Chamundeshwari

Chamundeshwari is the presiding goddess of Mysuru in Karnataka, enshrined on Chamundi Hill, which rises above the city. She is a form of Chamunda, the fierce aspect of Durga, and is worshipped as the slayer of the buffalo demon Mahishasura; local tradition derives the city's very name from the demon, Mahishuru, the town of Mahisha, over whom the goddess triumphed. Few Indian cities are so completely identified with their goddess: her hill commands the skyline, and her festival is the city's defining public event.

The tradition

Chamundeshwari is the tutelary deity of the Wodeyars, the dynasty that ruled Mysore from the late fourteenth century until the mid-twentieth. The royal house worshipped her as the guarantor of its sovereignty, endowed her temple across the generations, and made her worship the ritual centre of the state. The temple as it stands reflects this long patronage: an older shrine enlarged over the centuries, its lofty many-tiered gopura, the landmark of the hill, attributed to Wodeyar building in the nineteenth century.

The hill

Pilgrims may ascend Chamundi Hill by road or by the old stone stairway of roughly a thousand steps. Partway up the steps stands the colossal monolithic Nandi, Shiva's bull, carved from a single granite boulder and among the largest of its kind in India, itself an object of worship. Near the summit a modern painted statue of Mahishasura, sword and cobra in hand, greets visitors, a reminder of the adversary whose defeat the goddess embodies.

The Dasara

Chamundeshwari presides over the Mysore Dasara, the ten-day autumn Navaratri festival that the Wodeyars raised into one of India's great royal celebrations and which the state of Karnataka continues as its nada habba, the festival of the land. Through the nine nights the goddess is worshipped on her hill and in the palace, and on Vijayadashami her image is borne through the city in a golden howdah on a caparisoned elephant at the head of the Jamboo Savari procession, the culminating spectacle of the festival and a continuation, in altered form, of the durbar processions of the old kingdom.