Maheshvariमाहेश्वरी

Māheśvarī (माहेश्वरी) is the śakti of Maheśvara, the great lord Śiva, and one of the Saptamātṛkā, the seven mothers. Her iconography is Śiva's own transposed into feminine form: white or fair in colour, riding the bull Nandin, holding the triśūla, the trident, together with the ḍamaru drum, and marked with the third eye, the crescent moon and the serpent ornaments of the ascetic god. Some images give her the antelope and the skull-bowl, completing the likeness.

In the texts

In the Devī Māhātmya she springs from Śiva when the gods release their energies to reinforce the Goddess against Śumbha and Niśumbha, and rides into battle seated on the bull. Purāṇic accounts of the Andhaka episode likewise count her among the mothers created to check a demon whose every drop of spilled blood became another demon. In Śākta theology the derivation runs the other way: the Goddess is prior, and Māheśvarī is the form she assumes when she wields Śiva's power.

In sculpture and worship

Māheśvarī conventionally holds the second place in the Mātṛkā panel, beside Brahmāṇī, in the sets of seven carved at temple sites from the Gupta period onward and enshrined in Mātṛkā chapels attached to Śaiva temples. The seven mothers together receive worship in tantric rites, in the consecration of temples, and in protective rituals, and Māheśvarī, bearing the emblems of the god of dissolution, stands in these liturgies for the power that destroys in order to guard.