Navarātra: The Festival of the Nine Nights

Fundamental in making the myth of civilization meaningful in Indian culture was the performance of the Navarātra, the festival of the Nine Nights, which was intertwined with Durgā's cult. This final chapter deals with how the cult functioned in creating the spectacle of ‘public religion’ through a reconstruction of this ritual in which the goddess was worshipped by a ruler in the month of Āśvina. A detailed exposition of the modus operandi of the Nine Nights shows us how the religion of the goddess was spectacularly brought to life in an event of grand theatre and solemnized before its participants, the king and the entire community. The development of the Nine Nights from a fringe, Vaiṣṇava ceremony in the month of Kṛṣṇa's birth under the Guptas, to a ritual supplanting the established autumnal Brahmanical ceremonies of kingship and finally into a crucial rite in Indian culture for consolidating royal power, formed a crucial motivation for the expansion of Durgā's cult. The chapter isolates and analyzes in depth the principal early traditions of the Navarātra in East India and in the Deccan by an assessment of the available ritual descriptions and prescriptions in Sanskrit and eye-witness sources from a later period, used to fill in the gaps in the earlier sources. The most elaborate description of a court-sponsored rite emerges from the Kārṇāṭa and Oinwar courts of Mithilā, which embody what appears to be a ritual that had matured a good few centuries earlier before it was recorded in official literature. Among these the account of the Oinwars by the Maithila paṇḍita Vidyāpati is the most extensive treatment of the goddess's autumnal worship by a king, and attained great renown among the learned at the time as an authoritative source. His description portrays a spectacular court ceremony, involving pomp and pageantry, in which horses and weapons were worshipped, the king was anointed, and the goddess propitiated as the central symbol of royal power in various substrates over the course of the Nine Nights. Vidyapati's work also reveals the marked impact of Tantricism on the character of the rite, which employed Śākta mantras and propitiated autonomous, ferocious forms of the goddess associated with the occult, particularly on the penultimate days. Maturing in eastern India, the goddess's Navarātra ceremony was proselytized by the smartas further to the west and percolated into the Deccan, where, from around the 12th century, it attained an independent southern character. Whereas the eastern rite focused on the goddess as the central object of devotion, the southern rite focused on the symbolism of the king, attaining its most distinctive and lavish manifestation in the kingdom of Vijayanagara. Throughout this development, the Navarātra remained intimately associated with the theme of dispelling calamities, thereby augmenting secular power in the world, sustaining the power of the ruler and granting political might and health to a community. It remained from its ancient core a ritual of dealing with and averting crises performed collectively by a polis. Such remains its character even today.

Introduction

This Introduction outlines the backdrop for the emergence of the cult of Durgā, characterized by a transformation of political structure from empire under the Kuṣāṇas and the Guptas to autonomous kingdoms following imperial decentralization, as villages grew into kingdoms and aspirational lineages, successors to the Guptas, seized control of territories. While describing cultic antecedents in the Kuṣāṇa empire, marking out the decline of the Guptas as the key political moment galvanizing the wider popularity of Durgā's worship, and in describing transforming social landscapes, it explains the central proposition of the book: throughout the course of these developments Heroic Śāktism was a tradition structured around controlling communal dangers and civic threat, which resonated with rising monarchies confronting continual warfare and the threats of the civilizational process. By assessing examples of lineages and the formation of their religious policies, it shows that in absorbing local divinities, many outside the Brahmanical world, Durgā and her worship became a point of interfusion between the classical ‘Sanskritic’ and the non-classical ‘āṭavika’ (forest) domains, as new kingdoms arose from a tribal base after the Gupta decline. This led to the central place of paradox in the symbolic systems of the cult and the goddess's representation of wide-ranging identities, affiliations and loyalties, which in turn became a powerful symbol of the cohesive Indian state in the medieval period. The introduction also summarizes previous research on the Goddess in kingship and sectarian absorptions described in further detail in the subsequent chapters.

Heroic Śāktism and the Myths of Civilization

This chapter begins the third part of the book, which aims to present the belief systems and ritual practices associated with Durgā. Through these beliefs, which conveyed the myth of civilization and imperial kingship for independent rulers to cultivate, the cult made itself meaningful to its adherents. Among beliefs of heroic Śāktism there was, firstly, the belief that a goddess had granted investiture to a king, secondly, the belief that a king defeated in battle would regain power through a goddess, and thirdly, the belief that a goddess was to be worshipped in times of war. These are expressed among various examples of literature from poetry to inscriptions, in versions of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata that include scenes with Durgā aiding Rāma and the Pāṇḍava brothers, thereby showcasing her role in aiding the deserving hero. The chapter turns to the visual symbols and palladia whereby the relationship of king and goddess was made palpable for inhabitants of a kingdom, exploring rituals of goddess-empowered swords, crests, and fortresses, and chariot processions, whereby the protective, triumphant, militaristic and defensive aspects of Durgā's personality were manifested and enlivened within each and every aspect of a medieval city.

The Regional Cults of Goddesses Merged with Durgā

This chapter shows how the cult transformed against the backdrop of upcoming lineages, such as the early Rajputs, into a symbol of particularity by absorbing other similar deities important to specific lineages. Chapter 5 encapsulates the 6th and 12th centuries, when the political map of India represented a heterogeneous order of entrepreneurial lineages. It untangles the distinctively coloured threads of smaller local figures enmeshed with Durgā in her symbolic form of this cohesive social backdrop. It presents as case studies the stories of six locally popular goddesses who were synthesized with Durgā—Bhīmā, Nana, Kaṇṭeśvarī of the Caulukyas, Māneśvarī of the Mallas, Āśāpurī of the Cāhamānas and Danteśvarī of the Nāgas and Kākatiyas of the Bastar Raj. These aid us in evaluating the intricacies of individual goddess-cults and their continuity through dynastic shifts up to the 12th century. It also recounts other tales of clan-goddesses, in which heroic Śāktism is seen as the theology sanctifying a king, assessing the tropes and motifs whereby this sanctification and its concomitant concepts of power are evoked. First it locates a period and a locus when and where Brahmanical discourse, silent on local goddesses, began to contain such deities and the heterogeneous practices many represented, and assess accordingly the genealogical part of the Sahyādrikhaṇḍa, a Purāṇic work, as an example of this containment. Next, I study the legend of Kāmateśvarī, a story that was employed by the princely state of Cooch-Behar in explaining the divine right of its rulers, assessing this in parallel with Rajput ideologies and narratives, where similar narrative structures and figurative devices centring on the goddess and the king are employed.

Caṇḍikā, Pārvatī’s Unwanted Self (c. 5th to 7th Century)

By assessing early Śaiva and literary sources, this chapter demonstrates how Kālarātri-Nidrā-Kālī, Durgā's early form, was assimilated and transformed by Śaivism from the 5th century onwards, in which Durgā eventually acquired co-identity with Pārvatī, the consort and inalienable other half of the great god Śiva. Her dark complexion, a genetic feature of the Vaiṣṇava Nidrā, the sister of dark-hued Kṛṣṇa, is explained within this tradition as Pārvatī's rejected black skin, a symbol of mystery and danger, that she removes from her body to acquire a fairer complexion. The emergent goddess is the antonym of Pārvatī, a warrior virgin who, though a protector of Dharma, nevertheless remains potentially dangerous, as her earliest form Nidrā-Kālī. In this way, the Śaiva tradition views attributes of antinomianism, potentially within Pārvatī, to be transferred to Durgā, now known as Caṇḍikā, the Fiery Lady, Pārvatī's unwanted self, thereby enlarging the conception of the latter to a binary deity, who like Śiva, incorporates a gentle as well as a fierce or bhairava aspect. The chapter also argues that the goddess's capital-creating aspect was heightened in Śaivism. Navamī, initially a day when the goddess was said to be born, became crucial as one of the occasions when capital could be most profitably accessed from the goddess. What we find being developed from the earlier conception of the Vaiṣṇava Durgā and acquiring greater sophistication within Śaiva mythological and ritual domains is the ability of her spiritual repertoire to function as a religion for managing times of state crises and for granting largesse and power.

Durgā and the Making of Early Indian Civilization

This chapter provides a conclusion to the book. The historical phases and their inner tensions described in the previous chapters reveal that Durgā's representation of the civilizational process and the problem of chaos remained fundamental throughout her longue durée. In a wider sense, the goddess was an intimate part of the making of early Indian civilization. Each of the three political orders within which the story, and stories, of Durgā unfolded signalled a different period in Indian culture. Whatever the principal idea-maps about people, society and power latent in the air, they became imbued in the goddess. Under the Central Asian Kuṣāṇas, whose empire was a symbiosis of Hellenistic and Iranian cultures, Durgā's personality interwove elements from those traditions, and the extent to which she was indebted to percolations from far-away Bactria may be much greater than we now assume. Under the more parochial, Brahmanical Guptas, Durga's form articulated the Vaiṣṇava ‘classical’; under both empires her single identity as a Vaiṣṇava goddess resonated with the centralized imperial structure. When the atavika New World took over, and classicism began to be reformulated, the form of the goddess became heterogeneous, and harmonious with indigenous belief systems belonging to smaller kingdoms on the rise. Heroic Śāktism offered an idea of power that was in the world, not removed from it. It gave a sense of the divine that hovered close above the ocean of saṃsāra (an image often evoked in Sanskrit poems to Durga), ready to bridge the distance between heaven and earth in order to intervene when the duress of civilizational reformation grew debilitating for its agents. In this way, the goddess's cult represented nothing less than the civilizational transmutations of the classical period from the 3rd to the 12th century. At every stage, it allowed the inclusion of the liminal into articulations concerning civilization, and through this a radical reforming of the old order.

Patronage, the Civilizational Process and the Spread of Heroic Śāktism (c. 7th to 11th Century)

One of the most important ways whereby rulership was affirmed was by the donation of gifts and largesse (dāna) by a ruler to a deity of power, which tied kingship to the divine and in turn financially supported religious establishments. Looking at epigraphic evidence, this chapter assesses the forms of patronage received by the cult through dedicated worship in royal lineages, the establishment or funding of temples and the commissioning of statuary in the period between the 6th and the 12th centuries. Examining the donors and major Durgā sites receiving patronage, the chapter pays special attention to uncovering specific networks of patronage developing in Maharashtra, Thanjavur, Bengal, Himachal and in Kannauj whereby the worship of Durgā and her affiliated deities gained greater popularity and was institutionalized. These networks of patronage show that philanthropic support was provided to the cult of the goddess not just by ruling members of government but also by private individuals and village associations, indicating the broad devotional basis acquired by the cult by the 12th century CE.

Taking over Skanda (c. 6th to 7th Century)

This chapter assesses how Durgā replaced Skanda as a symbol of imperialism as she began to represent local goddesses thought to control land, something Skanda could not. Śaiva mythology employed narrative devices and concepts used to integrate Skanda into its fold to incorporate Durgā and to grant her a critical place within the Śaiva pantheon. This period coincided with the end of the Gupta empire, during which other lineages asserted themselves on the political map. The goddess, now a cohesive deity, began to appear as a political metaphor in their propaganda, replacing Skanda. The Cālukya emperors, for example, begin to prioritize her over their other favoured lineage god, Skanda. Assessing Cālukya era inscriptions, early Śaiva and epic sources, and later liturgies and mythologies of Durgā, this chapter shows how Skanda's decline provided a cultural vacuum after the end of the Gupta period that was filled by Durgā. Symbols of imperialism, such as the restoration of Dharma from the destabilizing effects of adharma, once formerly associated with Skanda in his imperial, demon-slaying form, began to be transplanted to the goddess. Among these symbols, her increased association with the protective goddesses called the Mātṛs, who are portrayed in early literature and material remains as Skanda's family members, had a political effect in increasing the relevance of her autumnal worship in combating communal crises. Safeguarding a community from death-giving dangers such as drought, cataclysms, earthquakes and the onslaught of harmful demons involved worshipping Durgā in the centre of the Mātṛs whose apotropaic function was well established in the religious literature of the day. The ritual sequence of the festival of Navarātra began to be dominated by the worship of these goddesses during the sacred days of Mahāṣṭamī and Mahānavamī. The result is that while Durgā's power in her earlier Gupta conception as Nidrā was connected with nature, particularly the sky, rainfall, stars and clouds, it is gradually represented through a more official array of symbols connected with military kingship, many initially imagined with Skanda, when the transition into Śaivism occurs. While under the Guptas she had been a liminal symbol, her entrance into Śaivism marked her gradual elevation into the centre, a transition that was firmly cemented when this transplantation onto the bedrock of Skanda's cultural conception occurred.

The Cult of Nidrā-Kālarātri, Goddess of Sleep, Swoon, Death and the Night (c. 3rd to 5th Century)

Assessing early Vaiṣṇava, epic, ritualistic and literary sources and iconographic evidence, this chapter discusses how an archetypical cult of an early Durgā, the form of the goddess prior to her absorption of other identities, acquired prestige from obscure origins between the 3rd and 5th centuries, while empire under the Guptas was in its heyday. Beginning in the 3rd century, the chapter examines the roots of Durgā in the black-hued, yellow-robed, ghost-encircled, liquour-loving, peacock-feather crested Vaiṣṇava goddess of Death, Time and Sleep, Nidrā-Māyā-Kālarātri-Kālī and examines her cult of averting dangers in that period. Within Vaiṣṇava thought, Kālarātri-Nidrā is Viṣṇu's yogic sleep and creative, active magical power (māyā) embodied, the great night of aeonic destruction too, while in her earthly form, she is Kṛṣṇa's savior from Kaṃsa, the intercessory salvific sister Nidrā born on the dark Navamī, who puts beings to sleep and is also responsible for their deaths at the end of their lifetimes. This goddess, who was also worshipped in Cambodia and Indonesia, her belief systems and her ritual worship with buffalo sacrifice on Navamī, the Dark Ninth of Śrāvaṇa, provided the idea-matrix—the classical archetype—for Durgā's later characterizations and ritual modifications.