Twice a year the lunar calendar sets aside nine nights for the Goddess, and the autumn one, Sharad Navaratri, is the one most of the Hindu world keeps. It begins on the first day of the bright fortnight of the month of Ashvina, usually in September or October, as the monsoon withdraws and the air cools. For nine nights the Goddess is invited into the home, fed, sung to and danced around; on the tenth morning she is sent on her way, and the day is called Vijayadashami, the tenth of victory.
Navaratri simply means "nine nights", and the festival is counted in nights because the worship, the fasting and the dancing all reach their height after sunset.
The battle behind the festival
The scripture at the centre of Navaratri is the Devi Mahatmya, "the glory of the Goddess", a text of seven hundred verses embedded in the Markandeya Purana and also called the Durga Saptashati. It tells how the buffalo demon Mahishasura, having won a boon that no man or god could kill him, drove the gods from heaven. Their combined anger poured out as light and took the form of a woman, Durga, "the one who is hard to reach". Each god gave her a weapon; the Himalaya gave her a lion. The battle lasted nine nights, and on the tenth day she killed Mahishasura, which is why she is called Mahishasura Mardini, the slayer of the buffalo demon.
The text is read aloud across the nine days, and its refrain is sung in every temple:
To the Goddess who abides in all beings in the form of power, salutations to her, salutations to her, salutations to her, again and again.
The nine forms
In the northern tradition each night honours one of the Navadurga, nine forms of the Goddess that together trace a whole life.
- Shailaputri, "daughter of the mountain", is Parvati as the child of Himalaya, riding a bull with a trident and a lotus. She is the beginning, rooted in the earth.
- Brahmacharini, the ascetic, is Parvati during her long penance to win Shiva, barefoot with a rosary and a water pot. She stands for discipline.
- Chandraghanta carries a crescent moon shaped like a bell on her forehead: the married Parvati, fierce and serene at once.
- Kushmanda is said to have created the universe with a smile, a small warm light in the void.
- Skandamata is the mother of Skanda, or Kartikeya, commander of the gods' army, who sits in her lap. She is the Goddess as nurturer.
- Katyayani was born in the hermitage of the sage Katyayana, and in this form she rides out against Mahishasura.
- Kalaratri, "the dark night", black-skinned and wild-haired on a donkey, is the most frightening of the nine. She destroys fear by embodying it.
- Mahagauri, "the great fair one", is Parvati after Shiva washed away the soot of her austerities with Ganga water: purity and calm after struggle.
- Siddhidatri grants siddhis, spiritual perfections. She is the Goddess complete, seated on a lotus, with nothing left to seek.
Three goddesses, three stages
Alongside the nine forms runs a simpler pattern. The nine nights divide into three sets of three. The first three go to Durga, who removes what is coarse and harmful in us: anger, laziness, bad habits. The middle three go to Lakshmi, who fills the cleared space with virtue and with material and spiritual wealth. The last three go to Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, music and speech, who brings wisdom to crown it. Purify, enrich, illuminate. Regions differ on the order, but the logic of the sequence is widely shared.
Keeping the nine days
On the first morning a pot, the kalash, is set up as the seat of the Goddess, often with barley seeds sown in a tray of soil around it. The seedlings that sprout over nine days are her visible blessing.
Many devotees fast. The fast varies from one meal a day to nothing but fruit and milk, but the common rule is no grain, no onion or garlic, no alcohol or meat. A cuisine has grown up around it: flatbreads of buckwheat or water chestnut flour, tapioca pearls with peanuts, potatoes with rock salt. The point is lightness, not hunger.
In Gujarat, and wherever Gujaratis have settled, the nights are given over to garba and dandiya raas. Garba takes its name from garbha, the womb: the dancers circle a lamp in a clay pot or an image of the Goddess, the divine at the still centre of a turning world. Dandiya raas uses pairs of painted sticks struck in rhythm, often described as a playful re-enactment of the Goddess's battle, the sticks standing for swords.
On the eighth or ninth day many north Indian homes perform kanya puja, or kanjak: nine young girls are invited in as living forms of the nine goddesses. Their feet are washed, a red thread is tied on their wrists, and they are fed fried bread, spiced chickpeas and semolina halwa before receiving a small gift. It is one of the most tender rituals in the Hindu year.
Durga Puja in Bengal
In Bengal, Odisha, Assam and among Bengalis abroad, the same days become Durga Puja, and the last five are the real festival. The Goddess is imagined as a married daughter coming home to her parents for a visit, bringing her four children: Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha and Kartikeya. Temporary pavilions called pandals rise in every neighbourhood, housing clay images of Durga with her lion, her ten arms full of weapons and Mahishasura beneath her foot.
Mahalaya, the day before, begins before dawn with a radio recitation of the Mahishasura Mardini hymn that still wakes households across the state. On the sixth day the Goddess's eyes are ceremonially opened. At the junction of the eighth and ninth days comes the Sandhi Puja, the forty-eight minutes in which Durga is said to have struck the killing blow. On the tenth day married women smear each other with vermilion in the sindoor khela, and the images are carried to the river and immersed. The daughter has gone back to her husband's home; the family weeps and promises to see her next year.
Vijayadashami
The tenth day gathers more than one victory. It is the day Durga killed Mahishasura, and the day Rama killed Ravana, so in north India it is Dussehra, when enormous effigies of Ravana, his brother Kumbhakarna and his son Meghnad are burned after nine nights of Ramlila, the staged story of Rama. In the south it is Ayudha Puja, when tools, books, vehicles and instruments are cleaned, garlanded and rested for a day. In Maharashtra people exchange leaves of the shami tree as "gold", a wish for prosperity.
Celebrating at home
Nine nights can sound daunting, but the shape of the festival makes it easy to keep in part.
- Set up a small kalash or simply an image of the Goddess on the first day, and light a lamp before it each evening.
- Fast on whichever days you can, even if it is only giving up one thing.
- Read or listen to a portion of the Devi Mahatmya each night.
- Dance. Put on garba music and let the children join in.
- On the eighth or ninth day, feed a girl or two from the neighbourhood with proper ceremony.
And on the tenth morning, start something. Vijayadashami is held to be among the most auspicious days of the year for beginnings.