Gauriगौरी

Gauri (गौरी), the fair or radiant one, is Parvati in her most benign and auspicious aspect: golden-complexioned, gentle, the perfect bride and wife. Where the Goddess's fierce names belong to the battlefield and the cremation ground, Gauri belongs to the household — to marriage, harvest and the well-being of families — and she is among the most widely worshipped forms of the Devi in domestic religion.

The story

The Puranas explain the name with a story of transformation. Parvati, dark-skinned, was teased by Shiva for her complexion; stung, she withdrew into austerities until the gods granted her a body of golden radiance. In the Devi Mahatmya's version of the motif, the dark sheath that left her body became the goddess Kaushiki or Kali, while Parvati herself shone as Gauri — the tradition's way of saying that the gentle and the terrible goddesses are one being, parted for the work at hand.

Worship

Gauri is above all the goddess of marriage and marital happiness. Unmarried girls worship her for a good husband — as Parvati herself won Shiva by devotion — and married women for their husbands' long life. The festival calendar honours her across regions: Hartalika Teej in the north, when women fast as Parvati fasted; the Gangaur festival of Rajasthan, whose very name joins Gana (Shiva) and Gauri; and in Maharashtra and Karnataka the Gauri festival kept alongside Ganesh Chaturthi, when the goddess is welcomed into homes as a visiting daughter and mother of Ganesha. The pairing Gauri-Shankara names the ideal divine couple, invoked at weddings.

Meaning

Gauri completes the spectrum of the Goddess. The tradition that worships Kali in the cremation ground worships Gauri at the threshold of the house, and insists the two are one — power in its terrible and its nurturing modes. In Gauri the Devi is met where most of her worshippers actually live: in the continuity of households, marriages and seasons.