Once there was a demon named Mahisha. He was a shape-shifting demon, who could take on the shape of any animal, but also any shape he invented or desired.
He might choose skin of deep purple or bright pink or pale grey. He might choose scales down his arms, or fur on his back, or feathers on his feet. He might choose claws on his hands, or tusks on his jaws, or horns on his elbows for jabbing people who got in his way. He might choose black eyeballs, or golden teeth. He might choose long barbed tails snaking and flicking round his legs.
But Mahisha wasn’t content with his incredible shape-changing powers. He wanted to earn more and greater powers.
So Mahisha denied himself everything for one thousand years. He denied himself food and water, he denied himself light and love and air and warmth. For ten centuries, he denied himself all pleasure and comfort.
This supreme act of denial and determination earned him the right to ask the universe for one more power.
The power he asked for was immortality.
But no-one and nothing, not even the universe, can guarantee that you will never die. Mahisha had to ask for something else. So he asked for the next best thing. He asked that he could be killed by no man and no god. And his request was granted.
Armed with that invincibility, the demon set out to conquer the earth. Because he could not be killed by a man, there was no warrior or general or king or emperor who could defeat him and soon the demon controlled the whole of the earth.
Then he looked up to heaven. He clawed his way upwards, and because he couldn’t be killed by a god, he soon conquered heaven too. He grabbed the gods in his huge brightly coloured hands and threw them from heaven. He threw Vishnu and Shiva and Brahma and all the rest down to earth.
The gods were homeless and humiliated, and the gods were angry.
They allowed the heat of their anger to burst from their mouths and their bellies. The white hot flames melted together into one bright ball of fury.
And out of that fire stepped… a woman.
A tall dark woman named Durga.
Durga was dressed in a bright red sari, and she had ten long strong elegant arms.
The gods gave her ten objects to hold in her ten hands:
A spear
A bow and arrows
A rope
An axe
A discus
A sword
A trident
A conch shell
And a lotus flower.
Then the gods gave her a tiger to ride on.
Durga rode her tiger up to heaven, where she saw Mahisha, in splendid purple scales, lounging on a golden throne, picking his teeth with a claw, flicking his three tails.
She challenged him by throwing her thunderbolt at his feet.
He laughed. “I can be killed by no man and no god!”
Durga leapt off her tiger and called back, “Do I look like a man?”
And she threw her spear at Mahisha’s chest.
The sharp point struck him true, driving right through his ribcage. But before his purple body could die, Mahisha changed shape, into a huge lion, which leapt roaring at Durga.
Durga shot the lion in the face with her bow and arrows, and the lion fell whining to the ground. But before the lion’s body could die, Mahisha changed into a giant.
He was a giant so tall that his head was above the clouds of heaven. Durga took her rope and threw it round the giant’s ankles to trip him up, then as he fell she used her axe to slice open his belly. But before the giant’s body could die, Mahisha changed into an elephant.
The elephant wrapped its trunk round the tiger and Durga together, and whirled them round to throw them out of heaven. Durga took her spinning silver discus and sliced off the elephant’s trunk. But before the elephant’s body could die, Mahisha changed into a buffalo, which charged heavy-hooved towards Durga.
Durga wrapped all her free hands round the hilt of her sword, swung it, and cut off the buffalo’s head.
And fast as fire, before Mahisha could change shape again, Durga leapt on the buffalo’s back, wrapped her legs round its ribcage and squeezed…
She squeezed the demon’s true form out.
She squeezed a bald scrawny creature, wrinkled and twisted from his years of denial, out of the bleeding neck of the buffalo.
Durga forced Mahisha’s true form out into the light, then she stabbed him through the heart with her trident.
That is how the gods returned home to heaven. That is how people regained control of the earth.
And that is how Mahisha, who couldn’t be killed by man or god, was killed by a woman.