed an independent existence, and in all probability it arose independently as well.
It probably was transmitted orally at first, but committed to writing not long afterward. The early Purāṇic literature belongs to the period of transition from an oral to a written culture, and the Devīmāhātmya exhibits the repetitive, formulaic quality consistent with the bardic style of the late preliterate period.
At the same time, the text is a compilation and synthesis of far older myths and traditions, skillfully integrated into a single narrative. It consists of three episodes based on previously known but formerly unassociated myths from Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, and indigenous tribal sources, interwoven with Harappan and Vedic strands and refashioned to affirm the Devī’s absolute supremacy and glory. Connecting the myths is a frame story, told by Mārkaṇḍeya, about a king, a merchant, and a sage. In turn the sage, named Medhas, becomes the narrator of the three myths describing the Devī’s activity (carità) in vanquishing the forces that threaten the world order, personified as demons variously called asuras, daityas, or dānavas.
A myth should not be regarded as fiction simply because it does not describe a historical event. As the Platonic philosopher Synesius of Cyrene put it, “Myths are things that never happened, but always are.”3 Indeed, a myth illustrates elusive truths that are difficult to express by more conventional means, precisely because it ventures beyond the realm of fact and into the realm of meaning. Open to multiple interpretations, a myth is valuable as a window through which one’s experience of the world can be understood.4 Through symbolism, it plumbs the deeper levels of the human psyche, and at one time myth may have functioned as an ancient form of psychology. Mythologist Joseph Campbell identified the four functions of myth as inspiring a sense of awe, explaining the origin and nature of the cosmos, supporting the social order, and awakening individuals to their own potential, especially in the spiritual domain.5 We find all four functions at work in the Devīmāhātmya.
The Devīmāhātmya’s three mythological narratives are allegories of outer and internal experience. Outwardly, the asuras symbolize the chaos or adharma that threatens cosmic stability or dharma. Inwardly, they symbolize the ego-based ignorance that plagues the human condition. The gods and the all-powerful Devī in her many aspects represent light and truth, and their clashes with the asuras symbolize the internal struggles that human beings face daily. Reflection on the myths’ often gory details reveals an underlying psychological and spiritual wisdom.
If the battle sequences concentrate on the Devī’s destructive side as the vanquisher of evil, the text’s four sublime hymns emphasize her auspicious and protective qualities. Although integral to the narratives, the hymns are markedly different in quality. Writing in the mid-18th century, the commentator Bhāskararāya characterized the hymns as dṛṣta (“seen”) rather than kṛta (“made”), thus conferring on them the exalted status of revealed knowledge generally accorded only to the Vedas.6 Because of their surpassing beauty and devotional fervor, they are frequently chanted in ritual. These four hymns—the Brahmāstuti (DM 1.73–87), the Śakrādistuti (DM 4.3–27), the Aparājitāstuti (DM 5.9–82) and the Nārāyaṇīstuti (DM 11.3— 35)—additionally speak of perennial, universal themes and have continued over the centuries to nourish philosophical thought.
The King, the Merchant, and the Seer
The Devīmāhātmya begins with Mārkaṇḍeya relating how a virtuous king named Suratha suffers the loss of his kingdom, then rides off alone into the forest and comes upon the hermitage of Medhas, a holy man. Soon afterward, a merchant named Samādhi, dispossessed of his wealth and cast out by his greedy family, arrives at the forest retreat. Amid the beautiful, peaceful surroundings, the two of them expect to find tranquility but encounter instead their own inner turmoil, fueled by recurring thoughts of loss, betrayal, and attachment to what they have left behind. The king feels that as men of knowledge they ought to know better than to be so overcome with misery. Together they approach Medhas, who recognizes that by “knowledge” the king means awareness of the objective world and not a deeper understanding of the true nature of things. The sage’s task will be to awaken his two disciples to a higher, spiritual awareness.
Medhas tells Suratha and Samādhi that, like everyone else, they are deluded by Mahāmāyā, the goddess who hurls even the so-called wise into the dark whirlpool of attachment. Having seized their minds, she binds them to this transitory existence (saṁsāra) and all its attendant woes.
Medhas explains that nothing in this world is as it seems to be. The world as perceived through the senses constantly deceives. Humans and animals alike share the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, but the faculties are differently attuned and developed according to species. To speak of sensory knowledge of the world is to describe only one’s own experience, and since the world is experienced differently according to the capacity of each experiencer, there is no single empirical world that is the same for all living beings. Additionally, the knowledge gained through the senses is conditioned by the physical properties of time and space, causing things to appear not as they are in themselves, but as they seem in relation to everything else.
If a simple act of sensory perception can be so fraught with deception, are not the more complex issues of animal and human behavior even more likely to confound? Medhas observes that birds feed their young even while feeling the pangs of hunger, whereas humans raise their children with the expectation of future reward. Birds act out of instinct according to predetermined patterns. Humans, also possessing instinct, additionally have the capacity to reason and make choices, but those choices are most often driven by self-interest, desires, and expectations. The Devīmāhātmya classifies both instinctual and rational awareness as lower forms of knowledge, because neither has the ability to liberate. Living creatures are bound to the ever- repeating cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Medhas instructs that Mahāmāyā creates the universe, then “seizes the minds of even the wise and draws them into delusion” (DM 1.55). But, he adds, she is also “the supreme knowledge and the eternal cause of liberation” (DM 1.58).
The delusion of which Medhas speaks is a basic fact of life. The Sanskrit word moha is translated variously as “delusion, bewilderment, distraction, infatuation, error, folly,” but none of these is an adequate synonym for the total pattern of thinking that fails to recognize that things are not as they seem to be and instead accepts appearance as reality. The fundamental meaning of moha is “loss of consciousness,” and its cause is māyā, another word with no English equivalent. Initially māyā denoted extraordinary or supernatural power, and later, magic or sorcery, sometimes in the negative sense of deception. In the later Upaniṣads and the contemporaneous Sāṁkhya and Vedānta philosophies, māyā took on metaphysical dimensions. The Devīmāhātmya’s understanding of māyā is closest to that of the later Upaniṣads, where it appears as the divine power of self-concealment. What it conceals is the infinite consciousness that is Brahman. Now the definition of moha as loss of consciousness begins to make sense.
The Śvetāśvataropaniṣad equates māyā with prakṛti as the female energy by which Śiva, the Lord of Māyā, projects the universe (ŚU 4.9–10). This portrayal as Śiva’s female counterpart implies the personification of māyā as a goddess, and such a goddess is the first one encountered in the Devīmāhātmya. Her name, Mahāmāyā, means either “the great māyā’” or “she whose māyā is great.” Either way it signifies immense power.
The king wants to know more about this goddess Mahāmāyā, and Medhas responds by relating the first of three stories. There will be three stories, because everything in the world has a beginning, a middle, and an end, over which the Devī presides as the universal creator, preserver, and destroyer. In the first episode (carita) she appears in her cosmogonic, world-creating aspect.
Long before the present creation, when the previous universe was dissolved into an endless primordial ocean, the blessed Lord Viṣṇu lay in deep meditative sleep. Suddenly, two demons named Madhu and Kaiṭabha sprang forth from the wax in his ears, intent on killing Brahmā, who sat on the lotus growing from Viṣṇu’s navel. Desperately, Brahmā tried to awaken Viṣṇu but in vain, for the sleep that had settled over the supreme lord’s eyes was the goddess Mahāmāyā herself. Brahmā extolled her with a hymn and asked her to release Viṣṇu from her spell. Awakening, Viṣṇu beheld the raging Madhu and Kaiṭabha and engaged them in combat for five thousand years until Mahāmāyā confounded them with pride. Having withstood the might of Viṣṇu himself, in their arrogance they decided to grant him a boon, but they realized their folly too late, for what Viṣṇu asked was to slay them then and there.
Comprising only one chapter, the story of Madhu and Kaiṭabha is a succinct reinterpretation of an earlier Vaiṣṇava myth found in the Mahābhārata and other sources. In the earlier accounts, Viṣṇu is the great hero and supreme lord who defeats the asuras through his own strength. In the Devīmāhātmya, the Devī is supreme, holding the sleeping Viṣṇu in her power until praised by Brahmā. When released, Viṣṇu battles Madhu and Kaiṭabha without victory until the Devī again intervenes. In the Vaiṣṇava versions, the asuras’ pride arises as a consequence of their own enormous strength, but in the Devīmāhātmya, the deluding power of Mahāmāyā tricks the pair into sealing their own doom.7 As retold, the myth establishes the Devī as the ultimate power in the universe, upon whom even the gods are dependent.
The brutish Madhu and Kaiṭabha are ultimately done in by their own arrogant stupidity, and the obvious message is that pride goes before a fall. Their destructive impulses, anger, and brute force represent the basest aspects of human nature. The demonic pair symbolize tamas, one of three fundamental energies (guṇas) pervading all creation. To combat this negative force, the Devī appears also in a tamasic manifestation as Mahāmāyā, “the dark goddess” (DM 1.89) who casts her veil of delusion and obscures the light of truth.
Brahmā’s hymn (DM 1.73–87), with its focus on the Devī’s tamasic, cosmogonic aspect, reveals deep insights into the nature of divine reality and the ever-changing physical universe. The initial verses establish the Divine Mother’s ultimate transcendence and identify her as the creator, sustainer, and dissolver of the cosmos. She is both consciousness and creativity—the substratum of existence and the great deluding power that projects the world out of herself. She is the all-encompassing source of good and evil alike, both radiant splendor and terrifying darkness, yet ultimately she is the ineffable bliss beyond all duality.
The Devīmāhātmya, already having pointed out that nothing in this world is as it seems, explains the origination of the universe with the startling paradox that the world is created by an act of simultaneous self-concealment (āvaraṇa) and projection (vikṣepa). The supreme Devī’s māyā veils her infinitude and causes the universe of name and form (nāmarūpa) to emanate from her limitless consciousness. “She is eternal, having the world as her form,” says Medhas (DM 1.64). This verse is an unequivocal statement of Śākta nondualism and affirms an ontological continuity between undifferentiated divine reality and its manifestation as the material universe.
Next, the Devī is prakṛti (DM 1.78), usually translated as “primordial matter” or “nature.” As a verbal noun that literally means “making at first,” prakṛti does not signify inert, insentient matter but a dynamic process endowed with awareness. Latent within the unmanifest prakṛti are the three basic energies, the guṇas. During the cyclical periods when the universe is not manifest, the guṇas exist in a state of perfect equilibrium. When the Devī disturbs their balance, she produces a cosmic vibration, a manifestation of energy of which the approximate sound is OṀ. The activation of the guṇas is the first step in the differentiation within prakṛti—an early event in the cosmic process of transformation from potentiality to actuality.
The guṇas—called tamas, rajas, and sattva—are the three basic energies, and their complex interactions create the physical universe. Tamas is inertia. The Sanskrit word signifies physical or mental darkness, and the force it represents manifests as heaviness, dullness, ignorance, error, and negative human behavior. Rajas is activity. The word signifies intermediate dimness between darkness and light, and the force it represents manifests as restlessness, impurity, urgency, and passion. Sattva is balance. The word signifies something like “being-ness” or “truth-ness.” Sattva is not reality itself, but it points toward reality; and its manifestations include light, calmness, purity, goodness, and wisdom. Tamas veils, sattva reveals, and rajas allows those two polarizing forces to interact. As the basic forces operative in the universe, the three guṇas determine everything from the structuring of physical matter to the subtleties of human behavior.
It is easy to regard inanimate mineral matter as devoid of consciousness and to regard plant life as limited in awareness, but to do so is to forget that everything consists of forms assumed by the supreme Śakti through her guṇas. Minerals are intensely tamasic, but their greatly obscured consciousness is observable in the consistency of their atomic and subatomic organization. At the other end of the observable spectrum is the sattva-steeped awareness of the seer who has experienced the Divine. The Devīmāhātmya speaks of all the universe, moving and unmoving, as divine manifestation in which nothing is devoid of consciousness.8
Matter, perceived as solid objects in space and time, is in fact a relatively stable form of energy, highly organized into systems of many kinds of subatomic particles or waves that are themselves made of still smaller quanta of energy. Overall, quantum physics and Śākta philosophy agree in viewing the physical universe as a manifestation of energy. Just as vibrating quanta of energy form ever more complex units of matter to produce the entire cosmos, so the three guṇas combine and recombine with increasing complexity to structure the material universe and its living beings. Scientists claim that the amount of energy in the universe is constant; late in the 19th century, Swami Vivekananda wrote that the Divine Mother is “the sum total of the energy in the universe.”9 While science continues to probe deeper for the ultimate simplicity—the perfect, unbroken symmetry before the beginning of creation, before matter crystallized out of energy—Śākta philosophy has known all along that the ultimate form of matter is energy and that the ultimate form of energy is consciousness.
Ādyā Śakti—the primordial power devoid of all duality—is the ultimate reality, an inconceivable formlessness that is neither female, male, nor neuter but is pure, undifferentiated being-consciousness-bliss (saccidānanda). Though without beginning, Ādyā Śakti is the beginning of all else. Śākta philosophy agrees with the Upaniṣads that Brahman and māyā, which it calls Śiva and Śakti, are one undivided reality; it is called Śiva when experienced as the unchanging ground of existence and Śakti when experienced as the dynamic power of becoming. This power of becoming (māyāśakti), which manifests as mind and matter, is the power through which the infinite changelessness dons the ever-changing veils of time and space and becomes a universe that is none other than the resplendent form of the formless (śūnyasyākāra), a universe wherein spirit, mind and matter are ultimately one.10
Although compiled from disparate sources, the Devīmāhātmya reveals a consistent philosophical basis, but later commentators have exercised wide latitude in attempting to reveal its secrets according to one philosophical position or another. The two greatest commentaries are the Guptavatī (“Confirming What is Hidden”), written around 1741 by Bhāskararāya, and the slightly earlier commentary of Nāgoji Bhatta. While Bhaṭṭa held in large part to the established practice of interpreting the Devīmāhātmya according to the Vedānta school, Bhāskararāya was the first commentator to write from the Tantric standpoint.
Although Śākta philosophy and the Advaita Vedānta of the eighth-century philosopher-saint Śaṁkarācārya are both nondualistic in agreeing that one reality underlies all diversity, they reach radically different conclusions about the nature of the world. For Śaṁkara, the world is neither real nor unreal. His nondualism posits an ontological hierarchy of the absolutely real or transcendental (pāramārthika), which is the nondual Brahman; the empirical (vyāvahārika), which is the objective universe of human experience, lying somewhere between absolute truth and complete falsity; and the apparent or illusory (prātibhāsika), which includes illusions, hallucinations, and dreams. According to the process known as sublation, a new experience disproves something formerly experienced as true. For example, a dream is revealed as unreal when the sleeper returns to the waking state. Similarly, the experience of the phenomenal, objective universe is sublated by the experience of Brahman, and the universe disappears. But because Brahman, the Absolute, cannot be sublated by any other experience, it is the ultimate and sole reality.
The absolute Brahman is nirguṇa, or without qualities, and according to Śaṁkara the universe is only a superimposition (adhyāsa) on that changeless reality. This doctrine, known as vivartavāda, explains the universe as merely a matter of mistaking one thing for another. The classic example is of seeing a rope in the semidarkness and thinking it to be a snake. As long as the misperception lasts, the snake is very real to the perceiver, who reacts accordingly. But the snake and the fear of it vanish when the light reveals it to be a rope. In the same way, the empirical world vanishes with the experience of the infinite Brahman. Śaṁkara’s philosophy does not regard the world as pure illusion but as a flawed experience of reality through māyā’s veils of time and space, and this contigent reality exists only in the fleeting experience of it.
In contrast to Śaṁkara’s doctrine of vivartavāda, Bhāskararāya’s Guptavatī and the Devīmāhātmya articulate the doctrine of pariṇāmavāda, the world as an actual transformation of divinity. The classic analogy expressing this view is that of thread being woven into cloth. The cause (thread) is transformed into the effect (cloth) through a change of form but not of substance.11 The Upaniṣads support the Śākta view of the universe as real. The Chāndogyopaniṣad’s pronouncement, Sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma, “Truly all this [universe] is Brahman” (ChU 3.14.1), continues, “From that all things originate, into that do they dissolve, and by that are they sustained.” The Śvetāśvataropaniṣad affirms the identity of the Absolute, the relative, and the māyā that bridges them, and declares all three to be Brahman (ŚU 1.9, 12). Through a mystery beyond the mind’s understanding, Śakti becomes the manifold universe even while Śiva remains unitary and transcendental, and divine reality encompasses both the experience of the whole and the partial within the whole. For the Śākta, everything exists in the infinite Śakti, even all limitations within her wholeness are but her other aspects.12 In glaring contrast, for Śaṁkara the absolute reality of Brahman lies in its immutability, which admits to no possibility of the imperfection inherent in change.
In truth, no philosophy can take the human mind beyond the finitizing principle of māyā to encompass the infinite, all-transcending consciousness. One can accept Śaṁkara’s position that the world is no more real than the snake misperceived in the rope, or one can accept the Śākta position that the unchanging One somehow transforms itself into the ever-changing many even while remaining one and unchanging. Either way, there is a threshold that reason cannot cross, where wisdom becomes silence, and inexpressible experience alone can reveal its truth.
Now what is the relationship of that supreme consciousness to the world of human experience? Without Self-realization, humans live, deluded, in a universe projected by Mahāmāyā, who is both “the great goddess and the great demoness” (DM 1.77). The universe is a kaleidoscope of limitless possibility, of breathtaking beauty and appalling horror, where life oscillates between pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, success and failure. In such a world, the necessity arises for making choices. If Medhas’s initial characterization of the Devī in her tamasic aspect inspires philosophical contemplation on the nature of reality, his depiction of her in her rajasic aspect inspires the vision of a goddess actively involved in her creation. Here she has the twofold nature of a compassionate mother worthy of devotion and a protective warrior intent on the victory of good over evil. Medhas’s second story, related in Chapters 2 through 4, forms the Devīmāhātmya’s second carita.
Long ago, the demonic forces of Mahiṣa, the buffalo demon, battled with the heavenly forces of Indra for 100 years and defeated the gods. Cast out of heaven, the dispossessed gods appealed to Viṣṇu and Śiva for help. Thereupon a great radiance issued first from Viṣṇu’s angered face and then from Brahmā’s and Śiva’s. From all the other gods, light also came forth and united into a fiery goddess, to whom each god gave a weapon or adornment symbolic of his power. Thus arrayed, she laughed thunderously and defiantly until the very universe shook.
Hearing the disturbance, Mahiṣa and his demon hordes rushed to the scene and beheld the Devī Durgā in all her awesome glory. Millions upon millions of asuras attacked her, but she serenely cut through their weapons as if in play. Her exhaled breaths became her legions, and amid scenes of horrific carnage the Devī stood victorious.
Next, Durgā destroyed Mahiṣa’s generals one by one until she faced the buffalo demon alone. With boundless anger he pawed the earth with his hooves, bellowed in rage and rent the clouds with his thrashing horns. Whenever Durgā struck him, he changed his form, from buffalo to lion to man to elephant and back to buffalo, evading her death-blows until she leapt upon him, pinned his neck underfoot, and pierced him with her spear. Then from his buffalo’s mouth, Mahiṣa’s hideous, true form emerged halfway, and the Devī Durgā beheaded him with a single stroke of her mighty sword.
In the centuries before the Devīmāhātmya’s composition, the goddess Durgā emerged in the Śākta movement as one of the Devī’s principal forms. She seems to be of indigenous origin, and many early references associate her with the Vindhya Mountains south of the Indus Valley, a region peopled by hostile tribes.13 The word durga (“difficult of access”) occurs in the Ṛgveda only as a masculine or neuter adjective or noun and never as a feminine name,14 and this textual evidence suggests that Durgā was absorbed into the Vedic pantheon after the period of the Saṁhitās. She first appears as a goddess in Vedic literature in the Taittirīyāraṇyaka, which characterizes her as “the flaming one” connected to the power of Savitṛ and Agni, the gods of the sun and fire (TA 10.1).15
Early traces of Durgā’s defining myth, concerning the slaying of the buffalo demon, are found in six statues and a terracotta plaque from the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan. Dating from the middle of the first century BCE to the early fourth century CE, they illustrate the myth’s climactic moment and depict Mahiṣāsuramardinī—Durgā as the slayer of the buffalo demon—as a goddess armed with trident and spear in combat with a buffalo. The plaque additionally shows a lion accompanying her.16
Although the myth’s ultimate origin remains unknown,17 circumstantial evidence places it in the extremely remote past. We recall that pre-Harappan images of a formidable goddess were found in Baluchistan in connection with those of a wild bull and have been interpreted as credible symbols of good conquering evil. Such an interpretation finds support in the work of archeologist Jacques Cauvin, who contends that the wild male bovine so terrified Neolithic people with its brute force and destructive ferocity that it became a universal symbol of evil, of the chaos that threatened the peaceful order of sedentary agricultural societies.18 Without direct evidence it is impossible to ascribe such a remote origin to the story of Mahiṣāsura, but we cannot rule out the possibility that one of Hinduism’s most captivating myths preserves a primeval cultural memory.
Later terracotta tablets from Harappa show a male figure killing a water buffalo in the manner described in the Devīmāhātmya, by pinning the head underfoot and thrusting a spear into the shoulder. This act takes place in the presence of the homed male deity, speculated to be proto-Śiva, seated in the yogic position.19
This evidence hardly suggests a direct connection with Durgā but becomes noteworthy in light of the oldest literary account of myth, preserved in the Mahābhārata. There Mahiṣa is slain by Śiva’s son, Skanda (MBh 3.221).20 In the Harivaṁśa, a later supplement to the Mahābhārata, Mahiṣa’s slayer is given once as Śiva himself and three times as an unnamed goddess.21 The Vāmanapurāṇa, thought to postdate the Devīmāhātmya, contains two accounts of the slaying, one associated with Skanda and one with Durgā.22 Arising from yet undetermined origins, the myth remained for a long while in a state of flux as to whether Skanda, Śiva, or an unnamed goddess killed Mahiṣāsura, until its unequaled formulation in the Devīmāhātmya for the first time actually linked the names of Mahiṣa and Durgā.23
The argument for Durgā’s antiquity becomes all the more compelling in light of her linkage to another ancient goddess, Vindhyavāsinī. This identification is consistent in two hymns interpolated into the Mahābhārata—the Durgāstava (in MBh 4.5) and the Durgāstotra (in MBh 6.22)—and in three hymns of the Harivaṁśa. Among the latter, Viṣṇu’s Praise of Nidrā first extols Vindhyavāsinī for foiling Kaṁsa’s plot to kill the infant Kṛṣṇa (HV 47.38–57). Then a later, fifty-eight-line addition to the hymn (HV Appendix I, No. 8) not only makes it clear that Vindhyavāsinī and Durgā are one and the same goddess but also identifies her in line 32 with Aditi, the universal mother of the Ṛgveda.24 This is highly significant, considering that the references to Aditi in the Ṛgveda may well be the most ancient surviving records of any goddess in the Indian literary tradition.
Durgā’s association with the Vaiṣṇava themes of the destruction of wickedness and the protection of virtue is another thread running through the Durgāstava and the Durgāstotra. The Durgāstava’s hymnist is Yudhiṣṭhira, the dispossessed king whose situation resembles Suratha’s. Significantly, the Durgāstotra, one of the earliest Sanskrit hymns to the Devī,25 occurs immediately before the 18 chapters that form the Bhagavadgītā. Arjuna, about to engage in battle at Kurukṣetra, is counseled by Kṛṣṇa to recite the Durgāstotra in order to insure victory. Arjuna descends from his chariot and invokes the Devī as Kālī, Bhadrakālī, Caṇḍī, and Durgā, and by other names and epithets found scattered throughout the Devīmāhātmya. Together, Yudhiṣṭhira’s ecstatic praise and Arjuna’s invocation present a vision of Durgā as a dark and resplendent goddess, the destroyer of Kaiṭabha and Mahiṣāsura, worthy of worship by the Vedic gods. Endowed with all manner of weapons and adornments, she grants victory in battle and removes human burdens. Many are the boons she bestows on those who seek refuge in her. The two hymns share a multitude of themes, images, and epithets with the Devīmāhātmya, even entire, closely-corresponding passages, especially relating to the Devī’s promises of protection and blessing.26
The strategic positioning of the Durgāstotra in the Mahābhārata forges a link between the Devīmāhātmya and the Bhagavadgītā. So does the forced enumeration of the Devīmāhātmya’s text into seven hundred verses in order to conform to the Bhagavadgītā’s similar number. Despite its alternative title, Śrī Durgāsaptaśatī (“Seven Hundred Verses to Śrī Durgā”), the Devīmāhātmya actually consists of fewer than six hundred full couplets (ślokas). To arrive at the requisite seven hundred, redactors have variously numbered some single lines, partial lines, and interlocutory phrases (“so-and-so said”) as full ślokas. For wishing to draw such a parallel to the Bhagavadgītā, they must have had a compelling reason. Indeed they did. They wanted to equate the Devī Durgā’s activity with the redemptive role of Śrī Kṛṣṇa in Vaiṣṇava religion.
The idea of divine intervention in worldly affairs belongs to the Vaiṣṇava tradition of the avatāra, or incarnate deity. In the Bhagavadgītā (BhG 4.6–8) Kṛṣṇa declares that whenever righteousness declines and evil proliferates, he is born into the world to protect the good, to destroy wickedness, and to re-establish the natural order, the dharma that upholds (dhāryate) the world. In the Mahābhārata, protective intervention is a role ascribed also to the Devī. On Kṛṣṇa’s advice, Arjuna invokes Durgā with a hymn immediately before the battle of Kurukṣetra, whereupon she appears and assures victory. And just as the opening words of the Bhagavadgītā declare the field of Kurukṣetra to be a metaphor for the field of dharma—the battleground of human life with its perpetual conflict between good and evil—the battlefields of the Devīmāhātmya embody a parallel symbolism. To compare the Devīmāhātmya to the Bhagavadgītā is to reinforce the Devī’s protective, redemptive role and her saving grace in the face of adversity. Whenever evil prevails over good and upsets the natural order, the Devī, who is the universal mother, protector, and salvific goddess, intervenes.
The second carita of the Devīmāhātmya has theological and practical dimensions in portraying the Devī as the salvific Durgā, and the story is intended for Suratha. Having lost his kingdom to evildoers, he can relate to the dispossessed gods; having ruled by divine authority, duty-bound to uphold the dharma, he can relate to its overturning. The heaven-storming asuras and the gods represent the good and evil tendencies that pervade the world in perpetual opposition. Mahiṣa’s fury symbolizes the ego-based sense of attachment that plagues Suratha over his lost kingdom. The buffalo demon’s behavior embodies the guṇa of rajas, the fiery, active energy that manifests as restlessness, desire, rage, and corrosive passion. The Devī also appears in her rajasic aspect, as the inherent splendor (tejas) of the male gods. And she is subordinate to none of them. Their individual strengths and virtues, which emerge from their bodies with fiery brilliance and coalesce into one supreme female form, are but facets of her own undivided might.
The episode of Durgā’s triumph over evil is her defining moment, a myth so powerful that it has been celebrated in sculpture and painting for at least two thousand years. Beyond moral victory, the multilayered imagery of the myth has deeper psychological and spiritual implications. As a metaphor, Mahiṣa represents more than anger, however monumental. Whenever Durgā attacks, the buffalo demon eludes her deadly blows by using the protective shield of his changing forms. Until he reveals his true form, he remains elusive and seemingly unconquerable. In the same way, human delusion dons an array of guises to mask and protect an ego ruled by attachment, aversion, and deep-seated fear. Personal demons will continue to bedevil in one form or another until recognized for what they are. Of course, Mahiṣa’s unwillingness to reveal himself stems from a sense of self-preservation, and Durgā forces the revelation by piercing his side with her spear, symbolizing the penetrating light of the higher knowledge. When Mahiṣa emerges in his true form, Durgā decapitates him with her sword, a metaphor for viveka, the ability to discern between the apparent and the real, the transient and the eternal.
The myth reveals an intimate connection between good and evil and the ego. The experience of duality and finite selfhood arises from moha, the limitation of consciousness. Without a nondualistic understanding, the presence of evil in the world remains a vexing question. Some dualistic religions seek a solution by acknowledging God as the source of good and inventing a devil as the source of evil, but in doing so they create the further problem of a diminished God, who is no longer the supreme being but one of two mutually-limiting adversaries. The simple fact is that good and evil coexist in the relative world and neither is possible without the other to define it. Practically and philosophically, evil is that which distances from the Divine, and good is that which leads toward it. As for the ego, when the Devī enters into her creation to experience it as her divine play (līlā), her infinite consciousness appears fragmented as finite centers in time and space that define everything in their experience in terms of “I, me, and mine” and their negative corollaries. Inevitably, the interests of one ego clash with those of another, and the need arises for moral choices between divisive egocentrism and the uniting power of selfless love. Durgā’s slaying of Mahiṣāsura symbolizes the conquest of ego-based attachment and all its consequent pain. No wonder Mahiṣa’s final expression, gazing up at his sword-wielding slayer, is one of rapt awe.
In the eloquent, richly detailed Śakrādistuti (DM 4.3–27) that follows, Indra and the other gods praise Durgā’s supremacy and transcendence before elaborating on the meaning of Mahiṣa’s slaying, which centers on the salvific nature of the Devī’s power and on her unconditional compassion. Her purpose is to preserve the moral order, and to that end she appears as “good fortune in the dwellings of the virtuous and misfortune in the abodes of the wicked” (DM 4.5), granting abundant blessings and subduing misconduct. “Ever intent on benevolence toward all” (DM 4.17), she reveals even her vast destructive power as ultimately compassionate, for in slaying those enemies of the world who “may have committed enough evil to keep them long in torment” (DM 4.18), she redeems them with the purifying touch of her weapons so that they “may attain the higher worlds” (DM 4.19). Since good and evil exist only relative to each other, no evildoer meets with eternal damnation. In the end, all are assured of the Divine Mother’s blessing.
The Devī’s promise to return whenever she is remembered by the gods or humankind in times of distress prompts Medhas to announce that he has yet another story, and so begins the Devīmāhātmya’s longest and most elaborate carita, which constitutes Chapters 5 through 13.
Long ago, two arrogant asuras, the brothers Śumbha and Niśumbha, seized Indra’s sovereignty over the three worlds, and once again the gods were dispossessed. The Devī had promised that whenever remembered in times of distress, she would appear and put an end to misfortune, and so the gods invoked her with praise.
She emerged in a resplendent form from the body of Śiva’s consort, Pārvatī, and took up her abode in the Himālayas. Soon her captivating beauty caught the attention of Caṇḍa and Muṇḍa, Śumbha and Niśumbha’s two servants, who reasoned that since their masters had already stolen everything of value from the gods, should they not also possess this most beautiful of goddesses? Śumbha sent his messenger, Sugrīva, to beguile the Devī to come to him and Niśumbha. But Sugrīva returned with a challenge, for the Devī had vowed long ago that whoever she married would first have to conquer her in battle.
Śumbha appointed the chieftain Dhūmralocana to bring her back by force, and after his failed attempt, Caṇḍa and Muṇḍa were sent to fetch her. The Devī saw them and their immense army approaching, and when she scowled, the frightful goddess Kālī sprang forth from her brow and slaughtered the demon hordes.
Next, Śumbha marshaled all the asura clans, and in turn the Devī evoked her śaktis, seven fierce goddesses who sprang forth from the bodies of the gods. From her own body the most terrifying śakti of all, Śivadūtī, came forth and sent the great Lord Śiva himself as a messenger to Śumbha and Niśumbha to warn them of the consequences of battle. The arrogant asuras took no heed, and fighting of unprecedented fierceness left in its wake a scene of gruesome slaughter.
While the surviving demons fled from the fury of the śaktis, the great asura Raktabīja strode onto the battlefield. Whenever a drop of his blood touched the ground, it grew into an asura of equal size and strength, and soon the Devī’s hosts again battled countless foes. Terror seized the gods, but the Devī merely laughed while Kālī began to drink in the drops of blood and the asuras being born therefrom. As she consumed them, others did not arise. Finally the mighty Raktabīja, drained of blood, fell dead.
Then Śumbha and Niśumbha themselves battled with the Devī and her śaktis until Niśumbha, too, lay slain. In rage and grief, Śumbha reproached the Devī for relying on the strength of others, but she replied that the śaktis were but projections of her own power. Drawing them back into herself, she stood alone against him, and at the climax of battle, the two leapt to the sky and fought in midair until the Devī sent the great Śumbha crashing to the earth. When he lay dead, the sky cleared, the sun shone in glory, and the universe rested in luminous calm. The gods praised the Devī in a great hymn of thanksgiving, and she pledged her protection and blessing thenceforth to all who praise her with hymns, recite the destruction of the asuras, and worship her with devotion.
Of the Devīmāhātmya’s three myths, the story of Śumbha and Niśumbha is the least attested in Sanskrit literature.27 In all likelihood, it originated among aboriginal, goddess-worshiping peoples of north India who perpetuate their ancient traditions to the present time. Among those same peoples the legends of Kṛṣṇa as the beloved cowherd Gopāla first arose, and the few traces of Śumbha and Niśumbha in Sanskrit literature before the Devīmāhātmya appear in connection with Kṛṣṇa Gopāla’s exploits, later absorbed into the Vaiṣṇava fold.28
From the same Vaiṣṇava milieu comes yet another myth, briefly alluded to in the Devīmāhātmya (DM 11.41–42): the story of Kṛṣṇa’s birth and the role played in it by the goddess Vindhyavāsinī.
It had been foretold to the wicked king Kaṁsa that his sister Devakī would give birth to a child at whose hand he would die. Preparing to take birth as the child Kṛṣṇa, the great Lord Viṣṇu asked the goddess Yoganidrā (Mahāmāyā) to be born at the same time to the cowherd Nanda and his wife Yasodā, and with the help of Yoganidrā’s deluding power, the babies were switched at birth. When Kaṁsa rushed to Devakī’s side to murder her newborn child, the baby escaped his grasp and assumed the goddess’s eight-armed form. Telling Kaṁsa that his slayer had been born into the world, Yoganidrā flew off to the Vindhya mountains, where she is still worshiped as Vindhyavāsinī.
This myth demonstrates that the goddess Yoganidrā, or Mahāmāyā, belongs to a pre-existing tradition that was incorporated into the early Vaiṣṇava legends.29 Likewise, hymns interpolated into the Mahābhārata and the Harivaṁśa invariably describe the Mahādevī, the Great Goddess, who incarnates to aid Viṣṇu, as abiding permanently in the Vindhya mountains—a designation that places her among non-Vedic tribal peoples of the natural wilderness.30 However, Vindhyavāsinī’s Vaiṣṇava association is not exclusive; the Matsyapurāna, one of the six Śaiva Purāṇas, considers her, Caṇḍikā, and Kālī as three manifestations of the Devī, each again connected with wild, mountainous regions.31
Today, Vindhyavāsinī’s temple complex dominates the north-central Indian village of Vindhyācal (Uttar Pradesh). Just north of a pavilion that bears upon its marble walls the recently inscribed text of the Devīmāhātmya, an ancient and unprepossessing stone shrine houses the goddess. She stands upon a lion and gazes out through wide, silver eyes set in her black, birdlike face.32 Her startling appearance recalls the avian-faced terracotta figurines from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, which in turn look back to the still earlier goddesses with birdlike heads from Baluchistan, and from there the chain recedes ever farther back into the incomprehensibly remote past.
By the time the myth of Śumbha and Niśumbha attained definitive form in the Devīmāhātmya, the Devī had either replaced Kṛṣṇa Gopāla as their slayer or had been restored to a role that was originally hers. Additionally, the Devīmāhātmya’s version of the myth contains details that signal a Śaiva influence, for example, the shift of locale from the Vindhyas to the Himālayas (Śiva’s abode), the emergence of the Devī from the body of Śiva’s consort, and the importance of Kālī in the narrative.
As described in the seventh chapter, Kālī has loosely hanging, emaciated flesh that barely conceals her bones. Gleaming white fangs protrude from her gaping, blood-stained mouth, framing her lolling red tongue. Red, too, are her eyes, which peer out from her black face. We can take this black, red, and white—the colors of tamas, rajas, and sattva—to indicate that Kālī is no subsidiary goddess but the supreme Mother of the Universe (Jagadambā), in whom the three guṇas reside. In short, she is the resplendent Devī in another, darker form.
Manifesting to confront Śumbha’s escalating evil, she carries the skull-topped staff that traditionally accompanies her in battle.33 This staff, also associated with shamans, supports Kālī’s presumed origin among the tribal societies of India’s mountainous regions. Although her ultimate origin remains shrouded in mystery, her dark skin may point back to the dark, fertile earth, and her dual aspects as the giver and taker of life point back to very ancient times. Conforming to her predominantly fearsome character, Kālī’s early temples were situated at the edges of civilization, often near forests and cremation grounds.34
Her name comes from the feminine adjective kālī, meaning “dark” or “blue- black.” It is probably related to the masculine noun kāla (“time”), which fits the concept of Kālī as ever-turning time, the relentless devourer who brings all things to an end. The name first appears in Sanskrit literature around 2,500 years ago in the Muṇḍakopaniṣad, where it identifies one of Agni’s seven flaming tongues that devour the oblations of clarified butter in the Vedic sacrifice (MU 1.2.4). This is scarcely sufficient evidence to confirm or even to suggest that Kālī originated as a śakti of Agni, but it is noteworthy that fire dissolves matter back into energy—in the form of heat and light—just as Kālī, the destroyer, dissolves the material universe back into undifferentiated śakti. The same verse of the Upaniṣad designates another of Agni’s seven tongues as Karālī (“formidable, dreadful, terrible, having a gaping mouth and protruding teeth”). This word appears twice in the Devīmāhātmya’s final hymn to describe Kālī’s terrifying mouth (11.21) and Bhadrakālī’s flaming trident (11.26).
Kālī first appears unequivocally as a goddess in the Kaṭhaka Gṛhyasūtra, a ritualistic text from late Vedic times that places her among Vedic deities to be invoked with offerings of perfume during the marriage ceremony.
During the epic period, sometime after the fifth century BCE, Kālī makes a startling appearance in the Mahābhārata. When the Pāṇdava brothers’ camp is attacked one night by the sword-wielding Aśvatthāman, his deadly assault is seen as the work of “Kālī of bloody mouth and eyes, smeared with blood and adorned with garlands,. .. crowned and holding noose in hand.” She, the Night of Death (Kālarātri), laughs derisively while binding men, horses, and elephants with her terrible snares of death (MBh 10.8.64–65).35 Even though the passage goes on to describe the slaughter as an act of human warfare, it makes clear that the fierce goddess is ultimately the agent of death who carries off those who are slain.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Kālī’s characterization changed radically, when Bengali Tantrics and devotional poets such as Rāmprasād and Kamalākānta envisioned her as voluptuously beautiful and began to sing her praises as the loving, universal Mother and supreme metaphysical reality. That characterization of Kālī remains the predominant one today.
The eighth chapter of the Devīmāhātmya relates how the Devī multiplies her strength in the escalating battle by calling forth seven individual śaktis from the bodies of the male gods. The seven śaktis are known collectively as the mātṛgaṇa (“band of mothers”), the Saptamātṛkās (“Seven Little Mothers”) or simply the Mothers. We learn from the Bṛhat Saṁhitā, a text contemporary with the Devīmāhātmya, that in the sixth century there existed a prevalent and powerful cult centered on a group of fierce goddesses, usually seven in number. The same text recommends that images of them should display the same identifying marks as the gods to whose names their own correspond. The abundant iconographie evidence from this period includes a sculptured panel from a temple to the Saptamātṛkās, portraying the seven goddesses accompanied by an inscription that invokes the benefits of their protective power. As in the Devīmāhātmya, the Mothers’ function is to fight for the preservation of the world.36
But who are these Mothers? When we meet them in the Devīmāhātmya, they have already been absorbed into the Brāhmaṇical fold and considerably tamed, but they were not always considered so benevolent. Only in the century or two immediately preceding the Devīmāhātmya did they take on the role of battling demons, as they became increasingly identified with male deities,37 and only then did they evolve into the differentiated forms recognizable as the seven śaktis described in our text. Before then, the seven appeared as uniform figures.38
Predating the Devīmāhātmya by about 500 years,39 references to the Mothers in later strata of the Mahābhārata invariably link them to the war god Kārttikeya (Skanda) and describe them as exceedingly ferocious and bloodthirsty minor goddesses in whom, paradoxically, the impulses of motherhood are deeply ingrained.40 Their number is often unspecified but implied to be very large, and they are portrayed not only as inauspicious but also as downright dangerous.41 These goddesses are predators of children until Kārttikeya persuades them instead to assume a protective role. Nevertheless he concedes to them the right to torment the young until the age of sixteen! Their names, when given, do not yet correspond to the names in the Devīmāhātmya.42
Earlier still, the Mothers were an independent group of violent goddesses associated with the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, infant mortality, and illnesses afflicting small children. Many such goddesses survive to this day in the folk religion of Indian villages, where they still receive blood offerings for their appeasement.43
Given ample evidence that features of the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization endure even today in Indian villages, if we look back two millennia or so before the references in the Mahābhārata, we discover that some of the Harappan stone seals bear the carved images of seven identical figures, all standing in a row, sometimes with hands joined. Clad in matching tunics, with hair in a braid and a bird’s plume on the head, they display avian qualities in body and attire, but their faces are human.44 Could these mysterious figures, peering at us across more than 4,000 years, be early representations of the Seven Little Mothers?
The Mahābhārata describes the Mothers as dark-skinned, speaking various languages, and inhabiting mountains and caves. Together, these traits suggest that the Mothers were present in the multi-ethnic diaspora of Indus-Sarasvatī emigrants, who resettled in remoter, peripheral regions after abandoning their doomed villages, towns, and cities.45 Although the Brāhmaṇical culture that produced the Mahābhārata viewed the probably non-Āryan Mothers with suspicion, the Śākta author(s) of the Devīmāhātmya accorded them full legitimacy, fixing their identification with the Vedic and post-Vedic gods and then revealing them not as mere goddess-consorts but as individualized powers of the one Great Goddess.
As allegory, the myth of Śumbha and Niśumbha has particular immediacy, because the sphere of action is decidedly terrestrial rather than cosmic or celestial. The gods, distressed that the asuras have once more overturned the world order, invoke the Devī in a magnificent hymn, the Aparājitāstuti (“Praise to the Invincible Goddess,” DM 5.9–82), which celebrates her immanence in the world as the consciousness that manifests in all beings.
Thereupon, the Devī appears on the bank of the Gaṅgā. Her effulgent manifestation, emerging from the body of Parvatī, embodies the guṇa of sattva, the energy of light, purity, peace, and goodness. Having already revealed her tamasic and rajasic aspects, she appears as sattvic and bewitchingly beautiful, although she will take on multiple and varied forms in the course of battle.
Śumbha and Niśumbha’s traditional characterization as mountain demons further emphasizes the terrestrial locale, and of all the Devlmāhātmya’s villains, they and their cohorts appear the most human. Individually, Śumbha represents the ego, and his younger brother represents its sense of attachment. They are central to the entire catalog of human failings and vices. The portrayal of Śumbha amid the glittering excess of his ill-gotten riches and powers is a sickening picture of corruption and materialism gone mad. The toadying Caṇḍa and Muṇḍa appeal to their master’s immense vanity and inflame his lust with tempting descriptions of the Devī’s captivating beauty. Courting the young goddess for Śumbha, the unctuous Sugrīva speaks with the intent to dissemble, and her refusal, citing a vow to marry whoever can conquer her in battle, establishes the pattern of challenge and counterchallenge that will drive the narrative’s steady escalation from that point on.
When Śumbha orders Dhūmralocana to bring the Devī back “kicking and screaming” if need be, the dim-witted thug becomes a casualty of the proverbial violence that begets violence. Śumbha, now driven by unreasoning rage, sends Caṇḍa and Muṇḍa to reattempt Dhūmralocana’s failed mission, whereupon the sattvic Devī evokes her fearsome manifestation, Kālī, who quickly slays the two servants and their army.
When Śumbha mobilizes for all-out war, the Devī multiplies her forces with seven fierce śaktis, evoked from the gods, and with her own śakti, the terrifying ŚivadūtI. In counter-response there appears Raktabīja (“he whose seed is blood”) with his amazing replicative ability. His red blood, symbolic of rajas, represents the awesome power of desire and mental restlessness. Just as each drop that falls to earth produces another asura, so does one desire or thought lead to another. Indulgence leads to insatiability, and the ghastly metaphor of Kālī lapping up the dripping blood symbolizes the sound principle that human desires and uncontrolled mental activity are best conquered if nipped in the bud.
Raktabīja’s death marks the turning point. Henceforth the theme of escalating multiplicity reverses itself. One by one the outward manifestations of ego have been vanquished, and only its essence, represented by Śumbha and Niśumbha, remains against the Devī and her forces.
The prolonged battle with Niśumbha runs parallel to the Devī’s victory over Mahiṣāsura. Both myths involve the demon’s metamorphosis, the piercing by her spear, and the revelation of an inner being who is beheaded. When Niśumbha, symbolizing attachment, sprouts 10,000 grasping arms, his awful transmutation is not a graceful evasion like Mahiṣa’s, but an act of ugly desperation. In both myths, the Devī’s spear, representing insight, leaves the asura exposed and vulnerable. The mighty demon that emerges from Nisumbha’s gaping chest wound calls for the Devī to stop, but in sādhana halfway measures simply won’t do, and she annihilates him with her sword of knowledge.
Now only Śumbha, the naked ego, remains. When he reproaches the Devī for relying on the strength of others, she responds that the śaktis are only projections of her own power and recalls them into herself. Meeting in final combat, the lone Devī and Śumbha rise to the sky, signaling disengagement from the world. After the ultimate struggle, when Śumbha lies dead, the veil of individual nescience (avidyā) that obscures the indwelling Self is lifted. Metaphoric clouds disperse to reveal the brightly shining sun and beatific peace, the realization of infinite consciousness.
If the myth of Mahiṣāsura is intended for King Suratha, whose duty and interests lay in conquering evil and governing righteously, the third of Medhas’s tales is intended for Samādhi, the merchant. With its imagery of material wealth and human passions, it resonates with his bitter experience of the vanity of riches and ephemeral pleasures and the folly of lamenting their loss. His goal is not to regain a kingdom but to renounce the world and attain liberation.
The Devīmāhātmya’s final hymn, the Nārāyaṇīstuti (DM 11.3–35), comments on the foregoing action. Popularized through widespread liturgical use, it lauds the Devī in her universal, omnipotent aspect and also in the diverse expressions of her power. Once again pleased by the gods’ praise, she renews her promise to confer well-being upon the world and to intervene whenever evil arises. In a fascinating sequence of verses (DM 11.40–55), she predicts five of her future incarnations, which in fact reveal their origins in humankind’s remote past.
Chapter 12 is a phalaśruti, a conventional literary form that details the benefits of reciting or hearing a sacred text. Cast in the Devī’s own words, it names specific blessings and protections and pronounces the Devīmāhātmya “the supreme way to well-being” (DM 12.7).
In the final chapter, Medhas resumes the thread of his original discourse, repeating that the Devī is both the binding ignorance (avidyāmāyā) and the liberating knowledge (vidyāmāyā). She alone is, and nothing exists apart from her. Medhas instructs the king and the merchant to take refuge in her. At this point (DM 13.6), Mārkaṇḍeya again becomes the narrator of the framing story and relates how the Devī appears to Suratha and Samādhi after three years of austerities. To each, she grants his fondest wish. Samādhi, who has grown wise and dispassionate toward the world, receives eternal liberation. The virtuous Suratha, who remains duty-bound, regains his earthly kingdom and receives the promise of rebirth as the manu named Sāvarṇi, who will rule over a future cosmic age (manvantara).
In the centuries following the Devīmāhātmya’s composition, three dhyānas (“meditations”) were incorporated into the text before Chapters 1, 2 and 5 to signal the beginning of each carita. These brief meditations describe the three cosmic aspects of Śakti—the tamasic Mahākālī, the rajasic Mahālakṣmī, and the sattvic Mahāsarasvatī.46 The dhyānas are thought to be a Tantric addition because of their carefully defined imagery, which facilitates the practice of visualized meditation.47 Exactly when they were added is uncertain, but literary evidence points to the period before the ninth or, at the latest, before the 12th century.48
Around the 14th century a set of ancillary texts, the six aṅgas (“limbs”), gravitated toward the Devīmāhātmya.49 The first three—the Devyāḥ Kavacam, Argalāstotra, and Kīlakastotra—are preparatory ritual texts, always chanted before the formal recitation of the Devīmāhātmya. The remaining three—the Prādhānika Rahasya, Vaikṛtika Rahasya, and Mūrtirahasya—deal with philosophy and formal worship (pūjā) and are optionally recited afterward.
Directly before and after the Devīmāhātmya itself, two ancient hymns are customarily chanted as a kind of auditory jewel box, symbolically to enclose it and separate it from the angas. The Vedic Rātrisūkta (“Hymn to Night,” ṚV 10.127) praises the starry night as the beautiful goddess Rātrl, who brings rest to all creatures; at the same time it asks for protection from predators that lurk in the darkness. The Vedic Devīsūkta (“Hymn of the Goddess,” ṚV 10.125) is the Devī’s own unequivocal revelation of herself as the Divine Mother and transcendent reality.
Since Tantra recognizes the word (vāk) as an actual manifestation of Śakti, it sees a correlation between the physical universe of form and the divine, formless reality. According to this view, the verses of the Devīmāhātmya are not mere poetry (śloka) but the actual embodiment of the divine presence (mantra), a power so great that Śiva himself is said to have restrained it “as if with a bolt” to prevent its intentional or unwitting misuse. Accordingly, the Devīmāhātmya is recited publicly in temples and also privately in homes, often by a paid professional, since proper recitation must be preceded by careful ritual preparation in order to gain access to that power, which then may be directed either to temporal or spiritual goals.
With the Devyāḥ Kavacam (“The Devī’s Armor”), the reciter dons divine protection. The verses invoke the individual śaktis who inhabit various parts of the body, and the prayer insures the Devī’s indwelling, protective presence. The Argalāstotra (“Hymn of the Bolt”) is another series of invocations; all but three of its verses have the form of a dhāraṇī, a Tantric mantra that first praises a deity and then appeals for assistance.50 In this case, the appeal is an unchanging refrain that requests contact with the indwelling divinity, the assurance of victory, glory, and the destruction of hostile forces. The Kīlakastotra (“Hymn of the Pin”) is the pivot on which access to the Devīmāhātmya’s limitless power hinges. Its language is deliberately obscure, lest its knowledge fall into the wrong hands, and its hidden key to the Devīmāhātmya’s power is the reciter’s attitude of complete surrender and selfless dedication to the Divine Mother.
If the function of the first three aṅgas is to assure the reciter’s safe access to immense power, the purpose of the remaining three is to instruct in philosophy and ritual worship. The Rahasyas (“secrets”) form a continuation of King Suratha’s dialogue with Medhas and relate to Śakti’s manifestations. Together, the three Rahasyas have been called the “earliest systematic statement of Śākta philosophy.”51
The Prādhānika Rahasya (“The Secret Relating to Primary Matter”) relates to the cosmogonic Devī of the first carita. Reaffirming the nondualism of the Upaniṣads and proclaiming the uncompromising unity of ultimate reality and its manifestation, the Prādhānika Rahasya considers how formless, singular consciousness assumes the forms of the ever-changing plural universe.52 The Vaikṛtika Rahasya (“The Secret Relating to Transformation”) explains that the supreme Devī’s manifestation is a modification (vikṛti) from formless transcendence to perceptible form. The Mūrtirahasya (“The Secret Relating to Forms”) elaborates on her incarnations as foretold in Chapter 11 of the Devīmāhātmya, describing their iconography and specifying the benefits of worshiping them. The final anga reaffirms the Devī’s maternal beneficence and salvific power, often conjuring up telluric and agricultural images connected to the ancient Earth Goddess.
In the classical Indian sense, a commentary seeks to enlighten by arguing the fine points of a text from a particular philosophical position. Such commentaries are intended for people already well-versed in Hindu religion and philosophy.
Mine is not a commentary in that sense. Instead, it is meant for readers who may have little or no previous knowledge of Indian culture or Hindu thought. It draws broadly on diverse sources of information—religious, philosophical, scientific, or historical—that help to reveal the Devīmāhātmya’s deeper levels of meaning. In the traditional manner it refers to the external authority of scriptures that would have been known to the author(s) of the Devīmāhātmya, particularly the Upaniṣads and Vedic hymns. But, departing from tradition, its approach relies heavily on the Devīmāhātmya’s own internal evidence, revealed through analyzing the text and its structure as well as the derivations of key Sanskrit words. Despite the differences of method, this commentary arrives at conclusions completely in accord with the Śākta philosophy underlying the text. Its purpose is to promote a deeper understanding, not a novel one.
On one level, the Devīmāhātmya is an allegory of the spiritual journey; on another it is a blueprint of the soul. Much of the commentary is written in simple language, aimed at explaining the practical application of the Devīmāhātmya’s teachings. Other portions, dealing with matters that may at first seem purely theoretical, but which are essential to a fuller understanding of the Devīmāhātmya’s profound teaching, are unavoidably more technical. Some of the most difficult passages occur at the very beginning of the commentary in connection with the meditation on Mahākālī and the opening mantra invoking the Divine Mother as Caṇḍikā. After that, the commentary becomes much less daunting.
Making no claim to be a definitive interpretation, the commentary is only a guide to what can become a voyage of discovery. The Devīmāhātmya is no ordinary book. It can serve us equally in times of personal difficulty and decision, in moments when we look in rapt wonder at the beauty around us, or in those indescribable moments when the profound quiet of holiness reveals its presence. The deepest meanings of this great poem make themselves known only through direct experience, and such immediacy can only come from within.
In present-day Bengal, the autumn Navarātri is one of the most widely-celebrated religious festivals. Occurring in September or October, it coincides with the harvest season and carries associations of agricultural fertility.53 The central deity worshiped is Durgā as Mahiṣāsuramardinī, the ten-armed goddess of golden complexion. Specially created for the occasion, the crowned, bejeweled, and garlanded image of the buffalo demon’s slayer stands triumphant upon her lion while Mahiṣa lies below, emerging from his decapitated buffalo’s body and regarding her with awestruck wonder.
While an air of festivity reigns amid the rhythms of pūjā, devotional singing, and the recitation of sacred texts, Navarātri is at heart a time for inner purification. For the first three days, devotees invoke Durgā—the warrior-Mother’s destructive and protective aspect—to destroy the asuras within, the acknowledged personal shortcomings of fear, passion, selfishness, and anger. For the next three days, they worship her as the beneficent Lakṣmī and ask for sufficient prosperity along with the positive virtues of courage, tranquility, generosity, kindness, devotion, and the desire for liberation. During the following three days, they appeal to Sarasvatī for spiritual knowledge. The festival culminates on the tenth day, called Dasarā or Vijayā Daśamī. This day, sacred also to Vaiṣṇavas as a celebration of Rāma’s victory over the demon- king Rāvaṇa—with help from the Devī54—is for Śāktas an occasion for joyous feasting. Spiritually, it commemorates the great and total victory, the realization that the individual soul is one with the Divine.55
Sixteen centuries after its composition, the Devīmāhātmya still shines as a beacon from a primordial age when men and women, enchanted by nature’s beauty and abundance, yet terrified by its fierce, destructive power, honored the source of creation as the Great Mother. It enshrines many an ancient memory in the resounding cadences of its verses and continues to sing her glory. At the same time as the last open expressions of Goddess-centered religion were vanishing from the Western world, the Devīmāhātmya took shape on the more tolerant soil of India, where the religion of the Divine Mother flourished and continues to flourish. Even today, the great hymn of praise that is the Devīmāhātmya reveals to us an all-embracing vision of harmony between the Mahādevi’s abiding earthly presence and the transcendental unity proclaimed by Hinduism’s seers.