Bhandasuraभंडासुर

Bhandasura is the chief antagonist of the Lalitopakhyana, the narrative of the goddess Lalita transmitted with the Brahmanda Purana, and the central demon of the Shri Vidya tradition of goddess worship. His origin is his meaning: when Shiva burned Kamadeva, the god of desire, to ash, a being was fashioned from those ashes and came to life. Born of desire destroyed rather than desire fulfilled, Bhanda embodies passion in its sterile, world-devouring form.

The story

Granted boons and lordship, Bhanda ruled from his city of Shunyaka, the city of emptiness, and drained the worlds of their vitality, for where he prevailed desire itself withered. The afflicted gods performed a great sacrifice, and from its fire of consciousness the supreme goddess arose as Lalita Tripurasundari, the beautiful one of the three worlds. The Lalitopakhyana describes her war against Bhanda in lavish detail, her lieutenant goddesses destroying his generals and sons before Lalita annihilated the demon and his city with the weapon of Kameshvara. Her first act after victory was to restore Kamadeva to life for the sake of his widow Rati, returning desire, rightly ordered, to the world.

In the tradition

Within Shri Vidya the battle is commonly read as an inner allegory, Bhanda standing for the ego and the deadened, self-enclosed condition of the unawakened mind, and Lalita for the consciousness that consumes it. The recitation of the goddess's thousand names, the Lalita Sahasranama, presupposes this myth, several of its names hailing her as Bhanda's destroyer.