According to Levi-Strauss, it is in the nature of a myth to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction. Viewing the Mahisasuramardini myth in this light, an attempt is made to highlight one prominent contradiction in the myth, and to solve it as seen in the myth.

In the Brahminic, Tradition, all the Puranas state that Mahisa offered a proposal of marriage to Devi, through his henchmen or himself directly. Devi spurned it and in the fight she killed him. In the folk-tales from all over India, the version is different. In North India, Bainsasura was a corn god. In Maharashtra, Jogubai that is Yogesvari, who is none other than Durga, is married to Mhatoba, who is Mahishasura. Satavi another goddess assimilated to Durga, has near her shrine Mhasoba, that is, Mahisa, worshipped in a shrine. In South India, in Andhra Uramma, the goddess, has a buffalo dedicated to her, called Gauda-Kona, husband of the goddess. He is also called Devara-Potu, devoted to the goddess. Before this buffalo is sacrificed to the goddess in the annual festival, another buffalo is chosen and dedicated to her, so that she does not remain a widow even for a day. If this is so in Andhra, other similar versions exist in other states. In Karnataka, the folk tradition says the Brahmin girl who was tricked into marriage by a Chandala is born as Mari, the goddess worshipped by the lower castes, and her husband was born as the buffalo to be sacrificed every year.

The most ancient goddess is the Sumerian Nammu, ‘the mother who gave birth to the sky and the earth’ and the ancestress who brought forth all the gods.

The planetary goddess was Inanna, the Akkadian Ishtar of the later period. She is the goddess of fertility who marries Damuzi. She goes to the netherworld to get sovereignty from her sister Ereshkigal. Agriculture was mainly a woman’s discovery and responsibility. When man’s function in procreation was dimly perceived, the furrow as the woman and the plough as the man was the resultant idea. The diffusion of this idea is very wide-spread, and is of primitive intuition. Women’s important position in farming in contemporary societies of Nicobar, Borneo, Orinoco Indians, Nias and Ewes in Africa, Jibaros of S. America, is self evident. These notions also lead us to understand Sita, as the furrow, and a goddess of the harvest.

In Syria and Palestine the goddess cult is deep rooted.

Anat was a fruitful mother goddess without losing her virginity. She was the consort as well as the sister of Baal. She was the counterpart of Phoenician Ashtarte. She delighted in wars and conflicts and she was called the Lady of the Mountain.

The Indo-Europeans moving from the Caucasus regions into Iran and thence into India played a major role in the development of the myth of the Mother Goddess in those regions. In Elam and Susa, on the periphery of Iran, Mother Goddess figures have been found.

At Susa, she is known as Kirrisha. She may be the Zoroastrian Goddess Anahita a goddess of fertility and water. She was worshipped in the form of Ishtar, with prominent breasts, dressed in golden raiments and a crown of stars. She was the mistress of all sexual life and had a retinue of priestesses engaged in ritual prostitution.

No less conspicuous were those forms of the goddess in Baluchistan, In Kulli and Zhob.

Goddesses like Durga, Kali, Ambika, and Uma are mentioned very few times in Vedic literature. These are tribal goddesses, who were finally absorbed into the Aryan religion as wives of Shiva.

Known variously as Durga, Bhavani, Amba, Chandika, Gauri, Parvati, Mahishasuramardini and her other manifestations. The name ‘Durga’ means ‘inaccessible’ and she is the personification of the active side of the divine ‘shakti’ energy of Lord Shiva. In fact, she represents the furious powers of all the male gods, and is the ferocious protector of the righteous, and destroyer of the evil. Durga is usually portrayed as riding a lion, and carrying weapons in her many arms.

Aditi and Prthivi are seen as powerful goddesses and the contention that the Rigveda shows a bias towards gods is refuted.

Guardian of Rta. Aditi’s origin is shrouded in pre-Vedic religion. Her name is derived to be the negative prefix ‘a’ with ‘diti’ and is said to mean ‘free’ from bondage.

Her supremacy is unmatched in the RgVeda and this supports the statement that the goddess cult was quite popular in this period. She is the immortal genetrix of all the gods and living forms. She is the mother and creator of all things past, present and future, from whom all things spring and return. She has no negative characteristics in her, though here again she is not supreme by herself, but is addressed along with Mitra and Varuna. Her greatness is because she was capable of expanding and assimilating various characteristics that could be attributed to her. But she obviously was not eclectic enough to survive after this period. She is a great mother standing for universal motherhood. In her cosmic character she contains in herself the male counterpart of spouse / son.

She stands for the unity of the universe.  Being a goddess, she is again the ‘intelligence’ of the living world, and is the ‘ground of being.’ Therefore she is father, mother, and son, everything. She is bi-sexual like the Moon. She is Dyasus and Prthvi; she is Mata and Pita. She stands for the unity of Sky and Earth. She may be the prototype of the Ardhanarishwar form of Shiva.

There is also another pinion that Aditi is a vague and amorphous goddess. She must be a very ancient goddess whose nature and function is forgotten even in the RgVeda period.

Aditi was needed only to mother the Adityas and she took their characteristics of light and might. She is said to be a virgin goddess, that is, after Indra’s birth. Her virgin godhead could be seen as the Kanya Kumari aspect of the later Goddess.

There are other epithets which also point to her virgin status like ‘yuvati’, ‘anarva’, ‘apravita’ etc. Savasi is Indra’s mother, identified with Aditi by Sayana.

Amba, Ambika and Ambitama are all names or adjectives as applied to the Mother Goddess.

Water personified should not be confused with personification of rivers. They are regarded as the primal cause of creation. Apsarases who live in the waters (literally move in water) are connected with fertility and in later literature are connected with sexual symbolism.

She is also closely connected with concrete aspects of nature like earth, cow, dawn or dyaus-sky. She is the bestowed of happiness, well-being, gifts, and longevity. She protects her protégées, answers their prayers, pardons sinners and delivers supplicants from distress. In the post-Vedic period, Aditi becomes the wife of Vishnu and later in the Puranas she becomes the wife of Kashyapa. A terracotta figurine surmised to be of this goddess has been discovered in the excavation at Hulas village 140 kms. North of Delhi, in the Saharanpur district. She belongs to the first millennium B.C.

Late entrants into the Vedic religion like Sri Laksmi and Ambika grow in stature and occupy an important position in the later religion.

Nirrti is obviously of tribal origin and her characteristics of death, destruction and disease have been taken over by the Puranic Kali, Karali, Chamunda, Chinnamasta, Manasa and such other minor and regional sectarian goddesses. The new Hinduism under the Guptas had to syncretise all the regional goddesses in order to be acceptable to the masses. South Indian images of Mariyamma or Mariyattal are also similar to Nirrti.

She is of the class of sinister and sinful deities and her colour is black. The animal offered to her is black cow with horns. In the bricks built for the fire altar, black bricks are laid for her.

She is the guardian angel of thieves and robbers. Colour plays a very important part in the Indian mythology and the association with night, manes and rain is well brought out in Nirrti’s black. The colour stands for strife.

Ass is an offering to Nirrti. Since there is a connection between asses and Yama, Nirrti’s connection to Yama is seen in the Ramayana. In the Mahabharata, Nairrta grass is set and the Pandavas sing praises of yama and Rudra. Thus the connection between the goddess and the gods is seen in the epics. Yami, the twin-sister of Yama, is also connected with the earth and this is seen as a link between Nirrti and Yami.

Laksmi stands for the material prosperity. She is identified with thought and speech and therefore with creativity and fine arts. She is extolled as the highest power of the cosmos in her connection with culture. Her vehicle, the swan, shows the purity of the goddess rising above worldly imperfections. Since she is the goddess associated with ascetics, she is not much favoured in domestic worship. Saraswati and Savitri appear as nude goddesses in the epic, Puranas and Tantras.

Old tribal structures were replaced by Aryan religion, which still retained small portions of the tribal ethnic structure.

Kali is a fierce and fearful-looking goddess, though in the Karpuradi stotra (verse 1) she is described as young and beautiful, and (verse 18) with gently smiling face and in some later portrayals she is depicted with a round and cherubic face and a well-filled form.

Her hair is loose and disheveled, her mouth is bloody, and with fangs, and from her open mouth the tongue lolls out gruesomely. She has shrunken pendulous breasts, and emaciated stomach. She is usually naked, holds a raised sword in one hand, and, a noose and a fresh cut head in the other two hands. She wears a girdle of severed hands, a garland of skulls; and a skeleton of babies as ear ornaments. She stands on a corpse as a vehicle. Her association and dwelling place also add to the gruesomeness of her character. Her two haunts are the cremation ground and the battlefield. In the battlefield, she crushes the enemies with her katvanga (the bone of a forearm topped by a skull), and, she crunches and eats the corpses, and drinks their blood. In the cremation ground, she is surrounded by snakes, jackals and ghosts.

The position of women, of the higher classes, continued to deteriorate. In exchange for social security, her inheritance rights, and, rights over her husband’s property were nullified. She was kept dependent on the males of her family, right through her life. Her education was stopped and marriage age was lowered to absurd limits. She was forced to treat her husband as her god and to self-immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.

The lower class woman had equal or, superior status to her husband. She worked in the fields and therefore, economically she was independent. The status of these classes of women is seen reflected in the goddesses they worshipped. Laksmi, who typifies the goddess who has power and status due to her marriage, is the example, which would reflect the status of the higher class women, and she is termed the Spouse goddess. Devi, i.e., Durga or Kali would reflect the status of the lower class women, independent, her position not dependant on any marital status. According to Saktas, the more a sakti is distanced from the god, the more destructive she becomes.

With the rise to power by the Brahmins, and the transition of statehood to the lands, Brahmins started acquiring lands as dakshina. They expanded their land-holdings further east and north. This resulted in their confrontation with tribal population, who were necessary for cultivation of the lands. The tribals were not given caste recognition, but their goddess cults along with Tantric rituals were assimilated by the Brahmins.

The Classical Age saw Brahminical ascendency, and, the rise of Mahadevi. The Spouse Goddess reflected the position of high caste women who had no choice but to play a subservient role in their marriage out of economic necessity. The presence or absence of orthodox marriage decided the class of the goddess. The Great Goddess, i.e. Kali, Durga (also Radha), who were spousified Devis, emerged in the same period.

Thus, the women of the elite class worshipped a transcendental metaphysical Goddess, while the lower castes by and large worshipped pragmatic goddesses. By the principle of reversion, women’s status was so low in real life, that it was compensated by giving a dominant role for the goddess in the cult.

Belief in a goddess with a marked ambivalence is a part of the ideology surrounding the Goddess. Again, the goddess figure is a symbol and reflects the ideas, beliefs, and values associated with women. By studying a goddess, we may get an insight into the status occupied by women in that period and the dominant values attached to them. As a corollary, it may be possible to correlate the goddess images and the society which propitiates them and find out the reason for such worship.

The Kali temples are famous for animal slaughter. The rituals attached to the goddess befit her personality. Kali demands the life / blood of the creatures she herself has created. Kali-Durga is goddesses of war and hunt, because they are perpetually revived by the fecundating and revivifying blood; this is reinforced by the sight of the flow of death and rebirth on the earth around. This is constellated in the imagery of blood sacrifice to the goddess. This is why Kali is represented with a raised sword in one hand. Continuing the symbolism, the mouth is the symbol of the female womb, the lips are the symbol of the feminine generative organ, and the tongue is that of the male. She is a gory goddess reveling in sacrificial dismemberment. She is phallic in her lolling tongue and raised sword. Thus she has in her, male and female which is the right image for the Uroboric Mother. The mother goddess of the Aztecs was similar; she was also personified as the ‘white stone knife.’

The hands and heads used as ornaments by Kali symbolize sexual powers and are instruments in active sexuality in their own right. In Hindu myths, semen is stored in the head which further corroborates the castration by Kali.

Manu had allowed fathers to keep their daughters unmarried if a suitable or acceptable bridegroom was not available. But in the Gupta period, Yajnavalkya and Narada condemn this in very strong terms. A father or brother would go to hell if he did not marry off the girl before her puberty. Since girls married before the age of twelve or thirteen, they had no say in the settlement of their marriage. A few affluent families educated their girl children. Yajnavalkya categorically states that women should not recite the Vedas and they should not even hear it recited.

There are literary evidences of this period of women hermits, poets, and students enrolling for studies along with boys.

There was doubt whether the widow could inherit the share of her husband in the joint family. If at the time of his death he was still a member of the joint family, then his widow would only get maintenance. But, if he had already separated, the wife got her husband’s share. Daughters had no share in the father’s property, if they had brothers. But her brother or her father was expected to spend about a quarter of the son’s share at her wedding. There were occasional remarriages but, puritanical society frowned at this. Sati was also occasionally practised. The widow did not deform her looks, but neither did she decorate herself.

The Puranas emphasize the ideal marriage as a wife subservient to her husband and this is stressed in the Gupta period. The wife is said to enjoy social privileges by virtue of her marriage but she had no independent status. This state of affairs is emphasized by Laksmi and surprisingly contradicted by Durga. Durga and Laksmi were closely related and may have been worshipped together as two aspects of the pre-Aryan fertility goddess. In the Puranas with Laksmi affiliated to Vishnu and Durga to Siva, there was a gap between the two goddesses which with time widened.

With the rise of gender studies in the West, goddess cult is receiving renewed interest. Similar feminist movements in India are also afoot and are re-evaluating the cult and its symbolism. Very rightly Kierkegaard has described woman as a mystery of existence. Now she is no more a mystery only but dwelling upon the immense potentially of her awareness she is attacking the age old discrimination on the account of sexuality.

The writer (aka Vinod Kumar) is a Head, Centre for English Studies and Dean, School of Languages, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi (Retd.) was awarded the Degree of D.Litt. in the year 2004 on post doctoral thesis titled Alpha to Omega and Beyond from Ranchi University, Ranchi.