Navratri - Forms of Goddess

The Navratri is the celebration of the Mother Goddess cult in India. It involves the worship of the primordial female energy, the energy which gives birth to new life and generative power. The worship of mother goddess cult can be seen all across the world in different forms.

Egyptians worshipped Mut, Isis and a few others, the Babylonians worshipped Tiamat, and the Sumerians worshipped Innana. The Greeks had the cult of Cybele, besides the worshipping of Gaia and Rhea. Similarly, the Irish, the Nordic and all the major cultures of the world had the concept of a mother goddess cult. So what is behind the cult of Mother Goddess that is so prevalent across the world which has some cultures still following the rituals associated with it?

In all major cultures, creation was either by a single unidentified (or not so distinctly clarified) principle or a male principle with the help of a female principle, but the initiation was by a single dominant force which ‘seemed’ to be male. But the successive generations came with the help of a female principle for both human beings and other living organism. Even if science had not proven that this union was necessary, this had been assimilated well by the primordial man, and thus emerged the significance of the cult of a goddess who soon took the form of a Mother Goddess. The concept of mother goddess was also similar to the concept of Earth goddess in many cultures, which takes one back to the principle of fertility and the concept of fertility goddesses and rituals associated with it.

Here, this Navratri, let us understand the different forms of the goddess –

The fourth day of the Navratri is associated with Godess Bhuvaneshwari – Bhuvaneshwari is one of the important forms of the Mother Goddess, who is responsible for giving a form and shape to the universe. She gets her name from the words ‘bhuvan’ meaning universe and ‘eswari’ meaning the ruler. She is invoked by uttering “Hreem” which is considered to be as powerful as the “Om”. She is always depicted as smiling and two of her four hands are always in the blessing form. She is bedecked in gold jewelry and is supposed to be residing in “manidwipam”, a land of gold, silver and jewels, which is guarded by powerful gods like Agni, Vayu amongst others. She is a giver of boon, which not only includes material forms, but also knowledge, health and happiness. She thus seems to be the embodiment of later goddesses like Saraswati, Lakshami and even Parvati.

The fifth day of the Navratri is associated with Chinnamastaa – Chinnamastaa or Chinnamastika is a ferocious aspect of the Mother goddess cult. The depiction of Chinnamastaa is often quite gory and repulsive as it is shown as a self-decapitated goddess holding her severed head in one hand and a small sword in the other hand with jets of blood flowing from her neck, which again is being drunk by two of her attendants (Dakini and Varnini) and herself! She is often depicted as standing on a copulating couple. Chinnamastaa is associated with the Tantrik form of worshipping and is seldom associated with individual worship, and temples of her are found in the Northern parts of India and Nepal. The ferocious and the gory form are associated with self-sacrifice and self-control – self-control of sexual energy at the same time as the epitome of sexual energy, depending on the interpretation. There are different versions to this form of the goddess. According to one, Parvati was once having a bath in the river Mandakini and while bathing she gets so aroused sexually that she turns black. Around the same time her attendants feel very hungry. Parvati tells then that she would give them food when they reached home, but later relents to their hunger, by severing her head and feeding the attendants with her own blood. The myth brings out the element of motherhood curtailing the sexual hunger of her own self. There are different versions to this myth, but this seems to be the most apt, if we go with what the goddess stands for. The significance of the copulating couple can be seen as the concept of sexual energy giving birth to life, along with the urge to suspend the energy for the call of motherhood which needs to be able to sustain even if it meant to satiate that urge with one’s own blood! (There may be many more esoteric and philosophic explanations besides this, but let’s keep the matter sweet and simple)

The sixth day of the Navratri is associated with Bhairavi – Bhairavi is another terrifying form of the goddess which sometimes gets confused with the Kali form of the goddess. Bhairavi is also referred to as Baala or Tripurabhairavi and as part of the nine day battle waged by Goddess Durga, when she entered the battle field, the asuras ran away in fear. She however, killed the two fearsome asuras Chanda and Munda and thus is also referred to as Chamundeshwari. Besides the two, she is also supposed to have killed two of the most important asuras - Shumbha and Nishumbha. Bhairavi, is shown on a donkey when angry.

At the end of the day, these are different form of the same Mother Goddess, i.e. Goddess Durga.

Navratri

Navratri

A Short Story

One of my short stories (non-mythological!) has been published in Litizen (again not my Blog)! Do read and send in your comments!! Happy reading!

To read - click

The Lipstick-Stained Cup

 

http://www.litizen.com/StoryReading.aspx?StoryId=63

http://litizen.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/the-lipstick-stained-cup-by-utkarsh-patel/

Mahalaya Amavasya

Today is Mahalaya Amavasya, also known as Mahalaya, the last day of the Pitru Paksha (the fortnight for the ancestors) and also the final day to offer oblations to ones ancestors.  According to Hindu religion, the souls of the three preceding generations reside in ‘pitru-loka’ a realm between the earth and the heavens and governed by the Lord of Death, Yama. However, during the pitru-paksha, the souls come down to earth and hover around the homes of their descendants and it becomes imperative for the descendants to feed their hungry souls. One of the ways to feed them is to feed the poor, though feeding the crows (also considered to be harbingers of death) or cows is a ritual many follow during the fortnight.

Details and significance of the day can be read in my article “Mahalaya” dated 7/10/2010 in the link - http://utkarshspeak.blogspot.com/2010/10/mahalaya.html

However, I would like to delve into another aspect of Mahalaya which is very important. This day is also marked as an important day for daan or charity which is considered to be a virtue. Many offer food, grains, clothes, etc. however, the most important of charities is donating food to the poor. This aspect of donation has its significance in an episode from the epic Mahabharata.

Karna, in Mahabharata was a well-known philanthropist and was also referred to as ‘daanveer’ – the hero of charities. All his life he had donated great wealth in the form of gold and jewels and at a crucial moment, he even donated his kavach, armour and kundal, gold earrings, (both of which he was born with and made him invincible) to Lord Indra who asks for it as alms in the guise of a Brahmin. Though Karna was well aware that he would need then during the forthcoming war and could be the only saviour, and the fact that the Brahmin was none other than Lord Indra, he gave them up as they were asked for in the form of alms and he could never deny anybody, not in the least a Brahmin, alms as long as he could.

After his death when his wounded and tired soul reaches the heavens, the way to heavens is strewn all around with the riches of the world. When in heaven, there was no food for him, just gold and silver. When he asks Yama, as to why was he not given any food, he was told that all he ever donated was gold and silver and never offered any food and water, especially to his ancestors. Karna went on to say that he did not offer anything to his ancestors, because he didn’t know who his ancestors were. He then requested Yama to grant him permission to go back to earth and feed his ancestors, so that their souls could seek salvation. Since his sons had all died during the war and there was none to do the same for him, the least he could do was seek salvation for his ancestors. Yama agreed to his request and Karna is supposed to have visited the earth for a fortnight where he fed the poor and offered water to his ancestors. It is this fortnight which is now known as ‘pitru-paksha’ and Lord Yama is supposed to have decreed that anybody who offered charities during this period would be rewarded hundred-fold in his afterlife!

The day ends with heralding of autumn and the Devi-paksha, from when the nine days of Durga Puja or Navratri starts. The inauspicious period is over and from tomorrow starts the celebrations!

Sati Savitri Naari (Woman)

Indian or Hindu Mythology is replete with examples of virtuous and devotional wives. Wives whose devotion was wholly and completely towards their husbands and their families and their entire existence was centered around the lives of their husbands. Wives who did not cater to their husband’s wishes or who expressed their individuality were generally depicted as negative characters. Let us begin with the good and virtuous.

Savitri

The first example that comes to my mind is the myth of Savitri-Satyavan, which also gave us the phrase ‘Sati-Savitri. In the entire myth, Satyavan is a dead-body, but his name still finds a mention in the myth. I won’t discuss the myth in details, but what is important here is the character of Savitri. The entire myth is seen as a woman’s devotion towards her husband and how she pursues the god of Death, Yama, to get her husband back from death. The fact that Savitri was an extremely intelligent woman and gets the better of the powerful, unmovable god of Death through sheer determination and the gift of gab, has been totally missed by one and all.

Sita's Agnipariksha

The second character that comes to my mind is that of Sita. Here too, she is seen as a devoted wife, who does not question any act of her husband or in-laws. She does not even protest the charges leveled against her of probable infidelity and that too in public and finally leaves the comfort of the palace to raise two children in the forest all by herself, without even a word of complaint. In spite of such virtuosity, the modern man does not forget to comment on her naari-hath (womanly-tantrum), a reference to her insistence on Ram fetching the golden deer for her! Nor does one forget to mention her using her own mind of crossing the Laxman-rekha, which is what supposedly led to the entire battle! Wasn’t the battle between Ram and Ravan pre-destined?

This takes us the third character, that of Sati Ahalya (the entire myth and its symbolism can be found in the link http://utkarshspeak.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html ). Sati Ahalya was cursed by her husband for having sex with Lord Indra, who had come in the disguise of her husband. The accusation was that a woman who did not distinguish between the touch of her husband and another man (irrespective of the guise) is no better than a stone! Modern-day feminists have written tons on this male-chauvinistic act, but that is it.

Besides the above, there are many women who have stood by their husbands, irrespective of their stand, be it Mandodari (Ravan’s wife) or Kaushalya (Dasharatha’s wife) or Urmila (Lakshman’s wife), all from Ramayana, like many other such women.

So what is behind these symbols of devotion and sacrifice? Was it a male conspiracy to send subtle (though some of them were hardly subtle!) messages to the women folk? Was this setting of social expectations from the women in terms of their roles and duties? Or was this again a statement that woman was just an aspect of man’s existence and everything around a woman was related to the man in her life, depending on the stage of her life, which was either a father, brother, husband or a son? A woman was what the man in her life expected her to be.

In spite of such qualities being ingrained in the modern woman, through rituals and katha’s, how much has such devotional aspects being imbibed?

The modern woman is no Savitri. Not that she would allow her husband to die, but if dead she would pick up the threads and move on in life, which is a sign of modern-day practicality. She is no Sita – in that she would not take a banishment lying down and nor would she stand wrong charges of infidelity and definitely not leave the husband and fend for herself. She would do all this, only after extracting a heavy price in the form of a legal suit, a probable out-of-court settlement and a fat alimony of course! Finally she is not an Ahalya too as she would not fall short of expressing herself sexually and would definitely press charges of impersonation and rape on Lord Indra and mental and marital torture on her husband. To take the myth of Ahalya further, she would even press charges of trespassing and ill-treatment on Lord Ram.

So which one is better, the archaic image of a devotional, suffering-in-silence woman or the woman with a mind of her own expressing every aspect of her individual self?

Your call!