Mahishasuraमहिषासुर

Mahishasura, the buffalo demon, is the adversary against whom the great goddess first fully reveals herself. His slaying by Durga, told in the Devi Mahatmya, is the founding myth of the Shakta tradition and among the most frequently depicted scenes in all Indian art. In him the texts imagine brute power at its most protean: a being who shifts between buffalo, lion, elephant and man, and who can be finished only at the moment of transformation itself.

The story

Mahisha won by austerity a boon that made him effectively unconquerable by any male, god or man, and on its strength drove Indra from heaven and seized the sovereignty of the worlds. The dispossessed gods poured out their anger, and from their combined radiance a woman took form: the Devi, to whom each god gave a replica of his own weapon, Shiva his trident, Vishnu his discus, and the mountain god a lion for her mount. Mahisha's generals fell to her one by one, and in the final combat the demon cycled desperately through his forms. As he struggled half-emerged from the buffalo's body, the goddess pinned the beast beneath her foot and struck off his head. The texts insist on the ease of it: she battles, the Devi Mahatmya says, as if in play.

In text and image

The narrative is the second episode of the Devi Mahatmya, embedded in the Markandeya Purana, and the goddess in this act is Mahishasuramardini, the crusher of Mahisha. The image is ancient, appearing on small plaques from around the Kushan period, and reaches one of its summits in the seventh-century relief at Mamallapuram, where goddess and buffalo-headed demon face each other across a battlefield in full career. It remains the canonical image installed at Durga Puja.

Festival and place

Navaratri and its Bengali culmination, Durga Puja, celebrate this victory each autumn, the goddess worshipped for nine nights and her triumph marked on Vijayadashami. Local tradition in Karnataka derives the name of Mysuru from Mahisha, and the goddess Chamundeshwari, worshipped on the Chamundi Hill above the city, is honoured there as his slayer. Few myths have been so continuously renewed in ritual, image and civic memory.