Nirritiनिरृति

Nirriti (निरृति) holds the south-west among the Aṣṭa-Dikpāla, the eight guardians of the directions, and is the darkest figure in that company. The name itself is a negation: where ṛta is the Vedic principle of cosmic order, nir-ṛti is its absence, disorder, decay, the coming-apart of things. The south-west, the quarter of the setting sun furthest from the auspicious north-east, is the fitting seat of such a power.

The Vedic goddess

In the Rigveda and Atharvaveda, Nirriti is a goddess, the personification of ruin, poverty, disease and death. She is not worshipped for favours but ritually sent away: hymns beg that she depart to the distance, and offerings assigned to her are made with averted formality, often in black, at the margins of the rite. She embodies everything the sacrifice is performed to keep at bay.

The dikpala

In the later Puranic scheme of direction-guardians the figure shifts gender, and Nirriti is generally a male deity, sometimes reckoned lord of rakshasas, armed with a sword and mounted variously on a man, a donkey or a lion. He receives his quarter in temple ritual and in vastu, the traditional science of building, where the south-west corner is assigned weight and stability precisely because its presiding power must be contained. Little independent cult attaches to him; like the decay he governs, Nirriti is acknowledged so that he may be kept in his place.