Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship

Abstract

This book tells the story of Durgā, the buffalo-demon-slaying deity dear to Indic rulers, between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE, as she transformed from a Vaiṣṇava, to a Śaiva and finally to a supreme deity, a concentrated power-source Śakti, in whom all divinities and dualities were thought to inhere and also to transcend. Reconstructed through mythology, liturgy, the belles lettres, ritual instructions, epigraphy, local legends of kingship, sculptural evidence and anthropological studies, the stages of this story illuminate an entire belief system concerning political power: warrior-centric goddess worship called heroic Śāktism in the book. The belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durgā, the form and substance of kingship, heroic Śāktism formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures. Fundamentally, the slow development of this deity cannot be disentangled from the narrative of the state in pre-modern India. Heroic Śāktism unfolded within a social landscape of conquest and competition, dependent on a monsoon economy in which harvests were unreliable and the appeasement of gods in control of environmental crises, foremost among whom was the goddess, was paramount. Its emergence is imbricated with the imperatives of state: military expansio…