Durga Ji

Durga is the great warrior goddess of Hinduism, the fierce and protective form of the Divine Feminine (Shakti) who slays demons that gods and men cannot. In Shakta theology she is not a subordinate consort but the supreme power of the universe in her own right.

Mahishasuramardini ("slayer of the buffalo-demon Mahishasura") is her defining epithet. Amba / Ambe and Bhavani are affectionate maternal names; Sherawali ("the one who rides the lion") is a popular North Indian form; the Nava Durga are her nine forms invoked over the nine nights of Navratri.

She is shown as a beautiful but formidable woman with many arms (usually eight or ten), each bearing a weapon given to her by a different god, a trident, discus, sword, bow, thunderbolt and conch among them, riding a lion or tiger. The classic image is Mahishasuramardini: mid-stride upon the buffalo-demon, spearing him even as her face stays serene. The many arms show her wielding all the gods' powers at once; the calm face amid battle shows mastery, not rage.

Her central story, told in the Devi Mahatmya, is the slaying of Mahishasura, a buffalo-demon granted a boon that no man or god could kill him. The defeated gods pour their combined energies into a single blazing goddess, Durga, who takes their weapons and, after a long battle, destroys him, an origin worth stating precisely, because she is formed from the gods' collective power rather than as a simple transformation of any one goddess. She fights other demons too, including Shumbha and Nishumbha, and from her brow springs the still fiercer Kali.

In the wider tradition she is identified with Parvati, consort of Shiva, with Kali described as issuing from her; but in her own scripture, the Devi Mahatmya, she is the independent supreme Devi from whom other powers emerge. The equivalence with Parvati is a later synthesis and is best held a little loosely against the text's own account.

She is worshipped above all at Navratri ("nine nights") and Durga Puja, celebrating her victory over Mahishasura as the triumph of dharma over evil. She is invoked for protection, strength and the removal of obstacles and enemies, and stands, for many devotees today, as an image of feminine power and courage.

Durga Puja is the pre-eminent festival of West Bengal and eastern India, a vast public celebration of elaborate clay images immersed at its close, whereas in the north and west the same season is kept as Navratri with fasting, garba and dandiya (Gujarat), and Ramlila culminating in Dussehra. The same victory is thus celebrated in strikingly different registers across regions.