Parvatiपार्वती

Parvati is the goddess of power and devotion, consort of Shiva and, with Lakshmi and Saraswati, one of the Tridevī. Her name declares her parentage: she is the daughter of Himavat, the Himalaya personified, and the queen Menā. In the theology of the Goddess she is Śakti itself, the divine energy without which, the texts insist, Shiva is inert; and she is that energy in its gracious, maternal aspect, the benign face of the same power that manifests fiercely as Durga and Kali, whom the tradition widely understands as her forms.

The story

Parvati is held to be the rebirth of Satī, Shiva's first wife, who gave up her life when her father Dakṣa insulted her husband. Reborn as the mountain king's daughter, she resolved to win Shiva again, but the god, grieving and withdrawn, was locked in meditation and beyond the reach of beauty; the love-god Kāma, sent to rouse him, was burnt to ash by his third eye. Parvati then took the ascetic's own path, undertaking austerities so severe that the sages marvelled, until Shiva, testing her in disguise and finding her constant, accepted her. Kālidāsa's Kumārasambhava made this courtship one of the summits of Sanskrit poetry. Their marriage joins asceticism and the household, and from it come Kartikeya, the commander of the gods, and, by Parvati's own shaping, Ganesha.

Iconography

Parvati is depicted as a beautiful, gentle figure, typically two-armed when beside Shiva, holding a lotus, with Ganesha and Kartikeya near. As Umā or Gaurī, the fair one, she is golden; in the Ardhanārīśvara image she forms the left half of a single androgynous body with Shiva, the classic statement of their inseparability. South Indian bronzes of the goddess, slender and poised, are among the finest achievements of Indian sculpture. In the abstract language of the temple she is the yoni base in which the liṅga stands.

Worship

Parvati is worshipped wherever Shiva is, sharing his shrines as Ambā, Gaurī or the local mother goddess, and she is central to women's festival culture. Observances such as Teej and the Gaurī festivals, kept especially in the north and west, invoke her as the model of marital devotion and the giver of good husbands and household welfare; unmarried girls fast for a spouse like Shiva won by her perseverance. Through the Śākta traditions her identity widens without limit: the Devī Māhātmya's supreme Goddess, slayer of demons and mother of the universe, is continuous with the mountain king's daughter.