Chandiचंडी

Chandi (चंडी), or Chandika, the fierce and impetuous one, is the name under which the Great Goddess acts through most of the Devi Mahatmya, the foundational scripture of Shakta Hinduism. The name is less a separate deity than the Goddess at full intensity — the mode in which Durga, Kali and the mothers operate when the worlds are at stake. So completely does the name belong to the text that in Bengal and much of northern India the Devi Mahatmya itself is called simply the Chandi, or Chandi Path when recited.

In the text

The Devi Mahatmya, embedded in the Markandeya Purana, runs to seven hundred verses — hence its other title, Durga Saptashati — across three episodes: the goddess as Mahamaya rousing Vishnu against Madhu and Kaitabha; the slaying of Mahishasura; and the long war against Shumbha and Nishumbha, in which Chandika sends forth Kali and the Matrikas from her own person and finally absorbs them back, declaring that she alone exists. That last gesture is the theological heart of the text: the many goddesses are one Chandi.

Recitation and worship

Chandi is a goddess encountered above all through recitation. The Chandi Path is chanted through Navaratri, at temple festivals and in homes, with an elaborate ritual apparatus of preliminary and concluding hymns; the practice of ceremonial recitation, sometimes by relays of priests, remains one of the most vigorous scriptural traditions in Hinduism. Her seed-mantras and the navarna mantra are central to Shakta initiation. In iconography she is rendered like Durga, many-armed and lion-borne, and regional traditions from Himachal to Bengal maintain Chandi and Chandika temples. Wherever the Goddess is invoked as ultimate power in her most concentrated, unhesitating form, it is Chandi's name that comes first.