Devi

The gods had lost. Mahishasura, the buffalo demon, held heaven by force, and the devas who once ruled it wandered the earth like dispossessed kings, because a boon had made the monster proof against any man or god who might come to kill him. They went to Vishnu and Shiva and told the whole humiliating story, and as they spoke a great heat rose off them, a light that streamed from their faces and their weapons and ran together into one blaze. Out of that pooled fury a woman took shape. She had the brightness of a thousand suns gathered into a single body, a different weapon in each of her many hands, and a laugh that rolled out across the mountains and set the demon armies on edge before she had taken a step.

One point of confusion is worth clearing at the outset. There is an entirely unrelated devi in Georgian folklore, a many-headed ogre-giant of the Caucasus whose name comes through Persian div from Avestan daeva. It has nothing to do with the Hindu goddess described here beyond an accident of spelling. The two words come from different languages and different worlds.

That scene from the Devi Mahatmya is the clearest thing Hinduism says about who she is. Devi is not one more figure in a crowded pantheon. She is Shakti, the power itself, the active energy without which the great male gods sit inert. Shiva without his Shakti is, in the old play on words, only shava, a corpse. The trinity could not defeat the buffalo. She could, and she was made of their combined helplessness turned at last into something that could act.

Where she came from depends on who is telling it. In the warrior story she is assembled in a moment from the rage of the assembled gods, each lending her a copy of his own arms, so that Shiva’s trident, Vishnu’s discus, Indra’s thunderbolt, the conch, the bow, the noose, and the sword all bristle from her at once. In the deeper Shakta theology she was never made at all. There she is Mahadevi, the Great Goddess, Mulaprakriti, the primordial matter and energy out of which even Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are spun. Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Parvati, Kali, Durga, the gentle and the terrible alike, are read as her faces. She is one and she is all of them, and the apparent contradiction is the point.

The buffalo was only the first of her famous kills, and it set the pattern. Mahishasura would not stay one shape. He came at her as a buffalo, then a lion, then a swordsman, then a tusked elephant, then a buffalo again, and each time she met the new body with the right weapon. At the end she pinned the beast with her foot, drove Shiva’s trident into it, and as the demon began to slither out of the dying buffalo’s neck in his true man’s form she took his head with a single stroke. The image fixed itself in stone and bronze across India and beyond: the calm goddess astride or beside her lion, the buffalo collapsing, the green horned man spilling out of its throat into her blade.

She is harder to catch off guard than her enemies ever expect, partly because she does not fight alone even when she stands alone. In the war against the brothers Shumbha and Nishumbha she faced a demon named Raktabija, whose blessing was monstrous in its simplicity: every drop of his blood that touched the ground sprang up as a new Raktabija, so that to wound him was to multiply him into an army. The battlefield filled with copies. Then Kali came out of the goddess’s own furious brow, gaunt and enormous and lolling a long tongue, and drank. She caught each falling drop before it could land and swallowed the demons whole as fast as they were born, until the original stood bled white and finished. It is not a delicate solution. It worked.

Her power is total in a way that is almost difficult to describe, because there is no department of the universe she is shut out of. She creates, she sustains, she dissolves. She spins the veil of maya that makes the world look solid, and she lifts it for those she chooses to free. She grants children and harvests and wealth in her benign forms and strips them away in her wrathful ones, and the same hand does both. Devotees come to her in the nine lamplit nights of autumn, the priests reciting the Devi Mahatmya in the dark while a clay image of her on her lion looks down, because she is the one you call when nothing smaller will hold.

If she has a limit, it lives inside that same ferocity. She is power, and power needs ground to stand on. Her fiercest aspect, Kali, once danced her victory so wildly that the dance itself threatened to shake the world apart, and it stopped only because Shiva lay down among the corpses under her feet and she, recognizing her own consort beneath her heel, froze with her tongue out in shock. The story is told as the moment the destroyer is reined back into balance. It says something the theology insists on: Shakti and the still ground she moves upon need each other, and unchecked, the goddess who saves the world could just as easily end it. She is summoned in extremity and she behaves like it. The gods learned that the force strong enough to kill what they could not is not a force you keep on a short leash.

She does not really die in any story, which is fitting for the substance the stories are made of. The demons fall, the festivals end, the lamps burn down, and she withdraws back into the ground of things to be called up again the next time heaven runs out of options.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Devi in Hinduism?

Devi, also called Mahadevi or the Great Goddess, is the supreme feminine divine power in Hinduism and the central figure of the Shakta tradition. She is understood as Shakti, the active cosmic energy behind creation, preservation, and destruction. Goddesses such as Durga, Kali, Parvati, Lakshmi, and Sarasvati are all regarded as her forms or aspects.

What is the difference between Devi and Shakti?

Shakti is the concept of divine cosmic power or energy, and Devi is that power personified as the Great Goddess. In Shakta theology Devi is Shakti made into a being who can act, the force without which the male gods are powerless. A common saying holds that Shiva without Shakti is merely a corpse, underlining that she is the energy that animates the universe.

How did Devi defeat the buffalo demon Mahishasura?

Devi appeared as the warrior goddess Durga, formed from the combined energy of the gods and armed with a weapon from each of them. When Mahishasura repeatedly changed shape during the fight, taking the form of a buffalo, a lion, a man, and an elephant, she countered each new body. She finally pinned him, drove a trident into him, and beheaded him as he emerged in human form from the dying buffalo’s neck.

Is Devi one goddess or many?

In the Shakta view Devi is both. She is a single supreme reality, Adi Parashakti, and at the same time every Hindu goddess is considered a manifestation of her. Her benevolent forms include Lakshmi and Sarasvati, while her fierce forms include Durga and Kali, all of them faces of the same Great Goddess.

Why is Navaratri important to Devi?

Navaratri, meaning “nine nights,” is the major autumn festival dedicated to Devi, celebrating her victory over the demons and her protection of the world. During the festival devotees worship her forms, recite the Devi Mahatmya, and honor the goddess on her lion. It is one of the most widely observed celebrations of the goddess in Hindu practice.

Related Entries

Durga, Kali, Parvati, Lakshmi, Sarasvati, Ganga, Aditi, Rati, Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, Ganesha, Indra, Mahisha