Parvati
பார்வதி पार्वती
Also Uma, Gauri, Sati, Meenakshi, Kamakshi, Akhilandeswari, Annapurna.
SaivaShakta
Who this is
Parvati is the daughter of the mountain, Himavan, and the wife who won Siva by austerity rather than by beauty. She is Sati reborn: Sati gave up her body at her father’s sacrifice when her husband was insulted, and returned as Parvati to the same marriage. She is the half of Siva that acts, which is why Ardhanarishvara, the half woman form, is not a curiosity but a statement. In the south she is worshipped under her own names more than as a consort, and at Madurai it is Meenakshi who rules and Sundareswarar who married into the city.
How to recognise them
A seated or standing woman, two or four armed, with a lotus and often a parrot, in the company of Siva or alone in her own sanctum. As Gauri she is fair and as Kali dark, and the tradition holds these to be the same person. As Annapurna she holds a ladle and a vessel of rice, and as Akhilandeswari at Thiruvanaikaval she wears the earrings Adi Sankara is said to have given her to cool her anger.
Family and companions
Daughter of Himavan and Mena, sister of Ganga in one telling. Wife of Siva. Mother of Ganesha, whom she made alone, and of Murugan, whom she gathered from six sparks. Her lion or her tiger is her mount in the fiercer forms and she shares the bull in the household ones.
How they are worshipped
Friday and Tuesday; the nine nights of Navaratri; the third tithi, Tritiya.
Friday and Tuesday are her days, and the whole of Navaratri is hers. Kumkum is the offering, the archanai is said with the thousand names, and the haldi kunku gathering of married women is the household rite that belongs to her. Unmarried girls keep vows to her for a husband and married women for the husband’s life, which is what the Gauri and Vat Savitri vratams are.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The austerity that won Siva
Siva would not look at her while he was in mourning for Sati, so Parvati left the palace and did tapas in the forest, standing through the rains and the heat and at last living on nothing, which is why she is called Aparna, the one without even a leaf. Siva came to her disguised as a young brahmachari and argued against the marriage, listing everything wrong with the man she wanted. She would not be moved, and he showed himself. The tradition reads it as the one marriage in the puranas that the woman chose and worked for.
The eyes and the darkness
In play she covered Siva’s eyes from behind with both hands, and the universe went dark because his eyes are the sun and the moon, and in that darkness every creature suffered. To undo it she was sent to do penance at Kanchi, where she made a linga of sand on the bank of the Kampa river and held it as the flood rose rather than let it go. Siva appeared and she was given back her place. Ekambareswarar at Kanchi keeps the sand linga and the mango tree she sat under.
The fish eyed queen of Madurai
Meenakshi was born to the Pandya king with three breasts and a prophecy that the third would vanish when she met the man she would marry. She was raised as a prince, took the army out and conquered to the north until she reached Kailasa and faced Siva, and the third breast vanished. He came to Madurai as Sundareswarar and married her, and the city keeps the wedding every year at Chithirai. The point the city makes of it is that she is the ruler and he the consort, which is the opposite of the usual arrangement, and her shrine is the larger of the two.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- Worshipped under her own names and in her own sanctum: Meenakshi at Madurai, Kamakshi at Kanchi, Akhilandeswari at Thiruvanaikaval, and in most Siva temples the Amman shrine has its own flagstaff.
- Kerala
- Kept as Bhagavathy in thousands of shrines, and the Thiruvathira of Dhanu is the women’s night of dance and fasting.
- Maharashtra
- Gauri comes to the house for three days in Bhadrapada beside Ganesha, is fed and sent off, and the Hartalika vratam is kept by women the day before.
- Bengal
- Durga is read as Parvati coming home to her father’s house for four days each autumn, which is why the immersion is felt as a daughter leaving.
- Kashmir
- Kashmiri Pandit houses keep Gauri Trai in Magha for the women of the family, and Kheer Bhavani is the great shrine of the goddess.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple Madurai, Tamil Nadu
- Kanchi Kamakshi Amman Temple Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu
- Jambukeswarar Temple, Thiruvanaikaval Thiruvanaikaval, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
- Mangadu Kamakshi Amman Temple Mangadu, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
- Patteeswaram Durgai Amman Temple Patteeswaram, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
What is said
From the mantra library